A Storm of Shadows (Fates and Fables #3)

17. Dryston

Chapter 17

Dryston

H e’d shown her his hand. Maybe he should have kept it a secret about the key. Maybe he should have let her believe he still had it and the power to let her go.

At least she hadn’t tried to kill him over the last three days since he’d told her. No, if anything, she’d restored her stormy silence, her livid glares, and her sniping remarks.

Because she needed him alive, and he needed her alive. So she didn’t have to obey. She didn’t have to comply. Unless he harmed her.

Which he wouldn’t do except in self-defense. He already saw the bruises on her from their fights, and he winced every time he looked at them. He beat himself up about it internally. Hurting others wasn’t something he relished, certainly not ones who were smaller and weaker than him.

Though he wasn’t certain Onora was weaker than him—or at least her other strengths greatly made up for the apparent weaknesses. She’d come so close to harming him so many times. He could have been dead if it weren’t for the chain that alerted him—and that was only because he’d been on high alert since they’d escaped.

She was leading him northwest and from what he vaguely remembered of the map, that was the direction toward Orc Haven. They would have plains, a river, then more forests before getting there. Silenus was in those woods and if they could get to the river, he could find Silenus’s house.

They’d encountered no Hunters since she’d screamed to alert them, and he didn’t know if they’d gone the wrong way, or if they were always just a step behind, drawing ever closer.

They broke for the day, eating more fish as she’d admitted that the berries were a sleep aid and she’d been trying to drug him. He’d had to let his anger go, let it slip away because there were more important things to worry about at the moment.

The wind whipped through the trees, the cool breeze making Onora shudder, hunching in her shoulders. He wrapped his wing around them, blocking out the wind, and she glowered up at him.

“Do you want to be cold, then?” he asked.

“I don’t want you any closer to me than you are,” she spat, finishing off her fish and striding forward, yanking the chain so he followed.

Anger ripped through him, tendrils of black smoke coming from his wrists as he did. “I didn’t do it.”

He didn’t know why he still tried to convince her of his innocence. He didn’t know why he cared.

“I saw it, Dryston,” she said, glancing over her shoulder with a new look—betrayal.

It felt like a slap, and his ire boiled hotter. “How? What could you have seen to convince you it was me?”

“I saw the destruction. Blackened earth. Bodies drained of their life. Who else could have such dark magic?”

“That doesn’t sound like demonic magic to me.”

She scoffed. “There were eyewitnesses.”

“Maybe it was a demon, Onora. It wasn’t me. I would never do something like that.”

She stopped, turning and coming close, pressing a finger into his chest, her face full of fury. “You know what I hate the most? That you fooled me. I defended you to Chief Amherst after we went to Evolis. I’ve been harassed, told I’m under some thrall put on by you, all because I refused to say that you were evil. That I saw some honor in you yet.”

He hadn’t known she’d done that. His chest ached. She hadn’t hated him. She hadn’t thought he was a perverse murderer. What had changed so swiftly?

“I’m not saying your witness is a liar. But she could have mistaken me for someone else, or she could have been enchanted to believe she saw me. And if she is a liar, she could have been paid a handsome sum. One eyewitness is not enough for a conviction.”

“Enchanting someone’s memories is too difficult. That’s entirely unlikely.” Her brow furrowed, and she swallowed. He could see something in her wavering, and he wanted it to tip, to fall over in his favor. “You left Orc Haven before the attacks.”

“I was meeting with Lord Killgan.”

“No, you weren’t.” That doubt disappeared into a steely resolve.

“Ask Lord Killgan.”

“Brayden followed you. You didn’t go south. You went north, toward the attacks.”

He blanched. That was a lie. She had been told by Brayden that he saw him do that. And she’d believed him. A new anger coiled with the others, something that felt dangerously close to jealousy.

“What’s between the two of you?”

She frowned. “What does that matter?”

He stepped closer until there was only a breath between them and she craned to look up at him, refusing to back away. “Are you lovers?”

It shouldn’t matter. It didn’t matter.

Yet . . .

She scoffed, turning and stepping away, but he grabbed her by the wrist, tugging her back against him. She glared up at him again.

“Let. Me. Go.”

He pointed ahead to the ground, where her foot had almost stepped.

A bear trap.

She jolted.

“Oh.”

That was the most thanks he would get. He released her. “Do you trust Brayden enough to say that he would never lie to feed his own ambition?”

She blanched, swallowing. That had hit a mark. She didn’t answer him, she just kept walking, looking down at her feet more often, sometimes back at him, curious and tense.