Chapter 31 #3
Everyone starts to leave The Seventh, our small group remaining. Thea waggles her fingers at me.
“Sure you aren’t ready to try ice?”
She knows damn well that I won’t be touching her Gift until we know for sure that she won’t be harmed or affected in any way.
I won’t allow her to be hurt or her Gift diminished in any fucking way, not for this, not for me.
I know she would be willing to do whatever was necessary to end this war and stop Barony, but I’m not willing to let her.
Just as I’m about to tell her that myself, Alexi caws loudly as he soars towards the open doors of The Seventh. Isolde tilts her head as the raven flies past her and I swear she licks her lips.
-Not on the menu,- I warn.
-I promise not to eat the messenger. But she did pique my appetite—I'm going to hunt with Soren.-
“Mia! Unless you want to be Isolde’s dinner, time to disembark.”
She sighs but scrambles off of Isolde’s head and slides down her leg, boots crunching in the snow as she lands lithely. She’s been training with her sister, it seems.
“She would never eat me,” she tells me, hands on her hips.
“You’re probably right. Too scrawny. Probably taste awful too,” Dessa calls.
Mia narrows her eyes at her sister and begins scooping up handfuls of snow and forming them into balls as Isolde stands, stretching her long body and flaring her wings.
She bumps Mia gently in the back in goodbye and takes to the sky.
Soren licks Mia’s face, making her giggle and wipe the slobber from her cheek with her shoulder, still packing the snow into her arsenal as the frost cat streaks off after the dragon.
Dessa winks at me before sprinting for her sister, making her scream.
She tries to throw the balls of snow, but she’s not nearly fast enough.
Dessa is quick as hells. While the two of them chase each other around, Thea takes the message from Alexi’s leg, rubbing the bird’s head and neck lovingly before handing the envelope to me. Cece and Math join us.
“He’s beautiful,” Math says, reaching a tentative hand toward the raven.
Alexi tilts his head at him, but eventually decides that he’s worthy of showering the bird with affection, and hops closer to him.
“I like you much better than that terrifying bastard that came from Lyanna all those months ago,” he tells the bird.
Alexi caws in agreement, nuzzling his head beneath Math’s fingers in clear agreement.
I chuckle and tear open the envelope, my blood going cold as my eyes scan the words, then scan them again to be sure I’m reading them correctly.
“Fuck,” I whisper and Thea tenses, immediately on alert.
“What’s happened?”
Cece puts a hand on her arm, reassuring and calm.
Not for the first time, I’m so happy that Thea found this woman, found them both all those years ago.
They’re two of the best people I’ve ever met, truly good to their cores, and Cece treats Thea the way her own sister should have.
I know that a part of Thea’s heart will always be broken from the loss of her twin, from the betrayal and the hurt and what should have been, but I pray that Cece’s love helps to make that fracture easier to bear.
“Your sister...Makers, she’s the queen of Marrowood now—and Lyanna.”
“What??” Thea barks, yanking the letter from my hand and reading the words herself, beginning to pace. My lips quirk ever so slightly: it’s a habit we both share.
“What the fucking hells do you mean she’s the queen of two fucking kingdoms??” Math asks me.
“Their plan fell apart when you learned the truth about me,” Thea says, wide eyes meeting mine.
“She must have gone back to Barony—killed Hastings, I’d wager, blamed everything on him—and they took her to Marrowood to keep them in the Alliance.
” Her eyes go back to the letter again, shaking her head, and I continue explaining what happened to the others.
“Apparently once there, Tybalt forced a marriage, probably to taunt Barony, but once the decree was signed, she burned him to death, taking control of the kingdom and uniting it with Lyanna by then marrying Barony.”
“Holy fucking Makers, that’s...diabolical.”
“My sister has always been cunning, that’s for fucking sure.
The rest of the Alliance is terrified of them now, of what they’re capable of,” Thea says, eyes still on the letter.
“And it’s believed that Barony is ready to take Gifts himself.
” She crumbles the paper in her fist, fire in her eyes.
The temperature drops around us, frost coating her hands and neck and lips.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she hisses between clenched teeth.
“It’s alright, love,” I assure her. “We’ll stop them.”
She meets my gaze. “But how many more people will they hurt before we do? How many more kingdoms will they take? How many more Gifteds will they destroy?”
I stride forward, pinching her chin and lifting it so she meets my eyes.
“They will pay for every soul they hurt, I promise you. Every. Single. One. But we must wait until we are ready to face them. We need more time.” I run the pad of my thumb over her bottom lip, the frost cool and tempting.
She shivers, the fire in her eyes shifting to a different kind entirely.
“Patience, Red,” I whisper. “We will make this right, but you must have patience.”
She takes a deep breath before letting it out slowly. “I know,” she whispers. “I just hate this. I hate her out there, hurting people and taking power. I know her—I know them both—this taste of it will only make them savage for more. They won’t stop.”
“We will stop them,” I promise her.
“I know.” She sighs, nodding. She turns her head and places a soft kiss on the pad of my thumb, before biting it gently and sending a ripple of desire through my body, directly to my cock.
She meets my gaze again, that wicked fire dancing within the emerald.
“Until then, I have ideas of ways for you to teach me patience...”