Chapter 13
Graysen
Show no fear.
Show no fear.
Show no fear.
Like a wild animal, she’d be able to scent it.
A brisk current of air breezed through the arrow slit in the wall behind me, rippling the blue flames of the wildfyre torches braced on either side of the heavy wooden door.
The soles of my boots scraped against the landing as I shifted my weight from foot to foot, readjusting my stance as I stared dead ahead at the door to my residence.
I cracked my neck and rolled my shoulders, trying to ease the tension from my rigid muscles.
I was stalling.
And I knew it.
I might have also been freaking the fuck out, wondering what was going to greet me when I finally grew the balls to enter my room.
My. Own. Room. For fuck’s sake.
Except one tiny girl with a wild mane of hair and glacial eyes, full of pure spiteful wrath, had tormented the ever-living shit out of me for the past three days.
Fuck, fuck, fuuuck…
Do it, just do it!—I mentally roared at myself.
My hand balled into a fist, rising to greet the wooden door—
I yanked my fist back.
Shock slammed into me as I realized I was about to knock on my own door and ask to be let in.
It’s my fucking room!
Mine!
Blowing out a breath, I tried to erase the anxiousness that wrecked my chest and steeled myself for what I was about to do.
I reached for the door handle, twisted, and pushed it open, sending my senses shooting through first. Testing and prodding and feeling out for a girl who had used the adamere walls like a whetstone to file a handful of spoons down to a razor-edge.
Nelle had ambushed me yesterday, as I’d entered my room, and hurled her weapons at me.
Sure, I was a Crowther, and she had absolutely no chance of outright killing me, and she knew it.
But when she actually sank one into my thigh, her godsdamned gleeful laughter and the little dance of victory she’d performed annoyed the hells out of me, wounding both my ego and my leg.
Besides, I smoothed a hand down the front of my black t-shirt, the irritation flaring all over again. I had every damn right to be pissed off. I clung to that righteous fury and let it heat my blood.
It was oddly quiet except for the wraith-wolf making a strange chomping noise when I stalked into my room.
The chrome lamp’s tall neck curved over the couch, its golden light spilling downward.
A few of the ceiling lights glowed in a dimmer setting, a comforting presence for a girl terrified of the dark.
Towering brickwork shaped into pillar-like forms rose to meet the roofline of the outer walls, broken by the wide openings I’d carved out for Nelle.
The tower’s magic acted like a windowpane, allowing light but holding back the evening chill.
Moonlight seeped into the room, glancing over the crown of Nelle’s pale hair and limning the edge of her features.
She was curled up on the couch with soft cream blankets tucked around her legs, looking sweet and innocent as she read a novel, with the sleeve of her white oversized dress falling off a shoulder.
A lie.
A godsdamned fucking lie.
The girl wasn’t sweet and innocent. She was a wraith-wolf, with claws and fangs and a spiteful tongue.
Nelle didn’t bother to look up from her book when I walked in, just coldly greeted me with, “Evening, prick,” as she flipped over a page.
Sage gave a low warning growl, his silvery eyes fixed on me as I entered my domain. Lying on the floor beside the couch, he sank his deadly fangs into the mangled leather of a boot, wrestling his head from side to side with one enormous paw over the boot’s upper for leverage.
I drifted to a slow halt.
My eyes rounded as I took in what was scattered all over the floor.
What the hells?
Every single shoe I owned was chewed to a pulp. Torn to pieces. Ripped to shreds. Just mutilated strips of leather and crunched metal zips and butchered soles. The only pair of shoes I had left were the ones I was wearing.
“What the fuck is all of this?” I bellowed, flinging my arms outward, waving them at the surrounding destruction.
Nelle’s gaze darted to the boot in Sage’s maw, then back to her book. “He’s bored and there was nothing else to play fetch with.”
“He can leave the rooms,” I bit out, as anger blustered its way through my veins. The godsdamned wraith-wolf could come and go as he pleased.
“He won’t, because I can’t,” she snapped, turning another page with an annoyed flick. She finally turned her gaze toward me. A cold feeling swept through me to see her eyes sparkle with barely concealed mirth. “Enjoy your evening out, asshole?” she crooned, taunting me.
I just lost it there and then. Fury tore through me in blistering swaths.
“How dare you mock my cock!” I roared, storming forward to stab a finger at her. “You know it’s nothing like how you described!”
Her eyes narrowed and became mean. She swung her legs over the couch, the blankets falling away as she pushed up to stand and step over Sage so we were face to face. She craned her neck back and spat out, “How would I know? I hadn’t any experience before I met yours!”
“I gave you multiple orgasms. Loads of times. Too many fucking times to count!” The shit that was leaving my mouth—I had no idea how to rein in.
“Has it ever crossed your ego-inflated mind that I might have been FAKING THEM?!”
“Un-fucking-likely!” I roared back. But there’d been a slight hesitation filled with doubt before I roared it.
Nelle hissed and hurled her book at me. I batted it aside, and it hit the carpet, the pages flapping as it splayed open wide.
My brothers had returned from dealing with the Widowmakers and needed to blow off some steam in Ascendria.
It had been a brutal siege to crush the vicious crime syndicate, with a few of our warband falling in the bloodshed.
When I’d arrived to pick them up from a nightclub and bring them home, unease had crept through me as I pushed my way through the crowded club.
I couldn’t work out why the mortals were giving me weird looks, then erupting into laughter.
I had no fucking idea what was going on, but I had an awful feeling who was behind it—Nelle Wychthorn.
My brothers, gathered at the end of the long glass-topped bar, had taken one look at me. Caidan had sprayed a mouthful of beer, Kenton cracked a rough cackle, and Jett had nearly fallen off his barstool with his crowing laughter.
Obviously, Nelle had found my old childhood arts and crafts box stuffed in the back of my storage cupboard.
She’d discovered a special kind of pen my mother had given me years ago.
The kind of pen you couldn’t see what was written unless you shone a certain light on it.
The lights pulsing through the nightclub were perfect for illuminating the message Nelle had written over my black t-shirt.
As my brothers laughed their asses off at me, I looked down, peeling the fabric that clung to my chest so I could read what Nelle wrote.
MEET
MR. TINY
LIMP DICK
Caidan had howled, barely able to describe what she’d drawn on the back of my t-shirt through his roaring laughter. Nelle had drawn a stick figure of me with a sad face pointing to the tiny limp dick between my legs, and the word Waaaaaah! rolling from my mouth.
The girl in question was now standing in front of me, bristling with anger.
Nelle clicked her tongue, and Sage rose, growling, his teeth banded around my fucking boot.
She rounded me, backing away with a smug smile as her gaze slid lazily down my chest. “Just thought I’d give fair warning to any unsuspecting girl you were planning to take home, so they wouldn’t be disappointed with your lack of prowess in bed. ”
My jaw clenched. Did she really think I’d go out and fuck someone else?
Of course she did.
Spinning away, she stomped toward her bedroom, and the thunderous slamming of the door—her signature goodnight—thumped through the air and sent irritating rattling through my very bones.
I sighed wearily, my taut muscles easing.
Hopefully, she had retired for the night. I could hear Sage inside the room, crunching metal and leather as he gnawed at my boot like a bone.
I’d carved a window for her so moonlight would bathe her while she slept.
The only time I had any semblance of peace was when she was fast asleep.
Nelle had employed psychological warfare for the past few days.
Her chanting of “Free me,” and “Set me free,” had been endless.
Sung in the shower, chanted as she strolled around the balcony, mumbled between mouthfuls of toast for breakfast and mouthfuls of fish for dinner, hurled at me when I was trying to concentrate on my research.
I wasn’t even Crowther any longer, either.
I was back to being asshole and prick, and her new favorite: dickface.
In my kitchen drawer, I fished out a trash bag and filled it with the remains of my shoes, cringing as my fingers slipped on wraith-wolf drool that gunked up the mangled pieces. I strode for the door to my quarters, opened it up, and tossed the bag outside to be dealt with tomorrow morning.
Entering my bathroom, the dark stonework calming with its clean lines and minimal decor, I drew in a deep breath, releasing the ire and agitation before walking over to the vanity.
With a twist of the chrome tap, warm water filled the basin.
I scrubbed my hands clean of saliva under the spray of hot water and liquid soap.
Turning it off, I braced my wet hands upon the smooth stone surface to stare at myself in the mirror.
I looked like shit. Bloodshot eyes with purple smudges beneath them, skin dulled to a tired hue.
Days of being on edge around Nelle had worn me thin.
It had been nearly a week since I’d last slept, the longest I’d ever gone, yet I couldn’t find it in myself to fall under.
And I sure as hells wasn’t going to sleep in my quarters where she’d shove a pillow across my face and suffocate me.