Chapter 19
Nelle
There was something else beyond the vast scale of the chamber that made this room feel colder.
We weren’t alone.
Small groups were scattered throughout the room, chatting over drinks and plates of light snacks. Men and women dressed in old-fashioned house uniforms, or in grease or dirt-creased overalls; soldiers too, their black fatigues giving them away.
Once more, Graysen was tense, almost battle-ready.
He’d fallen into his earlier pattern as soon as we’d left the library.
After handing my romance novels to Penn to take back to his tower, he’d shielded himself behind a cold, disinterested expression.
Even though he pushed his shoulders back and kept his spine rigid, he moved gracefully.
And with every step he closed the gap between us, my shoulder almost bumping into his arm as we approached the far wall.
If he could have growled like Sage, I imagined he would have.
He seemed to be aware of everyone here and every movement they made, assessing whether they were a threat to… ?
Me?
“Our Great Hall. Anyone is welcome,” Graysen shared quietly.
My family didn’t have a Great Hall. I suppose my surprise showed on my face because he continued speaking as if in answer.
“We have a Great Room like everyone else to greet and entertain the Houses. However, we’ve carried on our ancestors’ tradition.
This place is for our family and our staff.
Once a week we all converge here for an evening, where we all mingle. ”
It was yet again something else that set the Crowthers apart from the rest of us.
Here, not only their soldiers made up their small army, but maids and laundry girls, men and women that looked after their orchards and farmland, were invited to eat and drink with the Crowther immediate family.
This was something my parents and other Houses wouldn’t tolerate, nor even think of doing.
The chatter in the hall grew quieter as the gathered staff came to realize I was amongst them, walking between the rows of long tables and the giant pillars grooved with Ukkenskrit that supported the lofty ceiling.
I forced myself to stroll leisurely, arranging my features into a haughty look, even though the hall itself was magnificent and tugged at me to marvel at the beast coiling around the walls and the gems fixed into iron-wrought chandeliers and lanterns.
Brilliant white light spilled downward, while also reflecting upward like starlight onto the vaulted ceiling, where between the stone and sturdy rafters were slats of glass.
Again, like the library’s mural, the glass was stained, this time with muted greens and black lead outlining the image.
I frowned, thinking about the pattern. Then forced back the smile that wanted to curve my lips as it sunk in. Scales—that’s what they looked like.
Conversation dried up as the servants twisted my way to gawk. I lifted my chin higher, feeling the weight of their attention pressing on me almost as heavily as stone as I swept a disinterested gaze across them.
Except I was lying.
I was interested in their reaction to me.
Inside, the turmoil of conflict dashed upon me.
Almost two weeks ago, my wyrm had fatally wounded many of their loved ones with its fire and vicious squalls of barb-tipped wind.
And here I was, face-to-face with the survivors. Yet it wasn’t the soldiers. It was the servants, with drawn faces etched in grief, who stared down at their goblets and their half-picked at plates of food, as if they hadn’t the heart to eat.
Remorse thickened in my throat. My bottom lip wobbled, and stinging heat dampened my lashes.
I’m sorry…I’m sorry…
“Wychthorn,” came a murmur beside me, so softly only I could hear.
When I glanced up at Graysen, his face was distorted by the unspilled tears that shimmered in my eyes and made his image swim.
I rapidly blinked them back, but moisture escaped to streak down one of my cheeks.
Quickly wiping it away with the heel of my palm, I cursed myself for feeling this way.
I’d been the one hunted, captured, trapped.
Even his father, Varen, had defended my actions.
I shouldn’t feel tormented that I’d taken lives.
But I did. I did care I’d stolen precious life irrevocably.
An almost imperceptible shake of the head.
Graysen’s eyes narrowed as if warning me not to fall into sorrow and guilt.
“This is our way of life. You were cornered, and we know that. Every day, our lives are at risk when we deal with crime syndicates. Some of our warband fell in the siege against the Widowmakers, and the grief is still new and raw.”
Sage brushed up against my thigh with a low whine, knowing that I was faltering, that a veil of anguish had settled over my heart. My fingers slipped through the fur on his head, feeling much steadier when he pushed back against my touch, his tail wagging.
When we reached the opposite end of the hall with its enormous twin hearths, crackling with orange flames, there was nowhere left to go.
Graysen turned around to face everyone, while, like a coward, I stared straight ahead and collected myself.
The wall was carved into a relief sculpture of a place with rolling hills and a winding river cutting through forests.
On the hewn peak of a craggy mountain, there was a Keep.
This Keep, I realized, as I recognized Graysen’s tower butting against the adamere structure.
The fortress was much smaller, comprising, I suppose, of only the Heart of the Keep, the place the Crowthers later turned into the library.
I didn’t see what Graysen silently asked. But by the noisy clatter of plates, cutlery, and tankards, wood scraping on stone, and retreating footfalls, he’d asked them to leave.
After a few heavy minutes, silence reigned.
And we were left alone.
I glanced sidelong at Graysen. His attention was on the massive oak doors to the Great Hall, listening with his keen senses. Then, I suppose once the area cleared, and it was back to being only us, he visibly relaxed.
My layered skirt rippled outward, flaring in a soft arc as I spun around to walk deeper inside the enormous room.
It took up four levels of the Keep. The reason why almost encircled the entire room.
I felt Graysen’s eyes on me. He was hungry for my reaction.
His eagerness for it barely contained. The intensity of his anticipation crackled along the lines of my figure as he tracked every movement and the nuances playing across my features.
I really wanted to be dismissive and feign boredom because he wanted it so much. But I couldn’t do it. I gave in to the childish excitement of seeing something so fucking amazing. I shifted my weight from foot to foot fast, jittering with exhilaration.
Holy Skalki!
A wyrm coiled around the room. Not carved into the stone, its likeness was formed with real scales. Such a dark green they were almost black.
The very scales that armored Draxxon, the greatest wyrm that ever lived.
The wyrm that had saved the Houses on the ravaged battlefield against the Children of the Harbinger, who had aligned themselves with the mortals rising against us and provided them with a legion of others who had almost annihilated our kind and our way of life.
Draxxon took up the entire space from floor to ceiling, and his serpentine body curved along three walls, leaving only the one with huge double hearths free.
“He’s enormous,” I breathed in awe, spinning around, my braid bouncing against my back when I came to an ungainly halt.
My wyrm formed of flames wasn’t as big as Draxxon.
Mine was adolescent and much smaller. Draxxon was unbelievable.
I was standing in the shadow of greatness.
And for a reason that I couldn’t fathom, I had a wyrm and its might inside me.
Fierce hope, and a desire to burn everything in sight, lit up like a beacon within me. The things my wyrm and I would do when I got Zrenyth’s magic from my neck and set us both free…
I would raze this House to the ground.
Graysen shot me a swift, inquiring look, his brow furrowed. I realized too late that he could feel my desire beneath his skin. That I was broadcasting my emotions too loudly. This strange connection between us persisted, even though the collar around my throat nullified my wyrm.
I banked the smoldering embers of fury—calm, calm, calm—forcing myself to focus on the here and now, the magnificent beast before me.
Curious, I gestured at the elegant length of wings. “They look too sleek, too light to carry them into flight.”
“They spin squalls to keep them aloft.”
My lips parted in surprise. The reason my dark magic harnessed wind. There were so many answers I needed to know. “Were there many of them?”
“Wyrms were rare, even back then.” Dragging the messy locks of hair from his forehead, he thought about it more. “A few frost-wyrms in the northern tundra of Russia. Like those that bathed in moonlight, their fire was cold as ice.”
And my wyrm had both ice-shredding fire along with its heat-melting flames, an unusual combination.
This wasn’t quite all of Draxxon either.
His protruding body would have taken up all the space in the Great Hall.
Instead, his remains had been shaped into a gigantic relief sculpture emerging from the stone.
I craned my neck back to gaze up at his massive head twisting outward from the wall, with the antelope horns sweeping back from his forehead and his maw gaping wide to bare his teeth.
I blinked at the length and width of each tooth.
It was a mouthful of fangs, rows and rows of them. Enormous.
“Are his bones beneath the body?” As soon as I asked, I felt stupid because why would they?
Graysen crossed his arms over his chest, Draxxon capturing his attention once more. “They’re in our treasure trove. Most of them anyway.”
“Most?”