Chapter 31 #2
In the training pit, I had felt something shifting beneath my skin, something strange and dry like a bluster of windswept sand scouring my flesh.
I had kicked my brothers’ asses so easily.
And moved fast…almost as if I had swifted.
I knew I hadn’t moved through the void Nelle used to swift between places.
I couldn’t use them because I wasn’t dead, nor not-quite-living.
Yet I’d moved faster than I’d ever done before.
A soft voice cut through the tension in the room. “What do you know?”
Jett and Caidan shared a sharp look that, out of all of them here, Penn had been the one to ask.
It made sense, as she wasn’t aware of the full intricacies of our ancestors’ relationship with wyrms. She sat straight in her high-backed chair, her posture perfect and expression brimming with inquisitiveness.
“I don’t understand how it all works. This wyrm and tamer. ”
“A tamer is there to act as a point guard to the wyrm to direct it in battle,” Kenton explained as he wandered toward her.
“All knowledge of how our family tamed wyrms was buried, lost, or simply destroyed an age ago. We know only the basic dynamics. The tamer trapped and tamed the wyrm, and somehow the two bonded, with the tamer holding sway over the beast.”
“What’s sway?” Penn asked.
“It’s the tamer’s will,” I replied before Kenton could.
Penn turned her attention to me, her brows drawing together. “You can control a wyrm with sway—your will?”
From what I’d learned from scraps of information scattered throughout the library, I knew the theory of it, just not the practical how of it all.
“A tamer can use the sway to influence the wyrm and bend it in the direction it’s needed.
” I huffed an empty laugh, shaking my head at the ridiculousness of it all.
“But it’s a fucking wyrm, much like a willful dog—”
“An enormous, willful dog with wyrmfire and a poison-tipped tail, amongst other deadly things,” Caidan interjected, grinning broadly.
Penn frowned. “And the bond is?”
Trust, I imagined. When the wyrm submitted and placed its trust in the tamer. “There is a connection between the two of them. Without it, the wyrm will turn feral.”
“That doesn’t sound good.”
No, it sure as hells didn’t.
I thought about it while cozy warmth wrapped around my body from the fire popping and crackling in the background.
Taking a deep drag off the blunt, I blew a cloud of swirling smoke across the table, the whitish vapor curling about the brass lamp with frosted-glass.
I cleared my throat before answering Penn.
“It could attack anyone within range, even those under the protection of the tamer or members of our House.” I’d found a brief description in a crumbling book of a broken bond after a skirmish between Houses killed a tamer.
The frost-wyrm had laid waste to everyone.
Many Crowthers had died that day, shredded with ice, including the heir to our Great House.
“It could lay siege to the land and burn everything and everyone to the ground. It could simply leave everyone unharmed and fly away. Pretty much, the freed wyrm will do anything it wants.”
It was my sister who pondered this aloud. “How do you bond with a wyrm?”
Penn answered lightly, clearly not thinking about how it would be received. “I expect in this case you’d bond with Nelle since she’s human.”
It was such an innocently posed statement.
Silence descended upon the library.
The air grew thick with curiosity and warning.
Every single one of my siblings fixed their gazes on me. I was surrounded by them all, boxed in as if I held all the answers.
“How the fuck would I know?” I replied to their silent question, keeping my voice calm but edged with vexation.
Hidden beside Flossie, I stretched my hand wide against my thigh, then clenched it. I was off-kilter, but I couldn’t let them see that. I had to let them see what they wanted to see. And that was me—cold, loyal, hateful.
My siblings had no idea I’d already forged a connection with Nelle.
I didn’t know if it was the full bonding of a wyrm and tamer or if there was more to it than what I currently experienced.
I felt her emotions under my skin. It made sense to me now that this was one way a tamer could keep one step ahead of the wyrm if the beast lost its temper, wanting to strike out and take a bite out of me or anyone else.
“You’re the Tamer,” Jett replied, his mouth curling downward, as if annoyed I wasn’t sharing vital information.
“That’s right, I am.” A smug smirk curved my lips as I pointed a finger with the hand holding the blunt at him. “And you’re not.”
I’d been the first tamer born in over five hundred years.
My father, with his eyes a shade of violet so shadowed they bordered on black, had been on the verge of becoming a tamer himself.
Unlike the degree to which I experienced it, my father could feel a faint vibration coming from Draxxon’s body lining the Great Hall.
And while I carried full wyrmblood in my veins, he carried the barest trace of it too.
I tried not to bristle. The fact that they were even bothering to understand something that was of no use to them fucked me off.
And even more irritating, they were messing with my private affairs.
I took a puff of the blunt, blowing out a stream of smoke before placing it on the ashtray.
The leather beneath me whispered as I rose, Flossie jumping onto the seat I’d vacated.
Stalking around the table, I leaned between my brothers to snatch up the bottle and refill my tumbler with whiskey.
“All of this conjecture doesn’t matter,” I gritted out.
“We’re using Wychthorn to get into the Witches—”
My sister cut me off, stabbing the table with a finger to emphasize her point. “It matters to us if she can influence you in the meantime.”
Kenton interjected. “Ferne’s right. You’re so territorial you won’t let us in the tower.” It was lucky that he thought it was the territorial tamer side of me that refused them access to the tower, not the truth, that I wanted to protect Nelle from them.
“She’s not going to influence me,” I scoffed.
“How do we know that?” Ferne shot back. “Both of you have been connected since birth. I sensed it humming beneath the surface whenever you two of you were within range of one another. How do we know she isn’t going to manipulate you into freeing her?”
A soft voice unexpectedly answered Ferne. “She can’t.”
Everyone turned in surprise to Penn.
She twisted around to speak to Kenton. “I’ve told you before, she’s just as confused as Graysen about all of this.”
I kept my expression schooled to disinterest. My siblings had obviously pressured Penn into revealing what was going on between Nelle and me up in the tower.
Penn continued talking to Kenton. “Before your family captured her, she had no idea she was a wyrm or what any of it means.” She shifted her gaze to mine, and there was an unease haunting her features, as if she was thinking of something truly frightening.
“You intimidate and terrorize her at every opportunity you can. She puts on a brave face, but she’s utterly terrified and very much alone. ”
Penn dropped her gaze to the book in front of her.
She ran her fingers back and forth over the wrinkled page as if uncertain if she should share more.
Finally, she spoke, and her voice was so quiet we all strained to hear.
“She breaks when she thinks she’s alone and there’s no one listening.
I’ve heard her crying. It’s filled with terror and hopelessness. ”
For a moment, I couldn’t even think of how to reply. I had no idea what a brilliant actress Penn was.
I took a sip of my whiskey, the fierce liquid pouring down my throat.
My voice was cold and flat. “She deserves it and more.” It was something our aunt reminded us of.
How Wychthorn was coddled and pampered, living a life of freedom without fear while our mother was confined and tortured.
“We need her broken to break Byron so he’ll fucking hand it over. ”
Within the Wychthorn Treasure Trove was a crucial item the Blacksmith needed to forge a weapon to trap a Horned God.
Byron had so far refused to give it to us, believing it was his only leverage.
Byron was playing a dangerous game. He knew we were desperate to claim Brangwene’s Hjarte, and he hoped it would spare Nelle’s life if he kept it out of our reach.
“He will,” Jett reassured me. “Zielenski believes Jurgana is going to be at the Emporium within the week. We’ll give Byron his moment with his daughter then and there. He’ll hand over Brangwene’s Hjarte to save her.”
“Good,” I bit back. Even though it worried me, I had no fucking idea what nefarious plan he had in store for Nelle.
The easing mood resonating from my siblings relaxed the tension in my limbs. They trusted I remained loyal to their cause. I finished the glass of whiskey, turning the tumbler around between my pinched fingers so the firelight caught the crystal.
Penn continued to stare at the page in front of her, and her features softened as she admired a rough sketch of a wyrm, its serpentine body coiled and wings spread wide as it set the sky on fire. “They’re magnificent,” she whispered, her voice filled with awe.
I refilled my glass with more whiskey and listened to Penn speak to Kenton. “From what you’ve told me, Wychthorn’s wyrm isn’t a true wyrm. Not like the ones in these pictures or those you spoke of, in the sense that it wasn’t a real beast like Draxxon.”
“The wyrm was formed of flames.” Kenton angled his chin at me as I headed to the hearth with its burning logs permeating the air with pine and chestnut. “It came out of the fire surrounding Wychthorn when you flicked Zrenyth’s whip—”
“Leviathan Spinebender.” The whip had felt so natural gripped in my hand.