Chapter 31 #3
He nodded. “As if you manifested its flamed form.”
I frowned. Kenton was right. The moment the whip’s tip had struck wyrmfire the beast had appeared.
“Is the wyrm her?” Penn asked.
“No, they’re separate entities, yet tethered to one another,” he replied, deep in thought. “When she battled us, they worked independently of each other. It wasn’t corporeal. The wyrm wasn’t physically there, not like a true wyrm. It wasn’t alive in that sense.”
“Not-quite-living,” I corrected Kenton. “The reason she can swift.”
“Wyrms don’t swift.”
“Wychthorn can because her wyrm isn’t quite alive.”
Penn tilted her head, long strands of brown hair dipping low over her shirt. “So I guess you’re saying she has the spirit of a wyrm inside her?”
“Yeah,” I agreed, rocking back on my heels.
“How did Wychthorn possess the spirit of a wyrm?” She ran her fingers over the page, smoothing it flat. “What makes her special that the beast was able to bond with her?”
“The question is what else is she?” Ferne put forth.
There was a moment of astonished silence as we all processed this new thought and tried to align it against everything we knew about Nelle, which we were realizing was jack-shit.
I shrugged casually as if I didn’t know and didn’t care.
Penn’s gaze bounced from Ferne’s to mine. “What would happen if you two…” The words drifted apart as she startled, as if suddenly aware of what she was about to say. A blush crept across her cheeks, and she dropped her attention to the book splayed open before her as if it fascinated her.
“You two—what?” Kenton asked, gently urging her to continue.
The tumbler was warm beneath my fingers as I raised it to my mouth, watching Penn over its rim while swallowing back the whiskey. Penn winced, then darted a nervous look at my brother before her wide-eyed gaze locked with mine, and there was an apology in their blue depths. “Reproduced.”
My body jerked with shock. I hacked and coughed, thumping my chest with a fist to stop myself from spraying a mouthful of alcohol. “What the fuck?” I hissed through a ticklish throat.
Kenton braced a hand on the top of Penn’s high-back chair. “It’s the question we’re all asking. You’re human. Wychthorn’s part wyrm, but she’s very much human.”
My siblings erupted with fast-pitched theories.
“Can they reproduce?” Jett asked.
“A wyrm’s gestation period is a seriously long time,” Caidan offered. “Maybe Wychthorn can’t with that beast inside her.”
“What would happen if a tamer mated with her?” Kenton said. “What kind of offspring would they have?”
“Or anyone else, for that matter,” Ferne replied. “Could she mate with a Horned God?” It was unheard of for a Horned God to produce offspring with a human.
Something akin to astonishment swept across Ferne’s features. She whipped around to face me, her hair flicking over a shoulder. “What about the Children of the Harbinger? If they know she’s a wyrm, maybe this is why they’ve been hunting her.”
My entire body stiffened as an unsettling sensation crept slowly down my spine. A voice from a darker part of my mind whispered—What if this is why Silas Boon wants Nelle?
My siblings faded into the background while I processed her question, the insidious fear regarding Silas Boon clawing its way through me. And some darker feeling trembled and cracked through my bones like a vicious blast of winter.
Silas knew Nelle was a wyrm.
Did he desire her because of the immense power residing inside her, or was it more than that? He was aware she was a unique mix of wyrm and human. So did he want her because he, or someone, or even something else, could mate with her?
What the hells was Silas?
How did he find out about her?
We hadn’t even known what Nelle was. No one had, not even Nelle herself. So how did this fucker know she possessed a wyrm? And worse, Silas was with the Children of the Harbinger too.
My mind spiraled to a cavern beneath the city of Ascendria, where I’d breathed in stale air as I’d stalked through darkness. Pitch black but for feeble torchlight and a string of blinking fairy lights wrapped about Nelle’s shoulders as she spoke to an otherworldly creature of vast age.
As I’d approached, my fingers had clenched around twin daggers, my footfall silent on damp, rough stone. I’d heard the last part of her conversation as the enormous beast towered over her tiny figure. He knew all along what she was but had refused to tell her.
But me, the Uzrek had known my truth and shared it.
A thief. A death-dealer. A spinner of deceit.
And something else, too.
You do not know what you are either, Son of the Wyrm. You do not know what you mean together.
Even knowing what we were, what it meant, it had tried to kill me. Fucking eat me. But Nelle had revealed her secret with a punch of power, saving me as the Uzrek’s jaws yawned wide, hot rancid breath washing over my face as fangs gnashed downward.
There’d been a moment prior when I swore they’d been talking mentally. Now I wondered whether she’d claimed my life in front of the foul beast, or perhaps there was something else in their exchange.
My sister’s voice cut through my thoughts, and it sounded as if she’d been repeating my name. “Gray?”
I blinked, coming to, my sister’s attention fixed in my direction while Caidan and Jett discussed what it would mean if the Children of the Harbinger wanted Nelle for breeding. Kenton was on his phone to my father’s Second in Command, Wes Zhang, ordering additional security around the estate.
Finishing up his conversation, Kenton tucked his phone into his pocket.
“It’s getting late. We can talk more about this while I do everyone’s ink.
” Our eldest brother was the one who tattooed our skin.
He took after our aunt with her artistic soul, spending his childhood in her company, sketching and painting.
After our mother was stolen, my aunt put away her paintbrushes, locked up her art studio, and hadn’t entered it since.
However, Kenton couldn’t give it up. It was too enmeshed in his soul, the need to create.
His fingers would be stained and splashed with rich colors as he worked on a new piece, painting right through the night until the sun rose above the hills that surrounded the Keep.
I always thought it had more to do with filling in his time, rather than fucking some random, much as I’d done, desperate to deny my attraction to Nelle.
A loud sound boomed through the library as Jett clapped his hands together, grinning wickedly, enthused about the prospect. “Let’s get this wyrm battle tattooed on our bodies!”
I pursed my mouth. There was something my younger brother hadn’t quite clicked on to. Right as I parted my lips to inform him, it was Kenton who answered once again on my behalf. “Jett, we can’t ink the tale of us taking down a wyrm on our skin. It’s Ukkenskrit, the old language.”
“So?”
“The Horned Gods can read the language. We’ll have to tell it a different way.”
“Capturing a tiny little bird…” I murmured, regret threading through the words as I sipped on whiskey, the smoky flavor rolling over my tongue.
Jett’s dark brows slashed upward as his mouth turned down. “Really?” His expression was so downright miserable it was laughable.
Ferne rose, collecting her phone, her fingers searching for her tote to drag it across the table. “Kenton’s right. We can’t outright mention a wyrm. I guess you’d at least know what the tale was referring to.”
Jett threw up an arm as he stalked past. “Taking down a bird, for fuck’s sake. I’m not writing that shit on my body permanently.” Scooping up Flossie, he slumped into the armchair.
Penn stood, pushed her chair neatly behind the table, and then fussed with her shirt’s cuffed sleeves, rearranging the errant locks of hair over a shoulder. “Goodnight,” she said softly, to which we all replied in our various ways.
My older brother’s gaze lingered on her all the way to the door until she disappeared from the library and his sight.
Caidan stretched his spine before rising from his seat. “Let’s get this done. We need to get up early tomorrow.”
My brothers were going to shadow the mortal shipment the Troelsens had hunted and were headed to the Emporium.
Snacks, as Nelle rightly said. A select few sensual others that would give you the most mind-blowing orgasm you’d ever experienced.
The rest would be the buffet to feed the Horned Gods that frequented the bordello.
Zielenski ruled the Emporium, while his family oversaw the mortal brothels for our empire.
He was a year older than me and had a ruthless, cold soul.
You had to be, if you reigned over that sinister underrealm.
Over the years we’d fought often in the pit beneath Ascendria.
He was the only one who ever stepped forward to face me.
Sometimes, as we slammed our fists into each other, splitting skin and spitting blood, I wondered if he just wanted to feel pain. To feel anything at all.
“You coming?” Caidan asked me as he started out after Ferne and Kenton, who were leaving the library.
“I’ll be there soon,” I replied. There was something I needed to talk to my youngest brother about.
But first, I had to check in with Mela. I slid my phone out of the pocket of my sweatpants and typed a message.
Me: We still on for tomorrow?
Half a minute later, my phone pinged with an incoming message.
Mela: Yes. Petra picked up a relatively fresh trail today. We’ll be at the catacombs first thing.
Petra was the V?duvas’ prized hunter and the right hand to Mela’s mother, who ruled their House as Head. She was also one of the few people my father respected.
Me: See you there. Thanks, Mela.
Mela: It’s going to be okay, we’ll catch this Yezekael for Master Sirro.
I had no idea what Sirro wanted with the creature. Everything surrounding the Horned God was a mystery.
However, a thought crept into my mind of how we could save Elyse Estlore.
I quickly typed out a message.