Chapter 5 Nox
Nox
Igave him a stiff nod. “Scarven.”
“You certainly took your time,” he said, his full, rich voice rolling over me.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I drawled. “As you asked.”
Being in his presence always made my stomach tense, my insides knotting with hatred. He looked more like our father every time I saw him. They had the same dark brown hair, the same gray streak on the right side, the same sharp chin and pointed nose.
Kane Scarven was the son of my father and an older woman Father had an affair with seven years before I was born.
As Father was next in line for governor at the time, the Dumas—my grandparents—couldn’t afford a blemish on his otherwise perfect slate.
They paid the woman handsomely and let her keep the child, but refused any claim to young Kane.
My father never saw him again. Caius Duma married a respectable woman who bore both myself and Vera.
We were the only valid heirs to the province, or so they led everyone to believe.
Until Scarven turned twenty-one and decided he deserved to sit in his rightful seat as firstborn of Caius Duma.
I hadn’t known of his existence until the challenging. After Father died, my mother told me the whole story of my bastard half-brother. The boy who came from nothing and took everything with one swipe of a paw.
I flicked water from the shoulder of my cloak, then rolled my head along my neck. About a foot away lay a black and silver rug leading to the fireplace, with large sconces on either side of it. A liquor cart stood next to his burgundy chair.
“Let’s hear it, then.” He brandished his glass toward me. “The Emberfell rebel leader?”
“It was quick,” I said.
“Ah, your specialty.”
“Well, I assume you don’t just keep me around for my good looks.”
He leaned back in his chair, propping one foot on top of his knee. I had to hide the way my features tightened at the motion—I knew how similar we looked. How similar our mannerisms were. And I despised it.
“It helps to make them suffer sometimes, brother,” he said as casually as if we were talking about the weather. “Teaches them a lesson.”
“I think seeing the dead body at their feet made the point quite clear.” I kept my voice passive. This wasn’t the first time we had a conversation like this. Whenever he sent me off to do his dirty work, to “send his messages,” it was always the same.
This time, he had sent me to Emberfell, our neighboring province to the north where the Lightbenders lived—people who could create and manipulate light.
Scarven had ordered some of his men to the border to act as guards, harassing those who tried to cross into our province.
He was staunchly against free travel among the provinces, not wanting to “muddy the waters” between our people and theirs.
Emberfell, naturally, was pissed. Rumors of an uprising at the border had reached Scarven’s ears. Their little group of rebels was planning a siege on Drakorum’s patrol stations, and he wanted me to put an end to it.
Scarven nodded. “I don’t need those Lightbenders thinking they can strongarm me into anything. What did you do with the body?”
“Burned it.” The words tasted like ash on my tongue.
“Good. They have a habit of raising their dead up like martyrs. It’s better this way. Cut the rot before it spreads, you know.”
I swallowed, forcing my features to remain neutral. He could never know the truth of what I did on these missions. “Do you need anything else?”
His lips tugged into a smirk. He lowered his leg and slowly stood to his full height, barely an inch shorter than me, although his frame was slightly larger. “Join me for a drink, brother. It gets rather lonely around here, you know.”
Fates, I just wanted to get out of here. This place made my skin crawl.
I shrugged. “A quick one, perhaps.”
He strode to his liquor cart and pulled the stopper on a bottle of clear liquid. Pouring a generous serving into a glass, he turned to me with a smile. A dangerous, feline glint shone in his dark eyes. “You’ve done well, Nox. Perhaps a visit with your sister is in order.”
The words jolted through me, eliciting a sharp inhale as my spine straightened. Inwardly, I cursed myself for giving him any sort of reaction. It only fueled his control over me. But to see Vera again?
I hadn’t laid eyes on her in five years.
Not since my mother tried to break her out of Scarven’s cells and was banished from the province.
I hadn’t seen my mother in that long either, but I knew where she was.
I had Kieran hunt her down so Scarven wouldn’t suspect anything.
Mother was safely harbored in Tenebra, as close to our border as she could possibly get while still obeying Scarven’s commands to stay out of Drakorum.
Scarven’s men were watching her, though.
Always watching. Always right there to suck any happiness from my life.
So I still hadn’t seen her, but at least I knew she was alright.
Desperate, longing for her children, probably riddled with anxiety…
but alive. And I would bring her back home one day to reunite with Vera and me if it was the last thing I did.
Vera, however…I may have lived in this wretched mansion for many of my teenage years, but my sister had been raised here.
Her first word was spoken in these halls.
She took her first steps in her captor’s manor.
All because Scarven feared she would turn into something like me. A dragon. A rarity. A weapon.
He never imagined she would be so much more.
If Scarven had it his way, she would never see the light of day again.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Nox?” he drew out my name and handed me the glass. “To see her again. That can be arranged, of course.”
I gripped the edges of the glass, reining in my emotions before my hand could shift into a claw. I merely dipped my head. “Thank you, Scarven.”
His smirk slipped into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Stretching out an arm, he touched his glass to mine, sending a sharp clink through the small room. “To loyalty, my brother.”
I held his gaze. “To loyalty.”