Chapter 36 #2
“Dunk,” I instruct, setting aside the rag. “Your hair needs to be washed, too.”
“I can do it.”
“Dunk, Huntress.”
There it is. That flash of irritation. A spark in those bright eyes.
Relief flutters in my chest.
She’s under the water for only a few seconds before she rises, and I pour the shampoo into my palm before pressing my fingers into her scalp, massaging in subtle circular motions.
A gentle sigh escapes her, so soft I think she might have been trying to fight it.
“Are you going to kill me?” she whispers.
I know what she’s thinking. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s brilliant enough to come to the same conclusion I have.
If this woman is a threat to me, to my brother, to my kingdom, then my duty is to remove that threat.
Regardless of whether or not I want to.
“I think,” I draw out the words, their weight sitting heavily between us. “We should probably have an honest conversation with one another before there’s any more killing. We can start with you telling me why you were at that ball, Huntyr.”
She stares straight ahead. Unblinking.
“I want to know why you wanted me dead,” I continue. “I want to know why you say the word Fae like it’s disgusting.”
She goes silent again and this time I don’t fight to keep her talking. I let her retreat into that quiet in her mind for as long as she needs it.
I wash her hair.
I wrap her in a towel.
I give her one of my tunics, large enough that it brushes the tops of her thighs.
And when there’s nothing left for me to do, I wait for her to finally open up.
But there’s just silence.
It’s fucking unbearable.
I am not accustomed to people ignoring my requests. When I ask questions, they are answered. When I enter a room, people go out of their way to show me their strength.
Huntyr has never behaved that way, to be fair, but she always meets me with that icy hardness. She always has a retort. She always finds a reason to get irritated with me.
And that heavy feeling in my stomach isn’t concern for myself.
It isn’t even concern for my brother or her plans for him.
It’s utter fear for her. The longer she remains this shell of herself, the more I’m starting to worry that whatever happened in that arena truly broke my Huntress in a way she won’t be able to recover from.
It’s not until she’s tucked under a quilt on my bed, the panther pressed to her side, with a warm glass of hot cocoa in her hand, that she starts to speak.
And Gods, I hang on to every word like it’s the only story that’s ever mattered.
“When I was five summers old, I woke in the middle of the night from a storm. I was terrified of storms. The thunder would leave me trembling. So I ran to my father’s room, but he didn’t answer when I called him.
“And then I felt dampness under my feet, and I knew something was terribly wrong. Even as a child, I knew. I went to him, but it was already too late. He’d been killed in his own bed, and left there in the most gruesome, abhorrent way possible.
“My stepmother pulled me out of the room, and she said that the Fae had killed him. Then I heard her say she was going to sell me to one of the Madams in the city. So, I climbed out my window, and ran out into the storm.”
I clench my hands, breathing through the anger, both that the woman had done that to a child and that she’d had the audacity to blame the Fae for the death of Huntyr’s father.
There’s no fucking way that Fae were murdering Mortals in Velia fifteen years ago. We’ve been very careful to stay within the limits of our own kingdom.
“I spent the next week sleeping under bridges and stealing bread from garbage cans. Then, when I was so hungry I was nearly delirious, I tried to rob some of the merchants. I got thrown out and called a gutter rat. So, I tried picking pockets. I wasn’t particularly good at that either, though.
One of the men backhanded me so hard I laid on the street crying for hours. No one stopped. No one helped me.
“But I was hungry, and cold, and wet from the storms that refused to stop. So, I got up, and I tried again. The next man didn’t hit me, though.
He looked at me, and he stared into my soul.
He said that I looked just like someone he used to know, and he asked if I knew who he was.
I did. I don’t remember how, but I knew who Kristona Roschoff was.
I knew what he did. I knew I should be afraid of him, but when he tossed me aside and started to walk away, I chased after him.
“I pulled on his coat, and I asked him to take me with him. I asked him to teach me how to kill a Fae.”
I listen to every word, entirely captivated, lost in trying to picture her as nothing more than a child, abandoned, desperate for someone to help her, and hungry. There is no feeling more unforgettable than the sensation of a hollow stomach. I know that well enough.
Part of me can’t even blame her for her hatred of my kind. What other choice had she been given in life?
She avoids my eyes as she tells her story, hands clutching her mug tightly to hide her trembling.
“So, he took me home,” she continues, swatting away a tear.
“And I became known as the adopted daughter of the assassin king. Kristona taught me how to fight and how to kill. Those lessons were brutal, painful, and merciless. Sometimes he taught me, sometimes the other acolytes did. Every night, though, he would help me into bed and read me to sleep. Every time it stormed, he sat with me until it was over.”
I pull a chair to the foot of the bed, sitting heavily. “He loved you.”
She nods. “Yes. He does.”
The air between us is charged, almost unbearable. “So, tell me about the ball.”
She laughs softly. “The princess was not as innocent as you might think.”
“Oh?”
Huntyr looks at me, her brows lifted suggestively in an expression that looks so much like her that I almost sag forward.
“The princess had been having a very torrid affair with a nobleman in the Court. As you can imagine, he was not a big fan of yours.”
My tongue darts over my lower lip as I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Because I’m cuter?”
She rolls her eyes, continuing her story.
“Kristona’s birthday gift to me was the contract.
He gave me the job of killing you. I didn’t want to do it at first, because I didn’t want to step back into that part of my past. I didn’t want to be a noblewoman.
I didn’t want to go by the name of the woman who would have sold me. ”
“You just wanted to kill me more?” I tease, even as my stomach is tied in knots.
She smiles sadly. “Yes. So, I went to the ball, and I found your room. When the guard walked in, he seemed so comfortable there, and his ears were pointed. I thought he was you. So, I attacked, and he was so much stronger and faster than I ever imagined. I had never lost a fight before that, but all of a sudden he had his hands around my throat, and I knew he was going to kill me.”
Her eyes suddenly glaze over as her voice goes distant. Kaia lifts her head, looking at Huntyr, before nuzzling her head against the woman’s elbow.
“When the light exploded, I thought he did it. Not me.”
It takes every ounce of strength in me to keep my magic in check as my stomach falls and I repeat those words in my head over and over and over.
When the light exploded…
“The arena wasn’t the first time it happened?” I ask, my voice impossibly hoarse.
She turns those blue eyes on me. So fucking blue.
“I didn’t know. It wasn’t possible. It didn’t make sense.”
“When else?”
She chews on her lip. “I think, maybe, in the second trial too.”
I think back. I scan through the memories of that day. The maze. She’d run through the attacking vines and found Mara killing that Mortal girl. Then she’d found Alexandria and…
“Your orb,” I whisper. “It was brighter than the others.”
She nods.
And suddenly the story is over.
There’s nothing more to know. There’s no additional answers to be found within her past to help us figure out her present.
Except…
“Your headaches,” I muse, scratching at the beginning of a beard on my jawline.
She tilts her head in confusion. “What about them?”
Shit, it was right there the whole time. Right in front of my face.
“You’ve had them since you were a kid, right?”
I stand, pacing, hands coming to rest atop my head as I do.
“Yes?”
“I told you I got headaches as a boy.”
“What exactly is your point?”
The only consolation in me putting the pieces together so slowly is that my delay in answering seems to be annoying her. And the more annoyed she gets, the more she sounds like herself.
“Fae are pack animals, Huntyr. Our magic feeds off of the magic of others. The quickest way to recover from overspending your magic is to simply surround yourself with other Fae. When you’re on your own, magic takes more of a toll on you physically.
I got headaches because I was banished to an abandoned patch of land to train.
They stopped happening once I learned to control my powers and came back around the others. Just like your headaches stopped when—”
“When I came here,” she finishes, following my line of thought.
Slowly, so slowly, she takes the mug and sets it on the wooden table by my bed, exchanging silent communication with the Eshari.
“Is it possible?” I ask her. “Is it possible your mother was Fae?”
She frowns. “Did she kill my father?”
It’s like she’s poured a bucket of ice water over me. I actually stumble back. I hadn’t even thought…
Although, I suppose it could be possible…
I run a hand through my hair, pulling at the ends in frustration as I continue my pacing, needing the movement to steady the unease building inside of me.
Kaia rises from the bed and shakes out her coat, glaring at me so violently I almost question what I did to upset the beast.
But then she turns her glare onto Huntyr and stalks right out of the room.
“What was that about?” I question.
Huntyr follows the beast with her eyes and shrugs. “I don’t know, but she can be temperamental.”
I take it as a good sign. If the Eshari is willing to leave her, then she must be on the road towards mending.
Sure enough, she’s sitting up straighter. That furrow forms between her brows, the one that comes whenever she’s thinking… or scheming.
“Huntyr—”
“I won,” she says it like it’s a surprise. Like she’s finally come out of the fog and shock, and is thinking clearly for the first time in hours.
I don’t know what it is about this woman, but I know her thoughts as clearly as I know my own. I just know what she’s thinking, what she’s realizing.
“Yes but—”
“My favor, I want to call upon my favor.”
My heart is pounding, panic rushing through me. The thunder roaring outside the windows echoes the blood pumping too loudly in my ears.
“Huntyr, do not say another—”
“I want you to bring my sister to the Fae kingdom and give her the strongest healing tonic you have.”
Fuck.
The magic snaps over me like a vice, oppressive and overwhelming. Gods, it nearly pulls me right towards her. I stumble forward, catching my balance on the back of the chair, and she flinches on the bed, thrown off by my reaction.
I only have the briefest of moments to be thankful that she didn’t ask for something worse before my thoughts completely rewire.
Sister.
She has a sister?
Where is her sister?
How do I get her sister here?
Why is her sister sick?
How sick is her sister?
“Derian?” She crawls forward on the bed, leaning down to try to look at my face. “Are you all right?”
No, I most certainly am not.
I will not be all right until this mysterious sister is here drinking this tonic.
“Your sister,” the words come out as a growl. “Where is she?”