Chapter 39
I dream of beasts.
The kind that stalk on four legs, and the ones that walk on two. Sleep is fitful, and I wake several times throughout the night. Sin is restless too, his arms tightening around me every time I writhe myself awake, his lips at my ear, gently coaxing me out of my nightmare and back to him.
I’m not sure if I slipped back into sleep after my last wake-up or not when a scream pierces the night. I’m on my feet and out of the tent immediately, as is Sin who suddenly appears in front of me, his arm banding around my waist.
“Stay,” he orders.
Others are already tearing out of their tents to investigate, and it must be the plea in my Mate’s eyes, because for once, I’m going to obey him. Until a second scream follows, and without the furs dampening the sound from inside the tent, I recognize the shrill.
“That’s Zorina!” We exchange a look that only endures for a second, because it’s all the time he needs to know that nothing will keep me from going to her. With a deep sigh, he nods, and I turn to race through the narrow stretch of tents.
Zorina and Morrinne’s tent is only a few rows over, and just as I lock eyes on it, it implodes in a heap of poles and pelts. As the supports fall, they give shape to a gray wolf streaked with ribbons of silver along her face and maw, and more patches of white along her hind quarters. It is small by transcendent standards, but still far larger than a normal-sized wolf.
A blur of red catches my periphery, and I turn to see Eldridge shoving Ileana behind him as he races towards the collapsed tent, Theon on his heels. The three of us reach the tent as Morrinne snatches up the poles in her jaws and tosses them aside, her paws thrashing at the fabric on the ground. Digging .
Eldridge skids to a stop as he heaves the final pelt off Zorina, his missing appendage serving no hindrance as he drops to his knees and assesses his sister. Theon and I are on her next, and I smell the blood before I see it. My hands go to where she firmly presses her own against her belly, and when I lift them, her scent assaults me.
“Hey, hey, hey, it’s alright,” I say, squeezing one of her stained hands while Eldridge makes quick work of carefully shredding her shirt with a claw and pulling the fabric away to reveal the wound.
Blood pulses from a jagged gash, one clearly inflicted with a knife.
“A healer, someone get a healer!” Eldridge shouts.
“Aeverie!” I correct. I do not just want any healer tending my sister—I want the best. And goddess knows, the high priestess owes me.
Theon takes off calling for the elf, and I press my hands to Zorina’s wound with intention, golden light seeping out from the pads of my fingers. It will help clot the bleeding, but the purple vining around the laceration confirms it was inflicted with iron.
A shadow darkens the ground, but Sin doesn’t crowd us. He walks to where Morrinne is still hunched forward, and it’s then I notice my mother’s chest is still vibrating, a low growl ricocheting off the walls of her chest. She dips her head and steps to the side, revealing another body on the ground. This one male and… alive .
Sin hunkers down next to him, turning the man’s head roughly one way then the other, the ruined flesh along his neck making a squelching sound that turns my stomach to rot. He must not recognize him because Sin moves lower, ripping open the man’s overcoat and rolling him to the side to check for patches or embroidery. He coughs, red spittle flying from his mouth, then groans, long and low.
“Kill me,” he chokes out between more bloody coughs.
“Who sent you, and why her?” Sin asks, eyeing the shredded slab that was once his chest and throat. Clearly a wolf’s doing.
I glance at my mother, and pride swells behind my ribs.
“Kill me,” he spits again, the sound pained.
“Gladly. But not before you answer my questions. Who sent you, and why her?” my husband asks again, angrier now.
“Who do… think,” he sputters. “Seer. She killed… seer.”
Sin glances over his shoulder to where Eldridge cradles my sister’s head, comforting her while my magic makes quick work to clot the bleeding. “Hate to tell you this,” he says, the smugness in his tone implying the opposite, “but you got yourself killed going after the wrong target.”
The man rolls his head, his muddy brown eyes honing in on me. “Right target,” he whispers. “Her sister. Wanted witch… coming for her… next,” he trails off, his lips still quivering, but no words coming through.
My mouth falls open, and if my hands weren’t occupied saving Zorina’s life, they’d be shoved through his chest. Torin sent someone to assassinate my sister… as punishment for me killing his seer.
Sin rises to his feet and steps towards him, the heel of his boot making a slow crunching sound as he drags it through the dirt. “If you wanted to die quickly, you should have gone for the witch first,” he says, kicking the man’s side to force him onto his stomach. And then in a voice colder than death, “ No one touches my wife .”
With a crunch of splintering bone, Sin stomps on the base of his skull.
“Go—I have her.” Eldridge gives me a playful shove out of his tent, and I nod, confident Aeverie’s magic has left my sister with minimal pain.
“Galen?”
“Staying with Mina still. She didn’t want to risk there being a contingency plan for if the first one failed to put her down.”
I don’t blame her. Thank the goddess, Galen was spending the night with Cosmina and Theon. Cornelius stayed in Blackreach to temporarily command the soldiers that remained with the kingdom fleet, his strengths better suited for delegation than on the battlefield.
“I just don’t understand why he went after Zorina at all. What purpose would it possibly have served for him to kill my sister if he wasn’t intending to let me live with his punishment ,” I ponder.
“Because you’re a godsdamned menace,” Eldridge huffs, an air of amusement in his tone but his expression is anything but. “You think Torin thought for a second he’d be able to off you that easily? A mundane king that’s only ever heard the worst rumors of bloodwitches, and who has very likely put together that wherever you are, he’s right behind you.” Eldridge motions to my husband who has not veered more than a few inches from my side since snapping the man’s neck.
“He is right, and I can think of two more reasons.” Sin raises one finger. “As Eldridge said, his knowledge of bloodwitches is limited, and he’s hoping to rile you up. If he blinds you with rage, you will be sloppy in battle and easier to kill. And two”—he ticks up a second finger—“you said he was fucking the seer. You took someone he loved—he wanted to do the same. It doesn’t always get more complicated than that, love.”
I swallow, but I refuse to allow guilt to burrow its way into my heart. “If she didn’t want to die, then she shouldn’t have attached herself to you. I would do it again, as I would to anyone that ever tries to hurt you.”
Sin bands an arm around my waist, tugging me against his chest. His lips are at my ear a second later. “Let’s go, killer.”
I look back at Eldridge who glances to his own tent where Ileana tends to our sister inside.
“You care about her very much,” I say knowingly.
My words catch him off guard, and his brows raise before the cheekiest grin becomes his face. He laughs once, the sound nervous.
“She cares very much for you, too,” I add. “There are few people I would ever deem worthy of either of you, but I could not fathom a better match than the brutish man who only yearns to give, and the woman with a tongue sharper than steel who has only ever had everything taken from her.”
He shakes his head, but that smile doesn’t fade. Not even a little. “Not everything,” he says. “Deeply damaged yes, but they didn’t make so much as a fucking dent in her will. She is… hell, that female is stronger than me in many ways. She has a lot of love to give. It just looks different than mine.”
Warmth blazes in my heart, followed again by that claw of fear digging its way in. This unshakable sense that permanence lingers just out of sight, a ghost that refuses to leave my shadow. “I’m happy for you, Eldridge,” I say, and with every fiber of my being, I mean it. “You’ll take good care of her, I know it.”
“Don’t make me sound like such a fucking sap, Wren.”
“You are a sap!” I exclaim, thwacking him in the chest and pocketing his smile before I let Sin pull me away.
When we’re back inside our tent, Sin pulls me to him immediately. “I love you,” he murmurs, wrapping both arms around me. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“We can’t let him get away with this.”
“He won’t.”
“But what if he does?” I pull away from him as panic dislodges from my chest and spills out of my mouth. “He tried to kill my sister! Because of me, because of something I did.”
His hands wrap around my biceps, anchoring me, and he dips his head to level his stare with mine. “He targeted her to distract you. You mustn’t allow him to redirect your focus.”
“How can I not? How am I to focus when everyone I’ve ever loved is preparing to die, all because of what I am? This war is not a pissing contest over land or magic or power, and we all know it. Torin wants the white-haired witch. Either my body draped over his gates for all to see, or in his chambers warming his bed, but he wants me. More than anything.”
Sin drops his arms and folds them across his chest. “He will not touch you, because I will not allow him to touch you,” he snarls, his beast making an appearance.
“You are not invincible,” I argue, throwing my hand out. “The odds are enormously stacked against us, and you know it. We need more bodies on our side, more power, more…” I suck in a breath and force my stare to meet his, already hating myself for my next words. “We need your father, Singard.”
I might as well have slapped him. No—punched him, wrestled him to the ground and wedged a blade between his ribs, and even then, I’m certain his eyes wouldn’t reflect even half of the betrayal that flashes in them now. Just for a second, before they narrow and sharpen to swords. “ What did you just say to me?”
“Sera told me she asked you,” I whisper.
“Then she also told you my answer.”
“I think you are being stubborn. I know you two have your differences, but he is too great an asset to?—”
“Our differences ?” he interjects. “He ordered for an arbalest to be aimed and fired at your heart, Wren. How dare you look at me and renounce his crimes to my face, when it was he that tried to take everything from me?”
I meet him where he stands, my arms rigid at my sides. “Tried and failed, just as we will if we do not come at them with absolutely everything that we have. Dusaro is a snake, and do not mistake my words for a moment to think I do not hate him with everything I have for the unspeakable things he has done to you. But I also know our personal vendettas will be the downfall of us all if we allow them to be.”
Sin’s pulse quickens, the scent emanating from his pressure points enough to make me dizzy. “We cannot trust him. I will not afford him the opportunity to hurt you, especially not after everything we’ve done to him.”
“WHAT CHOICE DO WE HAVE?” I didn’t mean to shout, but tears suddenly spring from my eyes, streaming down my cheeks in fat, salty drops. I turn from him and pace the tent, nails digging into my scalp. “Singard, we must. But if you truly will not allow it, then we need to gain leverage somewhere else. We need…” I stop moving as an idea materializes, my hand slowly falling back to my side.
“I can kill him,” I breathe. “I could use the waystone. With Alistair’s help, we could push our way through the channel without Torin inviting us. He wouldn’t be expecting it, and as soon as we killed Torin, we could draw on his blood. Alistair and I could easily devastate the rest of his crew.”
“And where exactly is Alistair getting the blood needed to force your way through the stone? Something tells me sacrificing a poor rabbit isn’t enough,” Sin pushes, anger beginning to bleed into his voice.
“He has stores in an ice box always.”
“Ah yes, how considerate of him to not waste any from his last massacre. Wren, do you hear how fucking crazy you sound right now? I understand you are scared, but you must keep your emotions out of this. The risk of him capturing you instead is far too great.”
“And is that such a horrid idea? Even if he did, then perhaps I could use that to our advantage. If Torin had me, then it would not be worth risking his own casualties when he already has what he wanted. I could buy us time to better pre?—”
I startle as he suddenly grips my bicep with bruising strength, pushing me back against the furs. His other arm brackets me between him and the tent, the veins in his forearm now purple and raised. Our breath knots together in the space between us, his mouth hovering just above mine. “Never say something like that again. Do you understand me, little witch?” he rasps. “No one gets to hurt you ever, and if you managed to find yourself his prisoner, it would do nothing but shift the war from our territory to his. I would bring the entire fucking army to their front door without a single care of whose lives were lost in the pursuit of saving yours.
“Remember that the next time you even think of suggesting something like that to me again. Just because I am no longer your villain, does not mean I am not theirs.”
I shake my head, furiously blinking to clear the stupid tears. “You cannot sacrifice an entire kingdom for its queen. That is not what a good leader would do.”
“I never said I was a good one, love. But I am effective, and I’d burn the entire godsdamned realm to ash if that’s what it took to get back to you.”
The truth in his voice should frighten me, but I can’t bring myself to feel anything but the gentle caress of the back of his knuckles as he drags them down one cheek. There is a slight tremble to his hand, the tendons taut as his claws threaten to tear through the skin there. He’s leashing his beast, and to his credit, he’s doing quite well.
His jaw is tight, his eyes slivered in anger, but there is only concern swimming in them.
He feels it too.
That air of uncertainty I’ve been unable to shake, the stark reality of how horribly outnumbered we are a bitter taste on my tongue, like someone placed a coin beneath it.
I hold his stare captive when I ask him again, salt burning my eyes and my lips wet with tears. “Please, Singard. It does not mean you forgive him if you let him out. But it does mean you will not allow the hurts of your past strip the possibility of us building something better in our future. I do not want to live our lives from the darkness others forced us into. We must find our own light, and I promise we will never find it if we keep searching in the shadows of someone else’s hate.”
Sin stares at me for several long moments, but I sense it is not me he is seeing at all, and I wonder if he is imagining what’s been replaying in my head for days. Images of me walking the gardens with a beautiful black-haired child clinging to my fingers, of summer nights spent on our balcony under a sky dotted with thousands of stars, of Sin and my coronation, one where a jeweled crown is placed upon his head and its twin piece nuzzled in my white hair.
A kingdom not founded on lies and prejudice and hate.
A kingdom that is free .
“Please,” I say, the word breathless.
Sin exhales, his cheeks hollowing as he rolls his tongue behind closed lips. “I’ll give the order in the morning.”
It’s all he says.
It’s all he needs to.