Chapter 1 Draven #2
“Stay,” he growls at him like some stray pet he just found on the street.
Draven wraps his fingers around his wrist, squeezing tightly against the swell of magic overtaking his veins.
As he does, he concentrates on reigning his dark magic back inside him.
Somewhere along the way, the mask covering his face must have shifted, because he hears Holder audibly gasp with shock.
“You’re the Dalmar Heir….” he accuses, slightly awestruck. “I—I knew somethin’ was different about your magic.”
Draven only spares him an irritated glance.
Holder keeps talking, licking his chapped lips. “Did you know all the Great House Heirs have a pretty price on their pretty heads?” In one swift motion, he reaches for a dagger strapped to his ankle and attempts to slice Draven’s throat.
After sighing at the pathetic man, Draven presses two fingers together and flicks them forward, launching two spears of his magic directly into each of Holder’s shoulders.
Draven shakes out his hand after, wrangling his insatiable magic back into its cage.
Once he’s sure he’s gotten himself under control again, he squares himself back to Holder. “I told you to stay.”
“Fuck you.” The Skull Trader spits at Draven’s feet. “Go back to your pampered life on some cushy throne and leave us rats alone to play in the gutters, would ya?”
Draven grunts a laugh before mocking a dramatic sigh. “Alas, you’ve discovered my identity. I can’t just go back to my plush throne with you knowing who I am, now can I?”
Glimpsing the intent simmering in Draven’s eyes, Holder shakes his head, panic overtaking his features. “I won’t say nothin’,” he promises. “Not a peep. And I wasn’t just about‘ta actually harm ya. I was only goin’ to—”
“—to what?” Draven presses with a cocked head, his cold smirk tipping his lips.
Holder’s mouth flounders like a fish. Until he grits his teeth. “I won’t say nothin’,” he repeats, foregoing his declaration of innocence entirely.
Draven pretends to pick at his nails. When he hears a small choking noise slip past Holder’s lips, he is sure Holder has finally seen what has been lurking in the shadows behind him. From his peripheral, Draven catches a glimpse of brightly glowing violet eyes as his shadow panther prowls forward.
“A Skull Trader’s loyalty is only to their coin.
” His panther creeps another step forward, and then another.
And another. Its large jaw unhinges, exposing sharp, inky teeth.
Draven sets his expression with a savage indifference that, for once, is no mask.
“I have no intention of opening my pockets tonight.”
Draven throws open the door and drops himself into the chair resting in front of the burning hearth, hanging his head with a bitter mix of frustration and defeat.
“You look terrible.” Kiran strolls over to him and outstretches his hand, offering him a crystal glass filled with a deep amber liquid. “But you smell even worse.”
Wordlessly, Draven takes it and downs the whole thing in one gulp.
“I’ll take that as a sign you had no luck this time, either?” Kiran sits down in the chair across from him and folds one leg over the other.
“If I had even an ounce of good fortune,” Draven begins, his wary voice rough and pointed, “do you really think my face would look like this?”
Kiran opens his mouth, but after Draven shoots him a warning glare, he snaps it shut. “No,” he replies, seeming to take a different path. “No, it would not.”
Draven releases a frustrated sigh and leans back in his chair, raking both his stained hands through his unbrushed, mud-coated hair.
“I was so sure someone in Zavir would know at least something.” He huffs a manic laugh.
“But you know what, Kiran? It’s fucking laughable how mad I sound, going around from taverns, to dens, to underground fighting rings and the sort asking about Casimir Vivaldri—a centuries-old prince thought to be dead—and his band of Abdites.
During this particular journey, one drunken asshole laughed in my face and told me to get off the pipe. ”
“Well,” Kiran coos neutrally, “it is all rather hard to believe.”
Draven scrubs at his dirty face. “I know, Kiran. I fucking know. Still, I thought someone in Zavir—a city of thieves and criminals for the gods’ sake—would be able to cough up something. Anything. But…” Draven trails off, leaning forward and balling his hand into a fist. “Nothing.”
“How can you be sure they weren’t lying to you?”
Draven only spares Kiran a quick glance, scoffing as his eyes drift to the fire.
“If I ever suspected someone of lying, I bound them and injected venom into their veins. Their tongues loosened, but I was never given information that held any importance to me. I don’t care about their underground criminal rings; I only care about finding her.
” A frustrated growl rattles in the back of his throat, and Draven rises, suddenly feeling restless.
“You should know though, based on information I just received, we can probably expect to be dispatched with our aggregates soon. Sounds like there’s some sort of uprising forming. ”
Kiran tugs his brows together. “What—in Zavir?”
Draven shrugs. “In all of Solaya. From what a Skull Trader told me, there’s an underground movement taking shape, pulling their ideology from some centuries-old group.”
“A Skull Trader, huh? Do you have a name?”
Draven shakes his head. “No. Whoever is pulling the strings has been careful with their movements.”
Kiran is silent for a moment, his face pinched with thought. “I’ll look into it,” he says eventually.
Draven nods then heads for the door, in desperate need of a bath. But just as he reaches the mahogany wood, he stills, his hand hovering on the doorhandle. “How’s she doing?” he asks in a low murmur.
Kiran unfolds his legs and sighs, bracing his weight forward on his elbows. “She is not eating, she is not attending her classes, and it is a stroke of luck when I see her at even one training session. It’s safe to say she’s still doing rather poorly.”
“Should we intervene?”
He shakes his head, his unbound ruby hair spilling over into his face. “I have eyes on her, and they tell me Gray Nightenjoy is looking after her. Given everything, I’d say he’s the best suited to help her.”
“I’m glad they both chose Castaria—chose to have you as their captain.”
Kiran doesn’t reply, but instead gazes absently at the dancing flames in the hearth. The crackling noises from the burning wood swirl in the air and fill the stretching silence between them like escaped truths they can’t bring themselves to voice.
Draven glances over his shoulder, his lips thinning as he watches his brother sink into the hollow spaces of his mind. “Kiran?”
He drags his gaze from the hearth, sucking in an absent breath. “Yes?”
“I miss him, too.”
Kiran’s eyes soften as sadness ripples in his expression, knowing immediately who Draven means.
“My aggregate feels duller without Griff,” he confesses.
“And I have to bear the weight of that because I was his captain, and what did I do to keep him safe?” He tears his eyes from Draven.
“Nothing,” he bites out in a harsh whisper.
“I did absolutely nothing. I failed him, and the price of my failure was his life.”
Draven turns and strides for Kiran, resting a firm hand on his shoulder. “Look at me,” he demands. When Kiran doesn’t, he tightens his grip. “Look. At. Me.”
Kiran slowly pulls his eyes away from the hearth once more, locking them onto Draven.
“We all failed that day,” he murmurs. “Every single one of us. The burden isn’t yours alone to carry.”
Kiran holds Draven’s gaze, a subtle pointedness emerging within his sapphire eyes. “Burdens often aren’t. Yet it’s human nature to try and carry them alone anyway, isn’t it?”