Chapter 8
Graysen
Sirro was a study in metal. Silver strands shimmered as golden eyes fixed on my brother with a disquieting sharpness.
And like metal, coldness radiated from the Horned God, as well as hostility, jagged and raw.
He crooked a finger at my brother, indicating that he should rise. “Young Jett, explain yourself.”
My hands automatically pushed against the armrests with my intent to help Jett stand when Sirro’s tut-tut and the slow shake of his head stopped me.
I reluctantly sank back down, my heartbeat rapping an anxious rhythm as my gaze speared to my younger brother slumped in his seat.
Pain pulled his pallid features taut, and his labored breath sent ice sliding down my spine. We needed this over with fast.
Shit, if the bolt’s curse reaches Jett’s heart…
“I’m sure Jett can manage all by himself,” Sirro said, still staring at my brother.
Jett clenched his jaw. Veins corded down his throat as he shoved clumsily to his feet. Wincing, the hand braced across his wound trembled.
Sirro leaned back in his chair, and although it appeared he was calmly stroking his Familiar’s head, his thick brows furrowed over a gaze darkened by an acrimony that burned with the intensity of molten iron.
His power rippled and slunk around his limbs, his Familiar’s too, burnishing him in a silvery glow that cut shadows into the planes of his cheeks.
Jett approached with a lumbering gait, his combat boots dragging across the floor. He halted in front of the coffee table, then wobbled and stumbled.
Shit, shit, shit.
I went to rise…
…and stopped at Sirro’s fierce glare, warning me not to move a single muscle.
Fuuuck!
I leaned forward, clasping my hands between my spread thighs. The blood in my veins chilled at Jett’s unstable stance, and I willed Sirro to hurry the fuck up.
Jett’s voice was thin with fatigue. “They swifted in. Not-quite-alive.”
“Wraiths?”
“No…corporeal. More like the dead brought back to life.”
Sirro blinked. “Necromancy?”
Even the Horned Gods couldn’t bring the dead to life quite like those things I’d encountered. The dead could be resurrected. But they were wrong—soulless, lifeless creatures.
“I’m not sure… They’re nothing like I’ve ever encountered or anything I’ve learned about necromancy.”
I could barely taste Jett’s lies.
I’d shared everything I remembered down in the catacombs below Ascendria.
We went through it again and again during the ride here to Sirro’s residence—Jett repeating it, twisting it until he believed it was him down there fighting to protect Nelle.
And then crafted a choreography of events for what supposedly happened when this faction attacked the convoy transporting the tithes from the Wychthorns to Sirro’s residence.
“Nine of them. They had weapons like ours, forged of adamere. Crossbows too. It was fast and brutal… They’d split into three groups… Two took out the guards, the other one went for the tithe truck.” He swayed, his knees threatening to buckle.
My muscles bunched as I half-rose to surge forward and help him.
Sirro’s enraged glare slashed across the room, pinning me in place.
I gritted my teeth and sat back down. My foot tapped a restless beat on the floor, my knee bouncing up and down.
Sirro propped an elbow on the armrest and pointed at Jett. “And what were you doing?”
“I engaged in combat.” He glanced down at his shaky hand pressed to his side. Black blood soaked his t-shirt, and the sticky substance coated his fingers. The reek of rotting flesh wafted through the air and dread curdled in the pit of my gut.
How long was Sirro going to drag this out? The Horned God was enjoying every second of my brother’s suffering. Like a wolf after a fresh kill, there was a sated glow in his eyes.
“They’re skilled. Better.” His weakened voice was a dry rasp, like scraping sandpaper. He blinked sluggishly. Once. Twice. His limbs slackened, and I watched in horror as his head rolled back and his legs went out from under him.
I moved without thinking, grabbing hold before his knees hit the wooden floor.
His flesh was ice beneath my palms. My nerves were just as frigid, wondering how Sirro was going to react to my blatant act of defiance.
Panic had my pulse palpitating, not for me, but for my brother.
We needed this interrogation finished so I could administer the rest of the witch-wrought elixir I had in my pocket.
I chanced a swift look at Sirro. The Horned God surprised me with a broad smile, full of warmth and admiration. Genuine. “Such loyalty… No wonder you Crowthers have survived the ages.”
I couldn’t linger on Sirro’s unexpected response, fear for Jett consumed my thoughts.
I hauled him back up to a standing and braced his deadweight against me. “Jett,” I lightly slapped his icy cheek with my palm.
My brother’s shallow breaths skimmed over my neck.
I slapped him a little harder. “Jett.”
His long lashes pried apart as he scowled. “Stop…fucking…slapping me.”
I slapped him one more time, just because I could. And his pain-glazed eyes narrowed with his snarl.
I flashed a quick grin that faded quickly.
Jett leaned into me, and his words came too fast. Rushed like his heartbeat thudding beneath my palm.
“They looked human. But bigger. And the masks… No eye slits. Just grotesquely twisted features.” Pausing, he winced as a shiver ran through him.
“They didn’t speak, but they moved together…
Like they were communicating somehow.” A flicker of doubt shone in his gaze.
“Maybe those masks are their real faces. I don’t know. ”
“Human-looking, you say?”
Jett nodded.
Sirro’s gaze sharpened. “Was there… Was there anyone else with them?”
Lank, sweaty hair swayed as Jett shook his head.
Down in the catacombs beneath the city of Ascendria, those things had been after Nelle. And last night in our family room, she lied about Silas Boon. I didn’t know if they were connected…I just had a feeling they were. And I knew I had to coax the truth out of her sometime soon.
“Were they looking for someone…something?”
He grimaced, biting back a bark of pain. “By the time I escaped the unit boxing me in, the other two had already set the truck ablaze and burned all of Byron’s guards, as well as the tithes.”
Sirro’s tone sharpened. “Kenton said he’d sent you off to pursue them?”
Problem number one. The major one.
Jett could barely lift his shoulder. “It was useless and desperate. How can you track anything that swifts?” He squinted as if thinking back to that moment.
“I swept the area before heading to the second convoy, and that’s when I got ambushed—a pair of them.
One of their bolts grazed me…” He grunted, shuddering, as pain crashed through him.
“Hells… I went down hard. I expect they thought I’d die straight away.
They didn’t even bother waiting to make sure.
They swifted out. But I didn’t die, and they’d left behind the bolt. ”
In deep contemplation, Sirro leaned back in his chair.
I wasn’t sure I was breathing while I waited for his verdict.
As if waking up to the fact he had company, Sirro blinked, straightening. Condemnation aimed at me shot through his amber gaze like lightning cracking through a bank of roiling thunderclouds. “This is an act of war. You knew that when I asked for your opinion.”
Several nights ago, at an impromptu meeting on the Wychthorn estate, after a truckload of stolen souls had been intercepted by the very faction on which we were placing the blame to save Jett’s sorry ass, the Horned God had urged me to agree with him—a trap Nelle suspected and had warned me against.
I knew it was an act of war, as did Nelle, but she didn’t like how Sirro pushed for me to concur with him. To lend my weight behind it.
And now with this ruse—had we just created a new conflict?
Whatever these things were, they had to have attacked prior shipments. So no, this was where we were always heading.
The words rumbled from my chest as I confirmed. “It was an attack on our empire. It is an act of war.” But fucked if I was going to apologize for not backing him up earlier.
There was a wrathful hint of something on the Horned God’s face I couldn’t place.
But I felt it—as if some malevolent beast, as bitterly cold and ancient as the northern glaciers, stared at me from behind those golden eyes.
I sensed it in my bones, my marrow, and that strange, wicked thing that shadowed me reacted, baring fangs and hissing.
Sirro blinked, and it was there and gone again.
And I was left trying not to stare and wondering if I had even seen it.
For a heartbeat, I considered how much Sirro knew or had pieced together. If we’d unwittingly provided him with the means to press for war.
The angered lines of Sirro’s features softened as he gestured with a curl of his fingers toward Jett. “Show me.”
My brother lifted the hem of his t-shirt, the bloodied fabric stickily peeling away from his wound.
Sirro eagerly leaned in, hungry for the sight.
The wound was a ruin of blackened, putrid flesh.
Sickly purple lines spread from the weeping gash, branching like dying vines, each tendril studded with barbed, swollen nodes that leaked slow dark fluid, as if the curse itself were rotting from the inside out.
It crept around his rib cage, mottling the tattoos and staining his wyrm brand, the corrupted edge of it dangerously near his heart.
I couldn’t say I didn’t enjoy side-swiping the fucker. Now, I regret it. But if I’d hit him any later, our subterfuge would’ve been obvious.
Jett pressed a finger into his wound, and his ashen features twisted in agony as he scraped the nail along the gash.
Light from the bronze lamps overhead danced over his clammy skin as his entire body shook.
He raised his hand. On the tip of his fingernail was a tiny fiber of wood, so slender it could barely be called a splinter.