Chapter 24
Nelle
Graysen’s eyes—my light-gray eyes—blazed down at me.
Possessiveness carved itself across his features, along with some other feeling, darker and more wrathful, tempered by hurt.
I captured his hands and pried them off my body.
“Didn’t you want to ask me about Silas Boon?
If you do, you’d better do it soon before I change my mind and retire for the night. ” And I mocked a yawn.
Graysen straightened to his full height, cracking his neck to ease tense muscles.
All the while I held his lethal, unblinking gaze as I slowly slid along the stone railing, moving carefully like a small rainforest animal hoping the jaguar wouldn’t notice.
I stopped a safe distance away and blinked innocently, waiting for him to ask his questions.
The tamer slipped away as he pinched the bridge of his nose, briefly closed his eyes, and breathed out a low, annoyed sigh. When his thick lashes parted, gray irises darkened to black.
A sudden rumbling of engines and tires rolling on cobblestones jarred both of us from our silent standoff. The engines died, and the sound of doors opening and shutting, feet clattering, and voices ringing came from around the other side of the tower.
Curious, I hurried along the curving balcony, my hand skimming across the weatherworn railing until I returned to the entrance of Graysen’s rooms. Sage had already come out to inspect who had arrived.
My wraith-wolf poked his head out between the gaps in the balustrades, while I leaned over to watch the goings-on in the courtyard below.
The drivers, guards, and servants had disembarked several SUVs and were assisting an older woman dressed in white from her limousine.
I didn’t get a good look, as she had her back to me, and I could only make out bobbed black hair that had a textured, feathered look to the ends of the locks.
She strode ahead of a collection of men and women in House uniforms, navy business suits, and the usual black fatigues of soldiers.
A few stayed behind and unloaded the suitcases—a great many suitcases.
“Quite the entourage,” I murmured.
One of them glanced over his shoulder and up at the tower. I caught only the broad brushstrokes of an attractive male face, brown hair and a short-cropped beard, a twitch of a smile. Right before our gazes met, his companion said something, and he turned away to answer.
Graysen sidled up, leaning an arm on the railing beside me as he stared at the woman at the head of the entourage before she disappeared inside the Keep. The men and women followed behind, and only the hushed murmuring from the drivers and the clank of luggage on stone could be heard below.
“Aunt Addie,” Graysen said, obviously referring to the chic woman in white.
I arched an eyebrow, silently asking him to explain more.
“She’s arrived for our family reunion—”
I made a scoffing sound, cutting him off.
Seriously, the Crowthers were actually going ahead with the ruse that they’d used to circumnavigate the Alverac?
As I wasn’t yet twenty, meant the only way they could legally possess me was through my forced attendance of a family celebration.
Usually, it was one of my family’s celebrations that Graysen accompanied me. This time, it was theirs.
Vexation fizzed through my veins, and I did my best to tamp it down. This evening wasn’t about anger. It was about something else.
Dusk was creeping into night, and small pockets of blue flames erupted along the parapet of the Keep and in wildfyre torches flaring across the inner courtyard’s walls. I waved my fingers, encouraging Graysen to return to our game and ask a question. “Your turn. What do you want to know?”
He followed as I drifted backward and reentered our rooms once more, relishing the warmth that was retained within the magic-bound room.
Bracing one hand on his hip, he tilted his head in thought. “Is Silas Boon connected to the Children of the Harbinger?”
I smiled broadly—excellent question.
Nodding, I turned away to pad across the kitchen tiles. Behind me, I heard Graysen mutter, “Fuck. I suspected as much.” Glancing over my shoulder, I saw him flick on the light switch, and soft illumination poured down from the ceiling, banishing the shifting shadows. “How do you know for sure?”
While rising on tiptoes to rummage through the uppermost cupboards in the kitchen, I answered.
“When I last saw Silas, he had two companions, similar to those we came across in the catacombs.” Silas had sent a small army of creepily masked warriors to capture me when I’d gone hunting the Uzrek, and I’d incinerated the entire company with wyrmfire.
Retrieving a packet of walnut crackers, I lowered back down to the flat of my feet and fussed with the plastic wrapping of the crackers, peeling it open.
Without really thinking about what I was saying, I shared, “He didn’t deny it when I asked him either. ”
A sharp intake of breath. “You saw him with those things and spoke to him?”
I froze.
Shit.
I slowly drummed my fingertips on the countertop as I ran my mind back over what I had told Graysen. All he knew was that Silas had handed me over to Danne.
Swiveling around to face him, I replied, “Yes.”
His voice was as hard as granite when he stalked closer, demanding, “When did you speak with him?”
“At the cottage by the lake. You were hurt and unconscious on the lawn. Silas had come to reclaim me and end you.”
Surprise slackened his jaw. “You didn’t let him?”
I fucking should have.
“Yeah,” he said softly, reading my thoughts all over my face, perhaps feeling them with this strange connection we shared. “You should have.”
“Seems everyone wants you dead,” I snipped airily as pinched a small cracker between my fingertips and popped it into my mouth. The grainy walnut texture fell apart like delicious, buttery crumbs on my tongue.
Cool air wisped out and nipped at my bare arms as I opened the fridge and dug around the crisper drawer.
Spinach, carrots, celery, and peppers were fished out.
I found some feta and herbs too before slamming the door shut.
Arching a commanding eyebrow at Graysen, who was leaning against the kitchen counter, he shuffled over so I could get to the cutlery drawer.
It made almost no noise. There wasn’t the usual clank of metal.
I should have remembered that there wouldn’t have been anything I could use to cut the vegetables.
All the drawer contained was godsdamned plastic forks and knives and spoons.
I hissed at Graysen, waving a useless knife in his face. How the fuck was I supposed to make a salad with a plastic knife as my only tool?
He dropped his gaze to his feet and toed the tiles, trying not to grin.
I tossed the knife into the drawer and slammed it shut with annoyance. Rifling through a bottom cupboard, I found a porcelain bowl and slapped it on the counter with an irritating thump before running the sink’s cold water tap and washing the carrots.
“How the hells did Silas find us so quickly?” Graysen asked.
I dumped the first slender carrot into the bowl and washed another one, running my fingers back and forth over its ridges.
While I finished another mouthful of crackers, I pondered his question.
There was only one way Silas could have tracked us so fast. “I think Silas started hunting Danne as soon as he realized he’d been betrayed.
Perhaps when you destroyed the Cloakers that shielded me, Silas knew exactly where I was.
” And obviously, Silas had arrived at the bottom of the cliff just as we’d left it.
I’d followed bends and curves in the river, swifting in short bursts, until I’d come upon a lake and a cottage surrounded by wild grasses.
Silas arrived a moment later.
And we’d had a confrontation when Silas dared to end what was mine. I’d dredged up the last scraps of my power to thwart him and demand that he leave immediately.
Finishing up the carrots, I snatched up a red pepper to wash. I couldn’t prevent my thoughts from spiraling onward, and two opposing thoughts filtered through my mind.
Perhaps I should have ended Silas.
Perhaps I should have taken up his offer and gone with him.
Either way, it was too late.
I thought back to that last moment when I’d driven Silas away. He’d disappeared. Which was odd because nothing living could swift. And none of the swifting winds accompanied him that normally pulled me into the void. He’d simply vanished.
And before all of that, I’d felt Silas. He’d grabbed hold of me before I’d keeled over.
Deprived of oxygen, he cradled me on his lap to breathe air into my lungs.
Warm lips and warm-bodied—he wasn’t dead, nor not-quite-living.
Yet, he could be something like me, with something inside him that made it possible to swift like a wyrm. Or something else equally strange.
But what Silas had done was different.
It was as if he moved so fast that I hadn’t been able to see him move.
His companions had swifted…
But not Silas.
Slowly, as the threads wove together like a tapestry and created a pattern in my mind, I noticed Graysen setting up a wooden chopping board on the counter beside my vegetable bowl.
“Why did Silas kidnap you? What does he want with you?” he asked, not bothering to look my way as he pulled a switchblade out of wherever-the-hells he’d concealed it on his body and rinsed the deadly blade beneath a stream of hot running water and frothy dishwashing liquid.
I’d heard him, but my mind was busy ticking over with Silas Boon.
Silas had vanished or moved as fast as Graysen had done after I’d kicked the tennis ball at him. One moment there. The next gone.
Were Silas and Graysen the same?
Or different?