Chapter 6 #3
The prick would have suffered for decades at my claws as repayment for rejecting and selling Saphira, coming close to breaking such a spirited female.
Now, with his parting action of taking her parents from her, subjecting her to further torment and pain I knew too well, his suffering would be eternal.
This wrath burning within me would never be satisfied.
Even if she begged me, I would not release his soul.
Tan’ith would keep it caged here, bound to his rotting corpse, and whenever that cage of flesh and bone was in danger of breaking, I would have the lich restore it.
I would ensure Lucas never escaped me.
Wind howled around me, flattening my soaked tunic jacket and breeches to my body, untying my hair so it fluttered behind me as violently as my wings of shadow.
But it was not loud enough to drown out that voice.
“What were you questioning the wolf about?” Jenavyr took slow, measured steps towards me. Cautious steps. “Were you asking him about Saphira?”
I did not answer.
I stared at the raging sea that was ebony capped with silver as twilight fell, drowning in the darkness flooding my veins.
“She would not want you to be like this,” she whispered.
And by the Great Mother, those words cut into my heart as surely as a blade might have.
I knew that.
And it broke me.
“I do not know how else to be.” Tears stung my eyes as I glared at the roiling sea, pushing each of those words out from between clenched teeth as I shattered, the fragile barrier I had been desperately shoring up to hold back the flood of pain and fear, the anguish and despair, breaking under the weight of that admission.
She reached out and gently laid her hand on my arm, her shadows twining with mine. “We will get her back… but why… why in the goddess’s name would she go with them? Was she taken as a prisoner?”
I shook my head. “She goes as their guest. She made them believe we were enemies. That I had been cruel to her. She made them believe so I would be safe and so she could both fulfil her purpose and save her friend.”
“You said that before.” She came to stand beside me, one hand holding her hair from her face as she squinted against the wind. “But it is more than that. You are hiding something. You can hide things from the others, but not from me. Never from me.”
I glanced at her and lingered. I was not the only one who could read people at times, aware of when they were concealing something but not possessing enough of our mother’s power to scratch the surface to find out what they were hiding.
“Why were the seelie looking for her? Why did they take her to that court as their guest?” Each of Vyr’s words twisted that blade she had plunged into my heart, driving it deeper.
I tried to hold the words back.
I tried.
But they spilled from my lips in a broken confession, a whisper I hoped she would not hear.
“She is part seelie.”
The words fell like lead, striking me hard even as they lifted some of the weight from my soul, from my shoulders. Striking her hard too judging by how she stepped back, her silver eyes widening in disbelief and then narrowing as she frowned at me.
“Her speed. Her strength. The differences I felt in her when we were training.” Vyr shook her head, gaze darting over me as she considered all the implications of what I had said.
And the signs that had always been there.
“I felt it too,” I said, letting her know that she was not the only one who had sensed there was something other about Saphira.
Something I had tasted in her when I had bitten her.
Magic.
Dormant, hidden, but there.
Waiting for someone to wake it.
“This will be hard on her.” Jenavyr wrapped her arms around herself, pulling her thick black jacket closed over her navy blouse, and her fingers tugged at the sleeves as they tightened against them. She cast me a worried look. “How do you think she is handling it?”
“I do not know.” And it wrecked me. “I worry she will not be handling it well at all. I have found no evidence to prove that what the seelie said is true, and since he lied about interrogating you, part of me hopes this was also a lie.”
“But you feel it is not.” My sister slowly shook her head, gaze lowering to my chest before it lifted to my face again. “But it could be.”
“It could be,” I echoed, but she was right and I did not believe that.
I had tasted Saphira’s strength. That tang of something other in her blood, something I could now recognise as magic.
As fae power. I heaved a sigh, eyes straying to the murky horizon again, focusing there so I could free the words I wanted to say, ones that clogged in my throat as I fought to let my sister in, to share this burden with her in a way I had not with other matters.
“This will be another upheaval for her… and I worry how she is coping with it. She is still grieving, and now she has learned that her parents had kept something from her… that her father had not been the man who had raised her and loved her. I worry it will be too much for her.”
Vyr touched my arm again, gripping it through the sodden sleeve.
“She is strong, brother. Brave. A little stubborn.” She smiled slightly and one tugged at my lips too as I felt the truth in those words.
My little wolf was stubborn. She sighed and her expression shifted, a blend of concern and hope, and belief.
“She will survive that court as she has survived this one. You have trained her well.”
“We have trained her well.” I placed my hand over hers on my arm, smiling tightly when she looked surprised, and then pleased by my words.
My smile faded as I thought about the truth I had still yet to tell her.