Chapter 15 Dylan
Dylan
Purple was not her colour.
The shade was vile, but she still managed to snatch the air from my lungs when she stepped into the training ring in her Northern habit.
It took a lot of willpower to not imagine her all in black.
The thought alone had me semi-hard. Zenn stepped beside me, his boots crunching on the dry brush that peppered the forest floor.
I silently thanked the Crewrs for my loose skirt, layers of pleated fabric that concealed evidence of my arousal.
Zenn was one of the few people I had left who I would consider family, and it certainly wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before.
But no one needed an eyeful of an uncalled-for boner at this hour of the morning.
“She looks different today,” Zenn mumbled, his tone as deadpan as ever. Deep down, I knew his concern was genuine; he couldn’t help always sounding like he couldn’t give a shit about anything.
“No shit.”
I’d noticed something was different the second she stepped outside, too.
Her hair was darker than the day before.
It had even grown a few inches overnight, and her skin was practically luminous in the morning rays.
But the blush that had settled on her cheeks?
I knew exactly what had caused that kind of flush.
I’d caused that kind of flush many a time on various partners during my long life.
But the thought that someone else had caused such a reaction in Non made me murderous.
She’d better have used her fucking fingers.
Zenn placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Maybe we give this a miss, mate? She’s going to get battered out there, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”
I responded with a noncommittal grunt. Zenn would have to drag me kicking and screaming if he thought I would let her go through her first training session with the North alone. I knew I couldn’t intervene, thanks to fucking Coven politics.
The copse of trees we stood in kept us out of view from the training down below, but it was elevated enough that we had a clear line of vision of Llwyn Onn and its surrounding grounds.
You didn’t need to be a mind reader to know Non was nervous; her tells were obvious as she shuffled to the back of the group, fiddling with the ends of her almost ebony hair.
Honestly, she had every reason to be nervous. Seren’s training methods were renowned among the Covens as being brutal. And based on the short interaction I’d witnessed a few days prior in Bronwen’s study, I knew Seren would be out for blood this morning.
Seren’s voice was like a banshee as it rang out across the clearing. The group was to summon a practice weapon from the rack. Wooden staffs flew through the air and hit their marks, landing in the open palms of the Wielders who summoned them.
Non, clearly not familiar with the custom, walked over to the rack and made to pick it up rather than summon it. As her fingertips brushed the wood, her cousin shrieked another command for her to use her magic.
Zenn rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. “If she’s what you think she is, there’s no way in all the realms she’s going to be able to summon wood. This is going to end badly.”
“End badly for them, maybe, if they dare to touch a hair on her head,” I ground out.
In all fairness, I’d had very few interactions with Seren over the years.
All of them consisted of only a few words.
I had no real reason to be as suspicious as I was.
But she was a puppet for Bronwen, nothing more.
Moving each time she tugged at a string.
That’s what made me so on edge this morning; Bronwen was ruthless.
Zenn pulled one of his knives from his belt and began weaving it through his fingers. “With the right training, she’d be able to wipe the floor with every Wielder in that ring. But they won’t give her the chance. They’ll just keep pushing her until she snaps.”
Zenn was right, of course—he usually was. I just hoped that when she did inevitably snap, she made the whole fucking Coven vanish like she did to her cousin.
Non stood only a few feet away from the weapon rack, her arms stretched out in front of her while she tried and failed to summon the staff.
Eventually, two blond Wielders sauntered towards her. I recognised them as Osian and Guto. This was confirmed when Zenn stiffened as his eyes landed on the twins.
“Those fuckers,” Zenn growled. The jagged scar he sported on his neck, courtesy of the twins, stood out in contrast to his dark skin.
Non jumped out of her skin when Osian leant down to whisper in her ear. A cool rage unlike anything I’d felt before washed over me, and a faint spray of seawater started to rain down from the trees above us.
Zenn moved to stand in front of me, gripping both of my shoulders, and said, “You need to keep your cool, big man! Like I said, there’s nothing you can do. If they catch you interfering, you’ll only make it worse for her.”
I shoved him aside to see Osian still stood way too fucking close to Non with his palm raised.
The leftover weapon on the rack shot through the air directly at her, and gods bless her, she tried to raise her arms to block the blow.
Osian had yet to be chosen as a vassal, but he was still a soldier of the Northern Coven, trained with one purpose. To kill.
The staff connected with Non’s cheek with such force that the sound of her bone cracking could be heard even from where Zenn and I stood. She was blasted backwards, landing on her arse in the centre of the ring. The other Wielders rushed to crowd around her until she became blocked from our view.
Fury overtook the very little resolve I had, and I began moving without even realising. It was only when I felt resistance against my chest that I came to.
“Woah, can’t let you do that big man,” Zenn ground out. His palms were flattened against my chest as he dug in his heels, stopping me from running head-first into a political disaster.
A snarl ripped from my throat. “You’re always so fucking sensible!
They just broke her cheek for a laugh, Zenn!
” I jabbed a finger towards the training ring.
“I’m going to carve their own cheekbones out and feed it to them slowly.
See how they like it.” Zenn’s eyes widened in horror, and I lunged forward as his foot slipped and his grip on my chest loosened momentarily.
But he regained his footing quickly. They didn’t call him the Western Wraith for nothing. The fucker was quick.
Zenn nodded over his shoulder towards the circle of Wielders. “Dyl, mate, she’s fine. Look!”
Looking towards the training ring again, I could see there was a break in the crowd that gave us an unobscured view of Non, who was now sat on her knees.
Blood poured through her fingers that cupped her face.
Based on the amount of blood, it looked like Osian had broken her nose, too. Mother. Fucker.
Seren pushed her way through the gathered Wielders, barking incoherent orders.
The tosser twins were hot on her heels, heavy-handed as they shoved even some of the elders, who had attended training, to one side.
Guto, I assumed as he had more of a copper tint to his greasy locks, scurried to Seren’s side and placed a glass vial in her open palm.
Zenn must have seen it too as the cautious hand he kept at the centre of my chest fisted. “Shit, is that what I think it is?”
All I could manage was a short nod in response as Seren knelt next to Non and filled the glass vial with her blood. She corked it and tucked it away inside the folds of her habit.
I was certain both Bronwen and Seren had smelt the same thing we did when Non came flying through the door.
That unmistakable sickly-sweet note to her blood.
It was inevitable that Bronwen and her inner circle would notice eventually, but spilling Non’s blood in the training ring for half the Northern Coven to smell was a disaster.
In a few short hours, gossip like that would spread through the four Covens.
Shoving Zenn’s hand off my chest, I stepped forward to the edge of the copse.
Zenn tried to protest, but I waved him off as I raised my palms to the sky and summoned a downpour on the training ring.
Most of the Northern Wielders sprinted for cover in the castle; some chose to take refuge in the surrounding forest. There was nothing I could do about the vial Seren had, but I could at least try to wash away the scent of Non’s blood.
“Quick thinking,” Zenn said flatly, “but Ice Bitch Junior won’t be stupid enough to think that rain was a coincidence. And that vial will be in the hands of Ice Bitch Senior before we make it back to the encampment.”
Zenn’s words only enraged me further as Non still sat on the ground, now soaked in both blood and the rain I’d summoned. “Let Seren run back to her Ledr,” I seethed, “Bronwen already knows. She just needed some hard evidence. This changes nothing for us, we just need to work quicker.”
Zenn let out a long sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. As he turned to make his way deeper into the forest, he gripped my shoulder and gave it a supportive squeeze. “Caerwyn’s going to be fucking furious when he finds out what you just did.”
It took every inch of resolve and willpower I had to tear my gaze away from Non and follow Zenn back to the western encampment. As the twins’ synchronised laughter echoed through the trees, I promised that I’d skin every single person who ever laid a finger on her.
Alive.