CHAPTER FOUR
“Bad things happen to good people, and we’ll never be able to understand why,” Bellan said softly. “You’re safe now, and we will find and punish those responsible.”
I awoke with a pounding headache and deep desire to burn something.
I groaned and cracked open my burning eyes.
They fell on the stonetalon, lounged against a gigantic boulder with a thick blanket tucked behind his head and back.
My cheek was in the dirt just outside the ring of heat that emanated off a raging fire.
My cloak was wadded up a few feet away. I shivered, a deep chill baked into my bones.
I fumbled my way to my feet and flung my palms open but—still nothing. Godsdamned ironweb. The stiletto was gone, my father’s dagger the gods knew where. I felt its loss like a physical blow in my chest.
Griffon tracked my movements, his mouth stuffed with food and brow hitched with a lazy tilt. My eyes narrowed as I realized he was in his human form.
That cinnamon-dusted, hard-as-marble skin had transformed to a flawless, bronzed complexion that glowed golden in the light of the fire.
His razor-sharp features had smoothed to high cheek bones, a well-defined brow line, and a strong, rigid jaw.
Lazy curls, as black as the pupils that followed me, fell over his forehead and meandered around the nape of his neck.
He hadn’t bothered to put a shirt on, and the swirling lines of a tattoo just snaked over his broad, wingless shoulders.
A glittering silver line tracked along its edges.
My brows slowly hiked up my forehead as I observed him.
He was my favorite Arawn sculpture in the middle of Merchants, sporting a deliciously indecent number of clothes and a criminal amount of muscle.
What a shame, for such perfection to be wasted on this beast. The winter god’s statue would have to be a sufficient enough reminder once this version was finally dead.
I dragged my treacherous eyes off him and took in my surroundings. We were still in a forest, though certainly not the one all dressed up in its finest crimson.
“Where are we?” I demanded. “And how did we get here?”
He plopped a piece of fragrant meat into his mouth. “A couple hours or so outside Falcos, by foot. And, well…” He flapped his arms and dragged a finger though the air, whistling through his teeth as he went. He raised one immaculate eyebrow and waited.
“On Etain’s fucking moon,” I snapped, cursing the spring goddess’s court in Gideon’s honor.
“You flew me here?” I pinched the bridge of my nose and drew in a deep, maddeningly ineffective breath and tried to not imagine myself dangling from his arms, unconscious and at his nonexistent mercy.
“And what does your backstabbing bitch of a leader want with me?”
“Probably not to lash you to a stake and torch you like you deserve.” A shit-eating grin crinkled the corners of his eyes. “But one can hope.”
I took a step toward him and the outer fringe of heat kissed my frozen skin. I tried to repress the shudder that went through me at the delicious feel of it, but he noticed, if the satisfaction that smeared itself all over his face was any indication.
I bristled and snatched my cloak off the ground.
“You better watch your back after you drag me to that hellhole you call a home. Because I will stick a blade in it the precise moment I get a chance to.” A mouthwatering aroma wafted across the fire on the back of a soft breeze and my stomach growled.
His satisfaction ignited into a veritable sun at the sound.
“Fucking prick.” I tore my eyes off him and his plate.
He raised a piece of meat to his lips. “I have never claimed to be anything but,” he said, and took an agonizingly slow bite out of it.
“Well, at least we don’t have to add ‘liar’ to your long list of vile traits.” I stomped to the opposite side of the fire and threw myself on the ground. My gaze fell on the dead weeds at my crossed feet—and the few dark green sprigs interspersed among them. I buried my surprise in a scowl.
“My vile traits?” he scoffed. “Don’t sit there and act like your kind are saints among monsters. You least of all.”
A decade of vitriol clawed out of my chest like some feral beast. “Humans never vowed to protect an entire species and then slaughtered them like pigs!”
“Think what you want.” He shoved the last of the meat in his mouth and drew his tongue over the plate, watching me over the rim. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
I narrowed my eyes on him, every fiber of my being wanting to scream that I knew exactly what I was talking about. Exactly what he had done. But I just turned back to those sprigs and started ripping them up, the picture of “petulant child.”
“Whatever,” I grumbled.
My gaze fell on a bush a few feet into the trees, its plump red berries like a splash of blood against the dead-brown that surrounded it. Stagberry. Tasted like fermented piss, but I was willing to shove just about anything in my mouth as long as the annuleaf in my hand went with it.
I shoved off the ground and stalked to the bush.
My pulse hammered with every second my back was turned to him, but my fingers were steady as I plucked the berries and indiscriminately shoved them, weeds, and a shoot of annuleaf into my mouth.
The warring tastes of dirt and something akin to a rotten lemon laid siege on my taste buds.
Bile clambered up my throat and joined the disgusting concoction lumped in my mouth.
I clamped a palm over my lips and squeezed my eyes shut, absolutely refusing to vomit in front of him. With enough determination to win any war, I chewed and swallowed the whole mess.
I shoved the balled-up vegetation into my pocket and scraped my tongue off on my robe, then whipped back to Griffon.
He was staring at me with a faint smirk on his lips.
But I just smirked back at the fool. It would have served him well to learn what annuleaf looked like, instead of a foul but harmless berry.
“I’m not sitting here with you all night,” I snapped. “Feel free to follow or fuck off. Preferably the latter.”
I stormed into the trees, in the general direction of where I thought Falcos lay. A few moments later, the flickering of the fire vanished and I felt his slow, steady movements at my back as he followed me into the darkness.
We walked in silence, my fingers flexing at my sides as I waited for the annuleaf to do its damned job and burn the ironweb out of my system.
My grin widened with every second that horrid barrier at my skin lessened.
Griffon would shift the moment I ignited, but it would only serve to prolong his death; my magic was strong enough to end him in either form.
“You stomped into that forest with an awful lot of confidence for someone who’s rendered useless by a little ironweb and can’t dodge worth shit.” His annoyingly deep, velvety voice was close behind me.
I glanced back to find him shoving aside branches I had walked under with ease. “I obviously didn’t know they were waiting,” I ground through my teeth.
A pause. “Why were you there, then?”
I rolled my eyes to the still-black sky. “I was there because you were meeting the Tablors there. Why else?”
“The who?” he asked.
I whipped around to find him snapping a thumb-sized branch instead of ducking under it, his jaw ticking as he stared at the offending object.
“The Tablors,” I said slowly. “Wine merchants. The ones you brokered a trade deal for with Archon Navi in exchange for coin. Ringing a bell?”
But as I spoke his brows traveled higher and higher, until they were lost in those inky black curls that fell over his forehead.
A derisive snort sent his chin bobbing and he shook his head.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.
I was only there because you were. I could have plucked you off the road from Vircann, but I admit,” he tossed his shoulder in a lazy shrug, “I was curious what you were doing. I’d never work with a human unless I had to.
” He stalked past me and then tossed a glance over his shoulder.
His finger waggled between us. “Like this. This is not remotely by choice.”
The last vestiges of ironweb faded and my flames throbbed against my skin. But I stood rooted as he turned back around and continued to swat branches out of his way.
I’d never work with a human unless I had to. And I knew, with abject certainty, that he spoke the truth. Because I would have to be utterly desperate to ever work with a stonetalon.
The trees around me blurred as my mind spun. The tip about the Tablors left anonymously at Bellan’s office…that note on Jeremy’s desk…
All just a—a ploy? To lure me to the middle of nowhere to die? My stomach hollowed out.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. Those had been his casual words about Solstice. What if they were true, too?
“Are you coming?” Griffon called from somewhere ahead of me. “Or am I going to have to knock your ass out and carry you again?”
I snapped my fists shut. My liberated flames sputtered in my palms as I drew a deep breath and fucking buried the nagging voice that demanded I unpack what all this meant about the three corpses rotting in a wine shop. I forced my feet to move and followed Griffon into the night.