Chapter 3
My heart is thumpingin my throat as the bonds around my body tighten to a point where they feel more like knives cutting into my skin than invisible ropes, but I pin a bored expression on my aching face and stare Ephegos down as he turns the doorknob, his gaze lingering on mine as he relishes the sight of me incapacitated.
“Smile, Ayna.” It’s the last thing he says before he pulls the door open, revealing the view of an ornately decorated hallway. I spot curls and whorls of brass and marble curving along the walls, a set of stairs leading down not far from my room, and on the threshold?—
I blink at the sight of the familiar blue and black of the Tavrasian military.
Tavrasian.All sorts of fears flood my system, making remaining still in my seat easy as petrification sets in. How Ephegos knows Tavrasian soldiers, I can’t even begin to understand, but it’s definitely what the man is. A soldier, unless the uniform is stolen, which would be a mystery of its own.
Forcing down a breath, I count the stars on the Tavrasian soldier’s shoulder and swallow a fresh assault of nausea as I realize he’s high up in rank.
“Adrian!” Turning his back to me, Ephegos spreads his arms wide to embrace the man entering the room with two clipped paces.
“It’s good to see you, Ephegos.” Adrian meets the Crow’s embrace as if it’s nothing to fear, and perhaps I would have felt the same mere days ago, before I’d known of Ephegos’s betrayal.
The greeting is brief and clinical despite the warm words of welcome, a habit rather than genuine excitement, though I can tell from the way Ephegos’s movements become more springy and his features brighten that he is happy to see the man.
It’s only when they both turn toward me that I get a good look at the visitor’s face. His head is shaved, and the mustache is gone, but those pale eyes I’d recognize anywhere.
“You weren’t lying when you said that the months in the Crow King’s care were good for her complexion,” the man says with a smirk that makes me want to tear at my bonds all over again, but I refuse to give any inclination I’m not seated here out of anything but my free will. I won’t give any sign of weakness. Not to the man who captured the Wild Ray and ordered the death of the family I used to know, who ordered Ludelle’s death and put me in prison for almost a year before he sold me off to the Crow King. I don’t flinch as his gaze roams down my chest. “Though I have to admit, her face isn’t the only thing that has benefitted from a few months of proper feeding.”
Ephegos’s responding laugh sends a chill through my bones. “Yes, she’s quite something to look at. A real prize.”
The general nods his agreement while he turns to scan my room with the gaze of a military analyst. “What a gracious host you are to grant the widow of your enemy such comforts.” His eyes snag on the gardens outside the window. “And such a lovely view. Not comparable to Fort Perenis, is it?” It’s the first time he is speaking to me directly. The expression on his face gives the impression he might as well have been conversing with a piece of furniture, that this is a nuisance for him, but a necessary one, a duty.
I don’t deign to respond. I don’t seethe at him either. The best I can do is keep up the bland facade so I won’t break. Because of all the people he could have brought to me, this is probably the worst. From the first time I met the general, he’s only been bringing pain and destruction to my life. There is nothing indicating this time will be any different.
His uniform has polished gold buttons lining his chest in two parallel rows from his collarbones to his waist where the jacket parts beneath a belt to give his legs space. It’s a dashing cut, designed to impress and to function in combat, but when I look at him, all I see is a monster. One of the real sort, without wings or beaks or claws. The Tavrasian general is a nightmare come to life. And side by side with Ephegos, I can’t even imagine what horrors they’ve dreamed up for me.
“No words for me today?” he provokes. “No fists either?” His eyes wander to my right hand, the one the soldiers injured during the capture of the Wild Ray and that had never been properly set and healed, tracing the chain tattoo identifying me as a former inmate of Fort Perenis.
Oh, I remember the cracking of his nose under my fist when I hit him the day he sold me to the Crow King. I remember the fear, the fury, the lack of any sense of self-preservation I’d felt back then.
I shake my head. “Not today.” Today is different. Today I have a heart so splintered I barely feel anything other than the all-consuming pain of Myron’s sacrifice. And the need to hide it at all costs.
I’ve been at my lowest in front of this man. He’s made sure I break over and over again. And I can’t allow him to glean this truth in my eyes. I can’t allow him to see the monster he sold me to might have been my salvation had I not fucked up and failed to save him first.
All I know is that I need to be strong. I need to be strong so Myron’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain.
“You’ve met before, good.” Ephegos finally inserts himself into the conversation.
Both the general and I nod, but it’s Adrian who inclines his head with an icy gaze. “Wolayna Milevishja. I didn’t think Ephegos was telling the truth when he sent word you outlived King Myron’s care.” His lips curl in a way that makes the skin around them wrinkle, giving away his age when his hair no longer can. “Quite unexpected.”
“Indeed,” Ephegos confirms as if this conversation is the most normal in the world and not one about the likelihood of my survival, a situation one happily put me in and the other had an active part in seeing to my end. “The first bride to survive the marriage to the infamous Crow King in thousands of years.”
“The hundredth bride of King Myron of Winghaven.” Adrian gives me a knowing look, and I nearly fail to register what he’d called Myron. Myron of Winghaven.
I’ve never heard that name before.
“Yes, your husband kept a lot of secrets, Wolayna,” Ephegos sprinkles in, just to land another one of those blows to my chest, the pain of which I’m determined to ignore. “Damning secrets.”
The general measures me with those calculating eyes, probably figuring out where to hit so it hurts the most, even though I still don’t know what his quarrel with me is apart from, you know, treason. If looting the Tavrasian royal fleet can be called that. But the answer is there in his face as he takes a step closer, leaning down and bracing his hands on the table at my side.
“Milevishja… a name so common in Tavras I didn’t think at first you could be the daughter of Ivan Milevishja. Yes… I remember him.” He reads the question right from my eyes. “I remember how he betrayed the late King of Tavras.”
“My father’s crimes, not mine.” It comes out as a whisper because, no matter how much I try to be strong, I falter at the mention of my father’s treason. At the way things fall into place.
“Traitor by blood.” It’s all the general says as he straightens again.
Ephegos throws me a grin over the general’s shoulder, the Crow still taller than the man even when he is comparatively short for a Crow male. “Oh, the many ways one can commit treason,” he chimes as if we weren’t talking about my family’s crimes, about mine, and my right to live.
“You know that the punishment for treason hasn’t changed, Wolayna.” The general lifts a brown-gray brow as he surveys me. “While your father paid with his life, your punishment turned out a bit less permanent, I fear.”
There is no sign of that supposed fear in his eyes. All they speak of is the countless ways of punishment he can come up with.
“Luckily, my friend here”—he lays a hand on Ephegos’s black-clad shoulder, and it’s the first time I notice the fine making of his jacket—“alerted me that you survived your sentence, which I’m here to remedy.”
Everything inside me goes still as the meaning of his words hits. Death. He’s come to execute me after all. The punishment for treason is death.
The warm sound of Ephegos’s laugh fills the room, and I want to cry as it wraps around me with such familiarity just before I catch myself and remember that he is a traitor of his own. That the warmth isn’t real. That he doesn’t care about my suffering other than that it happens. He wants me to pay for Myron’s hand in his sister’s death.
Sariell, I remember. A half-breed of Crow and Fire Fairy blood. One of Myron’s countless brides who died because of the curse, not because Myron willed it so.
“You’re too kind, General Katrijanov.” He turns to the man he’d called Adrian before, and the ice in my veins solidifies. Adrian Katrijanov. General Adrian Katrijanov. King Erina’s general and the youngest general in Tavrasian history under Erina’s father’s rule. I didn’t care much for Tavrasian politics during my time as a pirate, but some news made it out to even the remotest ports where the Wild Ray laid anchor. Adrian Katrijanov’s promotion before the late king’s death is one of them.
I’m trying to hide the thoughts clanging through my mind behind a mask of boredom and calm as one piece after the other falls into place like a tapestry-sized puzzle I am merely getting the edges of.
Apparently, I fail miserably because Katrijanov gives me a smirk. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to execute you on the spot.” He runs his fingers over the pommel of the sword at his hip. “Your punishment was always meant to be something worse than death.”
It’s not the first time I’ve heard that line. A punishment worse than death.
And it’s not the first time I crumble at the multiple ways life can be worse than death. I’m living my personal nightmare right now, even without Katrijanov’s interference. Losing Myron is bad enough for a lifetime of heartbreak.
But the Guardians must be in a horrible mood today since they paired up the traitor Crow and the man determined to punish me for both my father’s crimes and my own. Two men determined to see me suffer and both with a track record of the lengths they are willing to go to make it happen.
“Why don’t you simply tell me what will happen to me.” I hold Katrijanov’s gaze, meeting that pale stare with what I hope is more fire than I feel. Anything is better than being locked away for a year again without knowing what fate awaits me.
“That, dear Wolayna,” Ephegos cuts in before the general can open his mouth to answer, “is not for today. For today, our task is done.” The last words are for Katrijanov, and the man gives a brief nod, snapping his heels together as he turns on the spot, marching for the door.
On the threshold, he pauses, glancing at me over his shoulder. “Don’t die anytime soon, Wolayna. We have great plans for you.”