Chapter 17
TELL ME YOUR NAME
FELíNE SLUMPED AGAINST THE REAR wall of her cell and picked at a length of straw. The floor was littered with remnants of the once-square bale that had long since devolved into a lumpy pile in the far corner. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than cold stone or packed dirt.
Not that she had any personal experience with imprisonment.
Felíne tossed the piece of straw into its brethren. Something shifted beneath the pile. Moments later, a pink nose poked through, twitching furiously. A set of beady black eyes and a plump gray body followed. Felíne shrieked, scrambling back, kicking hay across the enclosure.
The rodent scurried through the narrow slip between iron bars, squeaking in alarm, and disappeared down the corridor.
She pressed a palm to her chest and wedged herself into the far corner, breathing heavily. “Cursed rats. Why the gods chose to create such loathsome beasts…”
“Thank the gods they did.”
Felíne peered toward her stoic captor, his considerable bulk perched upon an overturned crate just outside her cell. “And why, pray tell, would you maintain such a contemptible sentiment?”
“Perspective shifts pretty quick when you’re trapped and starving. I owe my life to the presence of those loathsome beasts, as you call them.”
Felíne crossed her arms, eyeing the hay pile with dogged disdain. She didn’t want to think about having to eat disease-ridden rodents to survive. Gods, was that what her current interment would come to? Surely not. Yet now the question demanded posing. “How long do you plan to keep me here?”
Rusty gray eyes flicked her way. “As long as it takes for the Conclave to arrive.”
“And this Conclave, they make your laws? Function as Meress’s governing body?”
The guard nodded.
“How many members?”
“Five.”
Five. She had to convince five strangers of her innocence.
Not just strangers. Cozened. How the hell was she going to do that?
Felíne had been wracking her brain for a plausible excuse for why she was ignorant of the code to Stillwater Wood and thus far had come up empty-handed.
She hadn’t expected to be apprehended. Penn made it sound so easy to reach Fahren’s Pass.
But she hadn’t accounted for the damned bear, nor its pursuit pushing her heedlessly into the path of a sentry.
“May I ask your name?”
The guard turned toward her once more, grave as a plague. “Beaumont Stonehaugh.”
Felíne blinked. “Goodness.”
He grunted.
“What do your friends call you?”
“Beaumont Stonehaugh.”
Felíne edged closer to the bars. “That is positively excessive.” Then again, Felíne Lochlan Faelstrom wasn’t any better.
Beaumont shrugged broad shoulders. “That is my name.”
“What about Beau?”
“We had a watch guard named Beau,” the man mused. “He liked to cheat at stones. Liked to cheat at most things, actually.”
“Where is he now?”
Beaumont scratched at the thick tuft of his beard. “Dead.”
Felíne huffed. “Well, that won’t do. How about Monty?”
Beaumont faced forward. Another grunt was his only response.
How about ‘Stony’? she thought, miffed.
Minutes ticked by in silence. The cell where Stonehaugh had taken her was located in some kind of encampment.
Unlike Meress’s ethereal fusion with the surrounding forest, the buildings here occupied a sizable clearing enclosed by a towering wooden perimeter wall.
When Beaumont escorted her through the gate, she’d glimpsed a collection of cabins of varying sizes, their green metal roofs glinting in the sunlight.
Training rings dotted the expanse, clustered with watch members practicing sparring and hand-to-hand combat.
Deeper into the encampment, another inner wall—maybe twelve feet in height—encircled some manner of pit.
Felíne hadn’t gotten close enough to see within, but it looked wide enough to house a hundred shurii in second form.
The prisoners’ cells stood on one edge of the depot, the cramped enclosures forming a line parallel to the perimeter wall.
Several interconnected rooms, cold stone on three sides, spanned the block, their iron-barred entrances facing toward the center of the camp.
Not that they offered much view. The cells, covered by a sloping metal roof that extended in an overhang, were situated behind a lone L-shaped wall that blocked the camp from sight.
Beaumont Stonehaugh reclined against that wall, just outside her cell door. He stared down the row, monitoring the single accessible opening that existed somewhere to Felíne’s left, out of view. Hers was the last cell. She was the only prisoner.
“What happens when the Conclave arrives?” she asked.
“Inquiry.”
His tone made Felíne think it was more than a series of questions. “What happens during an inquiry?”
Gods, if someone walked in with a scale and stones, she’d scream. She’d survived Trade Master Grisham’s weighing thanks to Adder’s timely intervention. But Adder and Ophelia might as well be on the other side of Ilistaar. She had precious few allies here in the belly of Cozened territory.
Beaumont shifted on his crate. “You’ll be given a trial. Depending on—”
Beaumont abruptly lumbered to his feet. Whatever he’d been about to explain remained unspoken, hanging in the air like an omen.
Felíne pushed to her feet and gripped the bars. “Depending? Depending on what?”
But Beaumont gave no indication that he’d heard her. “Battle Master Kaine,” he said, folding at the waist.
Felíne cranked her head to the left, breath catching. Her knuckles paled where they fisted the bars.
Heavy footfalls trod the short hallway leading toward her cell, their beats replacing those of Felíne’s frozen heart. A moment later, Kal stepped into view.
Her heart soared at the sight of him. Then it dipped. He looked awful.
Kal wore the same clothes he’d been in when he left Felíne at his cabin the previous day, but his countenance had changed.
Dark circles rimmed the undersides of bloodshot eyes.
Tense lines carved hollows between his brows and bracketed his mouth.
Thick stubble shadowed a clenched jaw. He looked haggard. Exhausted. Stressed.
Felíne’s chest squeezed. She had the urge to reach out and fold herself around him, which was foolish. She was likely to blame for his current state.
“Leave us,” Kal said gruffly to Beaumont.
The guard dipped his head once and left.
Finally, Kal rested his heavy gaze on her.
Felíne’s resolve crumpled. “Kal…”
“Tell me they’re wrong, Kitty,” he said, deep voice strained. “Tell me you are who you say you are.”
She couldn’t breathe. A fissure of heartache cracked through her. Felíne reached an arm through the bars and found Kal’s hand. It was rough and warm, hanging limp at his side.
Kal stood unmoving, fighting some internal battle. A tense moment passed, then he squeezed her back and stepped closer. His other hand found the back of her neck, and he dipped his forehead toward hers.
“Please,” he whispered to her, fathomless eyes pleading.
Abject misery shimmered in her own. “Kal…”
“Tell me your name, Kitty.” His lips feathered over her hairline, the bridge of her nose. “That’s all you have to do.”
Felíne foundered. The pressure behind her sternum built to an unbearable degree.
“Tell me your name.” It was no longer a plea. It was a demand.
“Kal, I—”
He straightened suddenly, stepping away from the bars. His black eyes were wide open, but they were shuttering. He was closing himself off. The foot of distance between them felt like the gaping mouth of a boundless canyon.
Movement to the left drew Felíne’s attention.
She turned reluctantly away from Kal and met hostile blue eyes that glared at her from beneath a slash of blond brows.
The man was shorter than Kal and possessed a slighter build.
Yet the aggression rolling off his lean body saturated the space he occupied, making him appear larger than he actually was.
She stepped back on instinct, suddenly grateful for the iron bars of her cage and the padlocked door.
There was only one male she could think of who would harbor such blatant hatred for her: Rask Harless.
Rask stalked toward the door, icy glare traveling the length of her body. Felíne hugged herself. She was still wearing the thick sweater she’d taken from Kal’s house, yet he made her feel stripped bare.
“Is this the woman you took from Asteros?” he asked Kal, voice laced with disgust.
Kal’s inky eyes were on her, but the warmth Felíne had come to find within them was bleeding out. His dark sea churned with the swell of a winter storm. A chill shuddered through her.
“Yes,” Kal replied tightly.
Rask ripped his hateful attention away from her, pivoting toward his friend. “That is not Railah,” he snarled, words damning her. “That’s not my sister.”
And just like that, the obsidian sea iced over.
Rask stalked out, leaving Felíne alone with Kal once more.
Neither of them moved. Neither breathed.
Finally, a muscle spasmed in Kal’s jaw. His large hands fisted at his sides. If he were wound any tighter, he would snap.
“Kal,” she began.
The eyes of a stranger skewered her straight through the meat of her heart. Felíne knew this would happen. Had been dreading this inevitable moment. But the reality of it was worse than she could have anticipated. The pain greater than she could have ever prepared for.
“Tell me your name.”
“Kal—”
“TELL ME YOUR NAME!”
Felíne flinched away from him. Away from the only man with whom she felt truly safe. The only man whose affection she’d ever craved.
The only man…she had ever loved.
Fear, deeper than Felíne had ever known, burrowed into the hole he carved into her chest.
No, she thought, clarity striking like lightning. She’d carved that hole all on her own. This damage was self-inflicted.
Kal saw her alarm and made a visible effort to collect himself. A tremor started in his right hand and worked its way up his arm.
“Are you a Fate?”
“No,” she whispered.
A muscle feathered along his temple. “A spy?”
“No.”
Kal eyed her the way one might watch a venomous serpent. “Yet Asteros wants you back. The butcher king sent his hunters to retrieve you.”
Felíne did not answer. What could she say? He’d already pegged her as a liar. She could see the disbelief anchor itself into his posture, his expression. And every bit of it was justified.
“Tell me your name,” Kal bit out a final time. “Tell me who you are.”
Felíne’s misery was absolute upon witnessing his distrust. He wouldn’t believe her even if she told him. And if he did? Felíne searched his gaze. She did not find an ally there. Only anger. Her safe harbor had been drowned beneath an ocean of betrayal.
Tears welled. “I can’t.”
“Then I cannot help you,” Kal said, face blank, voice dead.
He turned and walked away without so much as a backward glance, the sound of his retreating steps as terminal as a sealing tomb.