Chapter 43
Chapter
Forty-Three
HAVEN
At the mention of my mother’s name, their gorgeous faces shuttered, and the tendril of connection—of trust—I’d felt toward Zane withered.
Secrets. They were keeping secrets.
“How did your mother die?” Zane took a seat on the log next to me, his voice careful.
I ignored the scent of fresh-brewed tea and the sharp tang of his sweat and shifted away from him. “The guard took her. She died at the front.”
Remy crossed his arms, his tone skeptical. “Are you sure about that?”
“Grandmother mourned her for nearly twenty-five years. If my mother were alive, she would’ve gotten word to her.”
Zane leaned forward slightly. “What if Hope contacting Valera might have put your grandmother in danger?”
My fingers trembled, and it had nothing to do with the weather. “How do you know my grandmother’s name?”
Remy looked down at me and smirked. “We can’t tell you.”
I longed to knock the smug smile off his handsome face. Instead, I shoved my hands in my pockets and said, “Clearly, you can.”
Zane reached for my arm. “It’s not our story to tell.”
I stood, avoiding his touch. “You know my grandmother’s first name, you obviously know something about my mother’s death, and you claim it’s not your story to tell? Maybe that’s true, but my mother’s death is part of my story.”
“You think we owe you an explanation?” Remy loomed over me. He was too tall, and too well muscled, and too snarly.
And I was too angry to answer him. Instead, I turned and walked toward the break in the trees that had led me here.
“Where are you going?” Remy made a grab for my arm, which I evaded.
“You think I owe you an explanation?” I was all too happy to throw his words back at him.
“Please, Haven.” The plea in Zane’s deep voice nearly stopped me. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll take my chances in Legacia with the devils I know.” The trees were only a few yards away. Then what? I’d wander around the forest till spring? I was too angry to care.
“Good luck finding your way.” Remy took being an asshole to a whole new level.
I glanced over my shoulder. Remy’s lips were curled in a sneer.
Zane held his hands out, pleading. “You can’t go.”
“Am I a prisoner?”
“No. No. Of course not.” Zane spread his fingers wide, showing me he wasn’t a threat. “The woods aren’t safe—”
Remy threw up his hands in exasperation. “Your mother is alive.”
His words didn’t make sense. Alive? My mother was alive? The ground seemed to shift beneath me, and I gripped the log to keep from swaying. Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years of believing she was dead, of grieving a woman who was … what? Living somewhere else? Choosing not to come home?
As a little girl, I’d longed for a woman with a gentle voice to read my bedtime stories.
I’d ached for someone who’d comfort me when a nightmare woke me in the middle of the night.
I’d have traded anything for loving hands to smooth the snarls in my hair before plaiting the strands into a neat braid.
“It’s true.” Zane’s voice was soft, almost gentle. “Hope Ford is alive.”
A million emotions hit me at once. Relief. Joy. Hurt. Anger. So. Much. Anger. She’d abandoned me. “How could she …” I whispered. “How could she leave us like that?”
Remy rolled his eyes. “There are things in this world more important than you.”
His words were the last straw. Something inside me snapped. I’d spent weeks being told I was worthless, expendable, less than human. From Drake, from Carron, from men who saw me as nothing more than a tool to be used and discarded. I was done.
Magic sparked at my fingertips, fueled by my anger.
For a heartbeat, I hesitated. I could be the bigger person and walk away.
But where was the fun in that? I could let his cruelty slide.
But why should I? Letting men walk all over me had gotten me nothing but scars on my back.
The magic raced from my fingers before I consciously decided to release it, hitting Remy squarely in his chest.
His body flew backward and hit a tree. Hard enough to shake every flake of snow from its branches. And every single particle of white landed on top of him. I made sure of it.
“What the fucking hell?” The snow muffled Remy’s words, but he sounded incredulous, like he couldn’t believe I’d so easily bested him.
Zane chuckled. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
Something rustled in the trees behind us, and Zane tensed, reaching for his axe.
Remy dug his way out of the snowbank. A vein bulged in his forehead, and a dull red suffused his neck and furious face. “You dare?”
I planted my hands on my hips and glared at him. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but what have I ever done to you?” I’d been in the clearing for less than an hour and had done nothing to earn Remy’s ire. Well, until the tree. “What is your problem?”
His lips peeled away from his teeth, and he snarled.
If I weren’t incandescent with anger, I might have found him scary.
Instead, I stepped forward and jabbed a finger into his chest. “In the past few weeks, I’ve been forcibly taken from my home, assaulted, whipped, and poisoned.
I’ve fought multiple mythical creatures and been attacked by rebels.
An innkeeper sold tickets to rape me to cover the guards’ room and board.
Now I found out the mother I thought was dead simply abandoned me.
I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with your hysterics.
” I didn’t mention Gladys or the visions.
Some things were just too traumatic to talk about.
Besides, there was no possible way those visions could be real, because hell would freeze over before I let Remy bury his face between my legs.
“An innkeeper sold you?” Zane’s voice was cold enough to make me shiver. “Did anyone hurt you?”
A bird gave a startled cry and took flight, and Zane shifted his gaze from me to the woods.
“No one touched me,” I told him. “I’m not helpless.”
Remy sneered. “No. You’re a whiner.”
The man was insufferable. “Again, what is your probl—” My breath caught, and I raised my hands, sending a spiral of magic at a monster.
Dingy white scales covered a sinewy humanoid body.
Its claws were long. Its fangs were longer.
Its snarling mouth revealed a forked tongue.
And the fiendish gleam in its crimson eyes was the stuff of nightmares.
My magic hit its shoulder, and the thing screeched in fury before crashing to the ground, hard enough to shake the clearing.
Remy spun around, drawing his sword. “Nian!”
I hoped he’d add that nians were misunderstood creatures, as docile as baby bunnies, but he didn’t. Instead, with a sweeping stroke of his sword, Remy cut off the nian’s head.
Black blood sprayed across the snow.
I retreated a step—not just to avoid the blood. I retreated because I was tired of death, which was too bad, because Gladys had promised my future was full of it, with ample sides of pain and suffering.
“Haven, can you ride?” Zane’s voice was laced with urgency.
It took effort to drag my horrified gaze away from the dead nian. When I did, I found Zane’s face tightened with worry.
“Can you ride?” Zane had lifted his axe to his shoulder. The softness I’d seen in him was gone, replaced by a steely resolve I found comforting.
I nodded slowly, as if my head was too heavy for my neck. “A bit.”
“We need to go. Now.” His urgency told me everything I needed to know. Nians weren’t secretly warm and fuzzy. Remy hadn’t killed the thing in a fit of pique. They were every bit as terrifying as they looked. And where there was one, there were probably more.