Chapter Fifteen
Legend
“You fucking what?” I snap at Creed, glaring at him from across the table. “Come again, because I’m not sure I heard you properly.”
I need him to repeat the words because what the fuck does he mean he put her in Crowsnest?
Creed shrugs, biting into his bone of meat. “What?” He pauses, sucking fat from his finger and gesturing around the table to all of us. “Would Arabella rather you two be sleeping down the hall from your first mate?”
My eyes bulge, a shiver rolling down my spine.
“What the fuck, Creed?” I want to scream some more, demand he cower and correct himself, take the bone from his hand and beat it across his face until that smug expression disappears with it.
But it’s the damn look in his eyes that gives me pause.
“Say some shit like that again and see what happens.”
“My bad.” His blue eyes hold mine, searching. “Guess I didn’t think the joke would trigger you so much. Wonder why that might be.”
“I’m not triggered.”
“You sound kind of triggered,” Sinner pipes up.
“No one asked you,” I dismiss, keeping my attention on Creed.
Sure, the place is big enough to house a fucking small village, but I’m not stupid enough to pretend that them both being under the same roof isn’t reckless.
Especially since Haide has somehow managed to win over the majority of Rathe with her flood saving.
That still doesn’t tell me what I want to know, though.
“Why Crowsnest?”
“Man.” Sinner takes a swig of his drink. “I haven’t been back there in years.”
Since around the time Villaina, aka London, went full dark, no doubt.
Creed doesn’t answer, and my nails scrape against the table. “Tell me.”
“First tell me, are you mad that I moved her without your permission, or are you mad her scent is no longer right under your nose?” he asks, tone flat.
“Fuck you,” I seethe, feeling a strange heat rise along my cheeks. I spin away from him before he can call me out.
“Knight.” I set my glass down harder than I mean to. “What are we doing about Haide?”
Knight reaches for the bread at the center of the table, tearing a piece off and chewing in a manner so slow it could only be purposeful.
London laughs from the far end of the room, and Knight’s eyes cut toward where she and Silver are leaning over an old scroll.
He waits. Watches her turn back to the scroll before he shifts in his chair, leaning toward me with his forearms on the table.
“Why?” He asks through gritted teeth. “She bother you that much?”
Fucking brothers. “She’s an exile on royal grounds, with pet dragons the size of fucking war barges camped outside our walls. That is a problem, Knight. Not a feeling.”
He leans back, something unreadable settling across his face. He doesn’t look convinced. He doesn’t look anything, really, which is somehow worse. “She saved the academy.”
“She also broke out of a holding chamber and made Arabella look like foolish in front of the full court.”
Knight’s lip twitches like his drink has soured. “Arabella managed that herself.”
I don’t have a clean answer for that, so I don’t give him one. I drag a hand down my jaw instead, fresh stubble catching rough against my palm. The ache is back. Dull and low, sitting behind my sternum.
“Haide is temperamental.”
“Then she’ll fit right in,” Creed answers.
That’s it. My hands slam down onto the table as I stand.
“What the fuck is this?” I rage. “Fit in? She is a fucking exile! She is breaking decree just by being here and let’s not forget you guys are the ones who helped me see that!” I snap back. “Every second she’s inside these walls, we’re playing with fucking fire—literally. Something is off here.”
“She’s inside you.” Knight’s words are not a question, and my brows snap together.
The ache behind my ribs deepens, spreading outward in a slow crawl that I can’t reason away no matter how many practical concerns I stack on top of it.
The mask. The garden. The way the rot stopped when I touched the ground where it melted.
I’ve been filing each of those things away in some locked room in the back of my mind, and the room is getting full.
Knight’s still watching me.
“She’s not.” The lie is like acid on my tongue. “The problem is we have no fucking clue why that menace came back—”
Everything becomes crystal clear.
The reason she came back.
Why Creed put her as far from me as he could while still keeping her close.
It takes every ounce of willpower not to throw myself across the table to strangle him.
“You let him out.”
Creed doesn’t deny it.
“What? Who?” Sinner perks up.
He gave her to him.
She fucking came here for him.
What’s to stop her from leaving, now that she got what she wants? She could disappear, never to be found or seen or—
Stop! You don’t fucking care. You want her gone. She’s nothing.
So why does it feel like my pulse is going to tear through my skin? Why is my throat on fire and my chest suddenly hollow and raw?
Because she’s everything.
Fuck!
“Something is happening here,” Creed warns. “The Tideward Academy attack was only the beginning. Vicente warned us of the continued cracks in the wards. You all feel it just as I do.”
“What does that have to do with what you did?”
“Recent events prove we might need her help whether you like to admit it or not, and the only way she’s giving it is if we give her something in return. So I gave her back her friend.”
Sinner whistles and Knight sighs.
“Haide didn’t have fucking friends.” My eyes narrow, thinking back to what she’d told me about her life. “What’s his name?”
“Zevryn.”
I grit my teeth. “That ain’t no fucking friend. That’s her ex fuck-toy.”
“Whoops…” Creed shrugs into his drink. “Probably not her ex anything now.”
I flip the fucking table and take off. Creed’s chuckle nearly brings me to a halt but I push forward. He just baited the monster and the monster came in for that bite.
“Where are you going?” Knight calls after me, but even his tone is full of mockery.
Like he already knows.
How could he, when I don’t?
All I know is my legs are moving, carrying me through the arched corridor that connects the dining hall to the east wing.
I’m not thinking about why. I’m not thinking about the ache that’s been gnawing a hole through my chest since dinner started.
I’m not thinking about the way Creed said Zevryn like the name was supposed to mean nothing and didn’t land in my gut like a fist wrapped in rusted iron.
Her fuck-toy is out. Walking around. Breathing the same air she’s breathing.
My boots hit marble. The corridor opens into the grand foyer, and the shift in atmosphere is immediate.
Gold leaf climbs the walls in intricate patterns that catch the low firelight, threading through veins of deep purple stone.
Black iron chandeliers hang from vaulted ceilings so high the flames at their tips look like some part of a fucked up sphere.
This room was built to make people feel small.
To remind them whose palace they were standing in.
It doesn’t work on me. I grew up here. I know every crack in the foundation, every secret passage behind the panels, every stain the cleaners couldn’t scrub from the stone after Father’s more creative council meetings. These walls sweat my fucking essence.
I’m halfway across the foyer when the main doors groan open, and a trickle of unease creeps down my spine.
“Legend.” Breathless, Arabella sweeps through them in a rush of white silk and blond hair, her cheeks flushed. Her hand catches my arm. “Wait.”
I stop. The ache dims. It always dims when she’s close.
“I need to head out.”
“Where?” she asks, her eyes searching mine. Not much to find in here. Give up now.
Nowhere I can explain. Nowhere that makes sense. I just need to move, need to find something. Someone. The pull is low and insistent, like a rope tied around my spine, tugging me toward the west gates. Toward Crowsnest. Because I want to fucking kill her, right?
Arabella’s grip tightens. “He’s here.”
I blink. “Who?”
Her smile breaks wide, genuine in a way that catches me off guard because Arabella doesn’t smile like that. She smiles like a diplomat. She smiles like a wounded pet—a snake, probably right before it sheds its skin.
Wait. What?
“My brother.” She pulls at my arm, turning me toward the entrance. “My twin. He’s here to see me!”
“Twin?” My head jerks back. How did I not know she had a twin?
Do I know anything about this girl at all?
The door widens and the “twin” steps through, mouth in a frown. Tall, and he shares Arabella’s blond hair, but his eyes—guarded and red—are almost chilling. “King Legend.” He offers a small bow, quickly turning toward my mate. “This isn’t a happy visit, sister. Mother and Father are dead.”
…
Haide
Crowsnest is something else.
I drag my fingers along the wall as I move through the space. Warm bark gives way to cool marble, then back again. The floor is the same. Uneven planks of dark wood interrupted by slabs of white stone, smoothed down by time.
A small kitchen is tucked into a bend of the trunk where two massive roots create a natural alcove.
Iron pots hang from hooks driven straight into the bark.
A basin carved from a single piece of stone sits beneath a copper tap that drips once, twice, then stops.
Shelves hold mismatched cups and plates, all of them chipped.
A major contrast to the palace of fucking uptight royalness.
A bathroom hides behind a door that catches as I pull it open. Claw-foot tub. No curtain. A mirror with a crack running diagonally through the glass that splits my reflection into two uneven halves.
One bed.
It sits against the far wall where the tree’s trunk curves inward, creating a shallow alcove that feels almost protective. A simple iron flame draped in linen that smells of flowers not planted in this lifetime, with deep burgundy pillows. It’s all comfort.
One bed. Two of us.
“Floor’s fine.” Zev doesn’t even look up from where he’s already sprawled across the rug, arms behind his head, boots still on. “Slept on worse.”
He has. We both have. Exile doesn’t exactly hand out feather mattresses.
“You sure?”
“Haide.” He cracks one eye open. “If I crawl in that bed, I’m asking the Nightkin to use your own hands to kill me. And I’m pretty sure when you die in Rathe, you’re just fucking dead.”
Fair.
“And smart.”
I smirk at the Nightkin’s grumpy tone and fall onto the bed, staring at the strange lights flickering above.
“Aha.” Zev sits up; his attention snaps to the window where a vine has crept through the gap between frame and bark.
Thick leaves, dark green, and nestled between them sit fat, resinous buds.
“That’s what that pipe I saw was for.” He’s already pulling one free, rolling it between his fingers and sniffing it.
“Zev, don’t.”
“Too late.” He goes and grabs said pipe, not hesitating to get fucked up when the opportunity presents itself. “I get let out of a royal prison because my best friend is a baddie. We’re celebrating.”
I chuckle, the sound growing when the first inhale makes his eyes water. Then comes the coughing. The third inhale finally drags a laugh out of him.
“Oh, that’s filthy.” He passes it to me, eyes already glazing. “Try it.”
It hits the back of my throat like warm smoke and cold water at the same time, contradictions dissolving into something that loosens every muscle in my shoulders. My head goes light. The colored lights on the walls seem to breathe slower, or maybe I’m breathing slower. Hard to tell.
“This is…” I start, then lose the sentence somewhere between my brain and my mouth.
Zev howls with laughter, rolling onto his side. “Your face. Your fucking face right now.”
“Shut up.”
“You look like a baby deer on ice.”
“I will end you.”
He laughs harder. I laugh, too, and it surprises me.
The sound feels foreign in my chest, like a hinge that hasn’t been oiled in months.
But it comes, and it keeps coming. Soon, we’re both on the floor because the bed feels too far away and the rug is soft enough.
The lights are doing something spectacular on the ceiling that neither of us can describe, but both of us find it deeply, unreasonably funny.
But slowly the laughter dies and I feel Zev’s eyes on me.
“Are you okay?”
My lips purse.
“Luda, come on, talk to me.”
Sighing, I shrug against the floor. “Define okay?”
“Was it hard to see him?”
The ache in my chest is swift and deep. Zev’s hand is suddenly over mine, lacing our fingers together.
“I didn’t think it would be.” So, yes. It was.
“And it was worse when you saw her?”
My eyes close and I breathe deep, my lungs expanding with each second.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispers. “I would have convinced the Nightkin to let us plan your return together. Differently.”
“What does that mean?”
“You haven’t figured it out yet?” I look over and he continues, a soft hook to the corner of his lips.
“We both knew you’d kill me eventually. It was your favorite pastime, after all.
” A quiet laugh escapes me, resulting in one of his own as he shrugs.
“He knew, just like I did, that even if you didn’t want to come back for that dumbass royal, you would come for me. ”
I want to be mad, but frankly that was a good plan. “Well played, you two.”
“Thank you, Hellpet.” I smile against my better judgment, because while his words are condescending, the beast purred them through my mind.
Clearing my throat, I look up at the weird lights again, not wanting to do this mushy stuff.
“I’m going to kill her.”
The declaration silences them both as Zev’s fingers tighten around my own.
They already know.
I will kill her.
The real worry is, can I control myself enough not to kill him, too?