Chapter 23 GODDESS OF DEATH
Chapter twenty-three
GODDESS OF DEATH
Nuala
“Where is your lover? The dryad prince,” the Chancellor clarified with feigned concern and a glance at Ornella.
Aodhan. She was talking about Aodhan. I had meant to ask Rian about him after the way he dealt with the dryad prisoners.
But I’d become too distracted by Geera and the prospect of this party.
It had been very obvious from the brutal way he took the men apart, with his pain exposed like a raw wound, that he had cared greatly for Aodhan.
But a lover? That possibility hadn’t occurred to me since I’d had no idea men could take other men as lovers.
“Aodhan is gone,” said Rian. He sounded unaffected, as if the dryad had simply moved away, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was more complicated than that. Aodhan was dead, probably killed by the dryads, but Rian did not want any of these fey to know that.
“Oh, I am sorry to hear that!” the Chancellor lamented while the ghostly visage of her true face smirked at him.
“Aodhan was always such a treat whenever you deigned to bring him here. Even if you were too greedy to allow us anything more than to watch you with him,” she added.
Her tongue slid over her teeth as she grinned licentiously, and my cheeks flushed in a confusing medley of arousal and anger at her insinuation.
“But I did not know it was possible for you to simply leave the Wild Hunt.”
“There is much you do not know,” Rian assured her with a hint of sharpness in his tone to let her know that he would not indulge her questions on the subject further.
The Chancellor pouted at him in a way that was meant to seem like playful chagrin, but I could see the truth of her mounting frustration behind her facade.
“Well, what of your gorgeous cousin? That dark-haired male with the beautiful purple eyes,” she crooned.
Ornella stiffened on Rian’s other side, her ears pinning back as she levelled a deadly glare on the Chancellor who did not seem to notice.
“Sage has rarely attended these events,” Rian replied, sounding confused when I could sense he was not.
“And I suggest you put Sage out of your vile thoughts. Before I decide to take away your ability to think at all,” Ornella added with such barely contained contempt that it made the Chancellor flinch.
“Ornella is our first female rider. And Sage’s anam,” Rian explained calmly when Aujaara looked at him as if she were scandalized by the dryad.
“So she is a new rider?” the Chancellor verified with a forced astonishment, but her true face appeared to panic. “She must have replaced Aodhan?”
“As I said, there is much you do not know about us,” Rian stated evasively, which made her true self scowl in an absolute rage of frustration.
A murmur from the crowd drew my eyes toward them, and I saw the way they eyed Ornella in a dangerous mix of envy and desire and resentment.
“True mates are so wonderfully rare,” the Chancellor said once she recovered from her shock at the revelation of a new rider. “Although I am surprised that yours would allow you to come here when he did not wish to join us. What a spectacle the two of you might have—”
I heard Rian kiss his teeth and pull me closer to him a second before something exploded behind the Chancellor. Everyone screamed and covered their heads as debris hit the ceiling and then broken rafters and chandeliers began clattering to the floor.
I peered around Rian and saw that the marble fountain in the middle of the room had been torn apart, and chunks of it were embedded in the walls. Rian had shielded me from being hurt, but I still felt water splatter on my cheek in a hot gust that smelled of summer rainstorms.
It smelled of a dryad’s rage.
“My mate is not a spectacle for your consumption,” Ornella snarled in fury, and everyone’s attention snapped back to her as she stepped away from Rian.
She loomed over the Chancellor who was still ducking from the blast. But she shrank even further away from the dryad when Ornella’s fingers lengthened into deadly claws.
The Chancellor’s fearful eyes flew up to Rian behind the dryad as if hoping he would restrain his furious rider. But he merely brushed marble dust off his vest.
“This is an outrage!” shouted a man from the crowd, and there were murmurs of agreement.
“The outrage is your needling,” Rian spoke up firmly, raising his head to pin Aujaara with an unforgiving stare.
“Did you truly think I would not see through such poorly disguised attempts to account for the whereabouts of all my riders? I will save you from further embarrassment and simply tell you that the Wild Hunt is whole and well. My riders and my army are still at my disposal to take control of this city if we deem it necessary.”
There was a horrified silence, and I had the sense that he had never threatened them quite so bluntly before.
A commotion drew our attention as fey screamed and ran from walls of shadows that suddenly began eclipsing all the doorways to block the exits. Then Ciaran appeared, walking out of the darkness that whipped around him like a tempest as he dragged a pleading man behind him.
“This one attempted to flee the moment you arrived,” said the Shadow Walker. He spoke with a deadly softness, but his words were heard by all in the silent room.
“Almost as if he needed to go and report our arrival?” Ornella suggested with a wicked grin.
“What does that mean? Rian, we aren’t your enemy!” cried the Chancellor, her voice pitching high in alarm.
She was ignored as Ciaran tossed his prisoner to the floor at my feet and then turned to face the crowd with his arms crossed imposingly over his chest.
The fey on the ground immediately attempted to get up and run from me, but then he tripped over his own feet as they were bound in vines.
He made a shriek of terror that was cut off abruptly when his entire body was consumed by the foliage that yanked him to his knees before me.
Every time he tried to burn away her vines with his fire, Ornella conjured a torrent of water that pounded over him so hard it nearly crushed him.
Until he was too exhausted and out of breath to keep fighting against her.
I stepped toward him, drawn by my curiosity for what secrets he might reveal for my Sight, but Rian cut in front of me to stand menacingly over the bound fey.
He did not speak as he extended a hand and allowed a tendril of his inky power to unfurl.
It looked like a guillotine blade was hanging over the trembling man’s head.
The crowd had started to whisper in awe of Ornella’s strength and power, but another horrified hush fell over the room at the sight of Rian using his.
And from the way they all shifted back, I was sure he had never allowed any of them to see it before.
Until that moment, it had been more of a myth than anything else.
“You will answer Nuala’s questions, and you will not attempt to harm her. If you do, I will rip you apart so slowly that these people will be hearing your screams in their nightmares for a century. Do you understand?”
Rian did not need to speak harshly or with aggression. The calm certainty in his voice was more than enough to make the man nod quickly.
I stepped up to begin interrogating the potential spy, but Chancellor Aujaara seemed to regain her courage.
“You have no authority here to question our subjects!” she tried to object.
She stepped forward as if she meant to try and reason with Rian, but she stopped and her nostrils flared as her head whipped toward me.
“She is a witch!” she hissed in hateful accusation before she looked at Rian in utter horror. “You keep company with witches?”
I glanced back at Rian in curiosity for how he would react to her accusation, but he seemed unbothered as he met my eyes. There was a softness in his expression that made my heart start to pound harder.
“Her name is Nuala,” he said fondly before his eyes hardened on Aujaara again. “She is a witch. And a Seer.”
Chancellor Aujaara hesitated, her face going quite pale as her attention swung back toward me.
“A Seer,” she breathed, that true face of hers whipping back and forth with her internal panic.
“Perhaps you would prefer I questioned you instead of your civilians?” I suggested knowingly, but she did not deign to reply to me. She turned her pleading eyes back toward Rian who ignored her.
“Proceed,” he directed me gently, so I returned my full attention to the captive fey.
He whimpered as I reached for him, but he could not move away thanks to Ornella’s vines as I cupped his face.
I felt my eyes roll and heard the room echoing with gasps when my eyes went white.
The heavy shroud of their pretty facades dimmed further so I could better see and hear their truths buzzing behind feigned expressions and practiced words.
“Your name?” I asked, my voice sounding far away as if my body were in another realm altogether.
“Jakl,” the fey murmured. Truth.
“Were you born in Mionlach?”
“I was,” he replied. Truth.
“Do you have family in the city?”
“N-no,” he said, but I could see the face of someone dancing through the mist around him. Taunting him.
“Lie,” I hissed, and he made a gasping sound as my nails dug into his cheeks.
“I-I… I suppose I have a half brother!”
“Do not lie to me, Jakl Taveem. I will know.”
“S-sorry! It was an accident,” he tried to reassure me, but I knew that was also very untrue.
Testing. Testing. Testing.
“Have you spoken to any one from the Vale?” I asked and heard the faraway crowd begin to whisper again.
“N-no… I mean… Y-yes,” he admitted, having learned better than to lie to me.
“And did they wish to know about Rian?”
His pause was much longer this time, and I could feel him resisting me more. Trying to pull away from me.
“Yes,” he panted finally.
“Tell me what they wanted to know.”
“Th-they… wanted to k-know if he came to the party. That is all!” he swore.