Текст книги "The wolf and the crown of blood"

Автор книги: Elizabeth May

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 33 страниц)

12

EVANDER

AMARA IS LATE, and I’m left with nothing to do but pace my garden and stew in my own restlessness.

I’ve never been a patient male. Waiting is an unlatched window inviting memories to come slinking out of the dark. And doesn’t that sum up the entirety of my existence these days? A former Prince of Turpori and future god-king of Scillari demoted to a wolf for the Eternal of Asteria. Waiting for orders. For permission. Like a dog.

Sit. Stay. Heel.

Unruly subordinates get put down. And liars? Liars get their tongues ripped out.

And now I have the girl Alexios wants killed in my possession. The irony would be hilarious if it weren’t so damning. When I saw Bryony Devaliant standing there in my foyer, my initial instinct wasn’t to rip her throat out. It wasn’t even rage.

It was relief. I do not feel relief over one inconsequential mortal not being dead. A hunter doesn’t hesitate when wounded prey is delivered to its den. It lunges. It devours. So why haven’t I?

You’re going soft, a voice that sounds suspiciously like my brother’s whispers. Have you forgotten what the Devaliants did to us?

I haven’t forgotten. I never will. So why is it that when I looked down into the Devaliant’s face, I didn’t think, I’m going to break her.

No, it was a traitorous whisper. Insidious.

I want to taste her again.

The east wing windows have been dark since she went in. I can’t help but picture her in my guest bedroom, touching my things. Lying down on my bed, all that silver hair stark against my black sheets. I’d smelled blood all over her cloak earlier. Some pathetic, disgusting part of me keeps thinking I should go in there and check on her.

I tell myself it’s because I don’t enjoy playing with broken toys. It’s not actual concern. I tell myself that her getting my dick hard is just a normal response to being near attractive, forbidden human pussy. I haven’t fucked a mortal in six centuries. It’s practically a novelty again.

Honestly, I tell myself a lot of things.

“I can hear you growling from here.” Amara’s voice cuts through my spiraling thoughts. “So either you’re choking on a live rodent, or I’ve stumbled on one of your brooding sessions.”

I turn as she drops out of the sky, wings spread wide. Moonlight catches on the violet sheen of her feathers as she lands on the garden path. Her eyes are more purple than blue in the darkness.

“You’re late.”

“Wow.” She flicks a feather from her shoulder. “Not even a ‘thank fuck you’re alive’ or ‘so glad you didn’t die on the way here’?”

I stalk over to her. “I’m so glad you didn’t die on the way here because then I wouldn’t get to do the honors myself for the shit you just pulled.”

“So you got my gift,” she says with a slow grin.

For a moment, I can only stare at her. The sheer audacity…

“Gift implies some consent from the recipient. What you did was risk setting off every ward in the Shroud to dump a half-dead human on my doorstep like a cat dropping a mangled bird at its master’s feet, then fly off into the sunset.” My hands curl into fists at my sides. “Do you have any idea what happens if Alexios finds her here? I’m supposed to be delivering her for a public pyre, not hosting her for tea. I had my tongue ripped out this morning over that girl.” I lean in closer. “Next time, he’ll probably make me choke on my own dick.”

“That’s pretty dramatic if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.” I rake a hand through my hair. “How did you even get her into Scillari without the Border Watch finding out?”

“Please. I may not be an Eternal, but I know my way around Alexios’ security measures. They’re easy to avoid if one knows where to look. I’d be happy to pass on a few pointers to the Watch, assuming you don’t murder the captain for incompetence first.”

I don’t bother mentioning that I’ve already made mental notes to hunt down every bastard stationed at a Shroud checkpoint and nail their balls to the palace wall as a teaching aid. That particular fantasy has been keeping me warm for the past few hours.

We’re all works in progress.

“Why did you risk it?” I demand. “You could’ve signaled me to meet you at the border if you wanted an execution.”

She glances at my tower and shrugs. “I thought you deserved the chance to take what you’re owed in private.”

She understands exactly what kind of festering hurts she’s prodding at here. Revenge and I have a long history. Like a trusty knife, it’s dulled but still hungry for blood. I just need an excuse to let it loose, and thanks to Amara, I’ve got a living, breathing symbol of every hurt and loss trussed up like a sacrifice in my home.

What a gift. What a neat, tidy box to cram all my hate into. How thoughtful.

“She came to me smelling like blood. How bad off is she?” I’m proud of how controlled I sound.

Amara hesitates, studying my face. “I counted four stab wounds. She died on the ridge before I got her heart beating again. She wasn’t going to last much longer where I found her on the Duehavn.”

Something twists sharply in my gut. I ignore it. Push it down deep where all the other inconvenient feelings go to die.

If she passed into the Void on that ridge, it would have broken the magic tying her to Alexios and the Shroud. He won’t be able to sense she’s still alive. Thank fuck for that, at least. I wouldn’t want to test how many body parts I can regenerate in one go.

“But you managed to stabilize her?” I say, dragging my focus back to Amara. “She was upright and talking when I saw her.”

“I patched her up. The divine blood polluting the Devaliant line probably did the rest.”

As if I could forget what flows in that girl’s veins. As if the reminder of her heritage isn’t a deliberate twist of the knife.

The thing in my stomach wrenches tighter. Uglier. I bury it under old hatred. Tried and true. So much safer than the alternative and infinitely more satisfying.

“Devaliants have a talent for lingering longer than they should,” I say. “I need you to bring me something for her to wear. I can’t have my usual servants at the tower while I’ve got her here, and she needs clothes.”

She blinks. “Wait. You’re going to heal her? I brought her to kill. Not to adopt as a pet.”

Oh, I’ll heal her. But not out of kindness. I want another chance to make Bryony Devaliant hurt the way I hurt. One more opportunity to break someone from that family into pieces. Immortality, combined with the horror of war, tends to breed a particular type of unhinged madness.

I still want to see her hatred when I bite into her.

“I can’t kill her when she’s likely lying in a mangled heap in my guest room. It’s unsporting.”

“That,” Amara says slowly, “sounded dangerously close to an actual feeling.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m going to stitch her up, watch her squirm and snap at me, and then I’ll make her wish I’d killed her quickly. I’ve never had a Devaliant for a toy.”

It doesn’t matter that she woke something up when I touched her. It’ll pass.

Amara looks like she wants to argue. Like she can see right through my flimsy justifications.

Then she’s stepping back, wings flaring. “Fine, whatever.” She rolls her eyes. “I’ll bring her a dress. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

OceanofPDF.com

13

BRYONY

THE DOOR OF the Wolf’s chamber thuds shut behind me. The room is lavishly appointed, with leather chairs and polished dark wood furniture, complete with bookshelves nearly reaching the vaulted ceiling. A killer’s lair dressed up as a gentleman’s sanctuary. At the far end is a four-poster bed with black silk sheets—the perfect place to lie down and die.

But I only manage three steps before my legs give out.

I crumple to the floor and curl onto my side, pulling my knees up to my chest to protect the vulnerable softness of my center. Darkness bleeds into my periphery. Breathing is excruciating.

I anchor myself in my old ritual—the raised scars I carved into my flesh, my fingertips mapping each ridge.

One jagged line. Breathe. Remember how your lungs expand and contract, how air flows in and out.

Two furrows. Feel. The carpet beneath your cheek, the chill of the floor.

Three gashes. Name. Bryony. No one can take it from you.

Four grooves. Present. You’re in Scillari.

Five scars. Agony means this is real.

I don’t know how long I lie there, counting scars and heartbeats. Hours, I think. Eventually, I register the soft snick of the door opening. Careful footfalls stalk closer.

The Wolf has returned to toy with his prey.

The footsteps halt. I sense his stare on me, as crushing and inexorable as his power. Shame scalds through me at the thought of how I must appear—curled up in a pathetic little ball, baring my teeth in a silent snarl even as furious tears burn my eyes.

I brace myself for brutality. For the bruising grip of his hands. For the bite of a blade against my throat, finishing what my uncle started.

It doesn’t come.

Instead, strong arms slip under me, scooping my limp body up and cradling me against a broad chest. His scent envelops me—citrus and evergreen.

“You should have told me how injured you were,” the Wolf says as he sets me on his bed.

I lick my cracked lips and rasp, “Find… another toy. This one’s broken.”

“Devaliant. Look at me.”

I drag my stare up to meet his. The hall light gilds his face and illuminates those amber eyes. Once, I thought the stories of his beauty were exaggerated. The reality is so much worse.

“Listen very carefully,” the Wolf says. “Can you do that for a minute?”

I nod.

“Good.” Warm fingers graze my cheek, and I can’t help but flinch. He gentles his touch but doesn’t pull away, the pad of his thumb skating over my cheekbone in an absent caress. “You’ve got two options. Option one: I use my power to knit you together, and we resume negotiating your death. Option two: I pour myself a drink and watch your demise in a disappointing conclusion. Take a guess which I’d prefer.”

Is he seriously asking me if I’d rather slowly bleed out here or let him murder me in the future? Those are my choices?

“Bastard,” I hiss.

Genuine laughter rumbles through him. “That was lacking in creativity or sting. The woman who called me pathetic can do better. What do you say? Am I healing you or letting you die?”

It’s so easy, isn’t it? To give in and live on whatever borrowed time he deigns to give me. But, on second thought, it would serve him right to be robbed of his shiny new plaything mere hours after acquiring it. I’m spiteful enough to deprive him of the joy of shattering me at his leisure.

“What if I want it to end?” I ask him.

Fury darkens his features. “You’re telling me that’s it? The Devaliant who had the spine to bargain with me for an ending on her terms is just going to quit?” He scoffs, disgusted. “Fuck me, that’s pitiful.”

I flinch as if he’s slapped me. Somehow, disappointing a god is worse than angering him.

But he’s not done. “So, is that your final answer? Please let me know if I should squander my time on shit like this or if you still want me to choke on your wrath.”

My own words flung at me as a challenge. I cut him open and demanded an end worthy of my rage, and now he wants the rest—the whole feast.

I could ask for other things. The chance to deal with Idris personally, for an opportunity to say goodbye to Theo. Things he might be willing to grant if I make it worth his while.

So I set my jaw. “Get on with it, then.”

Satisfaction flares. “There you are. I knew you wouldn’t bore me.” He reaches out and hooks a finger under my chin to tip my face up to his. “You’re the very best sort of nemesis. The kind with teeth.”

His hand drops to Amara’s belt at my waist. One sharp tug and the fabric parts, leaving me bare and exposed. Panic claws up my throat. I’ve never been naked in front of a man.

My hands lift to cover my breasts, but he bats them away with an impatient noise.

“Don’t,” he warns. “I have to assess the damage.”

My eyes slam shut. That’s almost worse, the not seeing. It amplifies everything—the hum through my body, the drag of his stare over every hurt and scar and flaw.

He carefully removes Amara’s bandages. With his other hand, his fingertips graze the puckered slash across my neck. I feel the weight of the Wolf’s gaze as it moves lower, taking in the stab wounds next—the chronicle of what I’ve endured. Of men and kings who sought to pour me into the narrow confines of sacred Anchor and oathbreaker and sacrifice, as if the whole of me could ever fit inside those tidy boxes.

“Devla svaust,” he mutters. “Even a butcher knows the value of a sharp knife and a steady hand. Only a hack takes dull steel to his work and abandons a pretty woman to bleed out on a mountain.”

His touch is gentle as he probes the gash on my ribs. I have to force down a pained moan at the fresh burst of agony.

“Red roses,” I gasp out.

He gives me a questioning look. “What?”

“When we’re… finished. The flowers in your atrium remind me of funeral roses… back home. Put them on my pyre. So you’ll remember me.”

His slow, devastating smile steals my breath.

Then he ruins it by opening his mouth.

“Don’t worry, Devaliant. When I end you, it will be a reckoning to echo through eternity. I’ll carve a monument to our mutual ruination from your bones and build you an altar worthy of the ages.”

He is an absolute lunatic.

I’m struck by the sudden, visceral certainty that this creature could swallow me whole. That he wants to. That when he’s wrung all the entertainment value he can from me, he’ll sink his teeth in and devour me.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re deranged?” I ask.

“Endlessly. I’d be concerned if they didn’t.”

The Wolf splays his hands over my abdomen, his touch intimate. Strangely reverent. There’s an unnatural heat to his skin, his power a current humming between us, suddenly sinking hooks into me like claws.

I suck in a sharp, pained hiss.

He gentles, power easing until it’s barely there. “I know it hurts. But I need contact with your body to set you to rights. As it stands, this will take multiple sessions. It won’t be pleasant, so hold your breath and think of something else. Can you manage that for me?”

I squeeze my eyes shut as I fight for composure. Then I nod curtly.

“Brave girl,” he says, so softly I almost don’t catch it.

His power unfurls again. It laps at the ragged edges of the deepest wound, building and building until my nerve endings sing, and then it plunges in, in, in, coaxing torn flesh to knit, stitching perforated organs and severed vessels. Heat suffuses my veins as the pain ebbs. I sigh as the burn of agony eases, and the warmth of his power turns strangely comforting.

His hands continue their explorations, touch sure and firm. Certain.

“You have the hands of an artist,” I murmur. “All that power in those clever fingers, and you use them to unmake instead of create.”

He hums. “Butchers and artists aren’t so different. We both understand the beauty in rearranging pieces.”

“But you’re an executioner with a healer’s power. Funny, that.”

“Life has a sense of humor. Trust me, I’ve ripped apart more bodies than I’ve put back together.” His fingers press against my ribs, checking something. “The internal bleeding’s stopped. Any more tonight, and your body will shut down. I haven’t used this power in a long time.”

“How long?”

The silence stretches between us. Then: “Since the war.”

Three simple words, and in the negative space between them, the truth he doesn’t voice—centuries of disuse. Of letting this magic wither until he had to excavate it from some dark, disused corner of himself, dredged up and dusted off for the likes of me.

Realizing he’s revealed too much, the Wolf blinks, and his jaw clenches. “You look like something I might have found broken and bleeding on a battlefield,” he continues with deliberate cruelty. “You would have fit right in with all the hopeless humans I tore into.”

My equilibrium is unraveling. Everything I’ve survived suddenly crashes over me, and it’s too much. All at once, I’m viscerally aware of my nakedness, his hands, my vulnerability, all this blood everywhere. Everything is too much and too close and too raw. The room is shrinking, black eating at the edges of my vision as my lungs constrict.

I need to not have blood on my skin. I need—

“I need to be clean,” I gasp. “I need—”

“Breathe.” His voice is crisp and commanding. “We’re going to breathe first, yeah? Nice and slow, in and out. Focus on me.”

I struggle to obey, to suck air past the pressure crushing my ribs. Gradually, the roaring static recedes to a low hum. The bands constricting my chest loosen.

“Good.” The Wolf pulls back to study my face. “I’m going to dress what’s still unhealed. Then we’ll get you in a bath.” He retrieves a box from a nearby table and draws out a length of soft fabric. “This will hold up in water,” he says as he winds it around my midsection. “I’ll remove it tomorrow when I heal the rest. Think you can manage if I help you to the tub?”

“Yes.”

He scoops me into his arms. I brace for the swell of revulsion, the animal panic. But it doesn’t come. There’s only the solid heat of him as he carries me into the bathing chamber.

Extravagant is my first impression—all cool marble and gilt fixtures. A large sunken tub dominates the space, able to accommodate his wings. Plush towels and an array of colored glass bottles line the counter.

He sets me down in a chair at the tub’s edge and spins a few taps. To my astonishment, a panel opens, and a small waterfall fills the basin. Not like the pipes back in Hellevig—a real, natural waterfall. The room quickly saturates with a lovely, citrusy scent. After a few minutes, he twists the knob to close the panel, and the flow cuts off.

I hold my breath as he helps me into the bath, and a moan catches behind my teeth as I sink in.

He moves away, collecting bottles and unfolding towels. And then, to my shock, he kneels beside the tub. Subservient, almost. He flicks a sponge into the water and reaches for me slowly enough that I could stop him if I wanted. I don’t.

“What are you doing?” I ask as he draws it across the knobs of my spine.

“You can barely sit upright. I’m helping.” His ministrations don’t falter, each swipe of the sponge hypnotic. “I’ve never met anyone who inspired this stupid impulse before. The verdict’s still out on whether I like it.”

I rest my temple against the cool lip of the tub. “Do you have a lot of impulses?”

“Can’t say I’ve ever been accused of being rational.”

Exhaustion is settling into my limbs, dragging me into the warm dark. I fight it, clinging to consciousness. There’s one thing I need to know.

“Tell me your name. Your real one,” I say, barely loud enough to be heard over the drip and plink of the water.

He goes still. Then, as if the admission is being dragged out of him: “Evander.”

“Evander,” I whisper, letting my eyes drift closed. I turn the shape of it over. Tasting the sounds. “Pretty name for a monster.”

Pretty name. For such an ugly thing.

“Monsters aren’t born.” He smooths the sponge over my neck. “We’re made. Some of us in pointless, brutal wars. Now go to sleep. I’ll dry you off and put you in bed.”

I’m weightless, drifting, surrendering to the dark. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”

“Not tonight.”

OceanofPDF.com

14

BRYONY

I WAS FIVE the first time they killed me.

The Eternal has rules about these things. Alexios says our souls can’t take the trauma of dying when we’re babies, so Devaliant children prick their fingers, the same as every other Claimed human. Just a tiny drop of blood in the temple collection channels.

Until your fifth nameday.

No one prepares you for the altar. No one is allowed to hold your hand and whisper reassurances. And every moment before and after the knife isn’t some hazy, half-formed nightmare you shake off: you’re old enough to remember. When most children are figuring out how to tie their boots, I was finding out what it feels like to die.

“It’s okay,” Theo whispered to me that day. Two years of deaths had hardened her into someone who could lie convincingly. “It’ll be okay.”

The Head Oracle didn’t even look at her when she spoke to my father. “Take her outside. She’s distracting the child.”

I can still hear Theo shouting as Father dragged her away.

Three Oracles surrounded me. One grabbed my arms and lifted me onto the altar, another locked my legs down.

And one held the blade.

I screamed when I died that first time. The Oracle with the blade slapped her palm over my mouth until I stopped making noise. When I came back from the Void, I didn’t scream again—not until Idris sliced me open on the Duehavn.

That’s the thing with trauma: it doesn’t heal like skin. It doesn’t stay buried. It nests inside you, patient as a snare, waiting to wake up. And when you’re trapped between sleep and waking, between nightmares and reality, where the world is black ice—that’s when ugly memories come slithering out of the dark. I thought that five-year-old girl died for good when the Void swallowed her. That it spat out some unrecognizable creature wearing her face.

Then I dreamed about her, and the dream went like this:

Soft morning sun on my cheeks. The aroma of freshly baked bread and sausage. I’m a little girl again, stretching awake to breakfast in bed on temple day. Before the blood. Before the blades. Before the hand over my mouth—

Shut up. Stop thrashing. Hold still.

I jerk upright, gulping air. Sun slants over the stone floor, the rugs with golden threads, the bookshelves. Not my room in Hellevig.

The Wolf’s tower.

By the window is a silver tray piled high with covered dishes. The competing scents of food hit me again, threatening to unbury the memories.

I force myself out of bed. Folded fabric sits next to the tray—a gown. The blue silk is so sheer it’s almost transparent, adorned with lace trim and pearls alongside yellow gemstones on the bodice. This isn’t a garment that lasts through multiple wears. Neither are the underthings it came with—those are the kind meant to be admired by a lover before he tears them off.

Heat floods my face, thinking of the Wolf picking out each scrap of silk. Picturing how it would cling.

How it would tear.

Theodora’s voice echoes in my mind. You need clothes, Bry. You can’t walk around in a tattered cloak with nothing underneath. Now get dressed.

So I do. I shove into the ridiculous underthings and yank the gown over my head. Of course, it fits perfectly, hugging close to my body in all the places he’d want to stare at.

I manage to stab the last tiny pearl button through its loop before the walls start closing in, before my lungs turn to stone and the room tilts and blurs, and I’m drowning in air and I can’t breathe can’t think can’t stay here another second.

I run. The corridor stretches until—there.

Windows ahead, a burst of green past the glass. I push through the doors, heaving air into my constricted lungs. In. Out. In. Out. Letting the perfume of roses fill my senses.

Finally, when I manage to return my breathing to normal, I look up. The garden spreads wild and free, nothing like Hellevig’s sharp-cut hedges. Climbing roses choke the walkways and twist around every tree trunk and branch, every crumbling statue and fountain. Beneath it all is a faint electric hum that prickles my skin—magic.

The Wolf’s magic.

For a reckless moment, I consider running. Trying to get to Theo—

Stop. My bare wrist is a mocking reminder that I’m a human illegally in Scillari and stripped of the only thing that might offer some security.

No mark. No protection. Just meat for the taking.

A snarl tears from my throat. “Fuck.”

I kneel in the middle of the roses, scrabbling my hands in the dirt. I have to grab onto something. I need to hurt something. Thorns gouge my palms as I tear at the weeds, fistful after fistful. Blood slicks my hands, vines tangle around my wrists, but I keep going. I can’t stop—

“Most people rest when they’re injured.” The Wolf’s words cut through my spiraling thoughts, equal parts amused and annoyed. “You didn’t touch your breakfast. Not hungry? Or are you too determined to rip up my garden to bother?”

I stare down at my shredded palms. “Why do you care?”

“I’m trying to decide if you’re an ungrateful brat or working to earn that execution I promised you.”

I don’t answer. “Did you need something?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. I need you to stop spattering your blood all over my roses. It upsets them.”

An incredulous laugh leaves me. He can’t be serious. But no, there’s no trace of humor in his voice.

“Keep going the way you are, and those roses will tear you apart before I do,” he adds.

Heat crawls up my neck as I realize what a mess I am. Panting like an animal, gown ripped to shreds, caked in filth and blood. Tearing up his garden as if I could unearth the rot in me if I dig deep enough.

“Look at me.” A quiet command. “At my face, not the dirt.”

Finally, I drag my gaze up to his. It’s a mistake to look at the Wolf directly. At those golden wings gleaming in the sunlight, at the dark hair falling over his brow as if I’d somehow disturbed his rest. He gives me a searching look, lingering on my hands. On my broken, muddy fingernails and the scrapes from the thorns.

“I didn’t piece this body back together just so you could damage it again,” he says, almost gently.

For a moment, the Wolf is gone, and it’s the male staring at me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost call the expression on his face concern. But I do know better. This has nothing to do with me; he’s probably worried that his toy might be too damaged to entertain him.

I shove to my feet. “Take me to Vartena. I need—there are things I have to do. People who need to pay.”

It’s as close to begging as I’ll ever get.

The Wolf tucks in his wings and studies me once more—assessing the destruction, the obvious signs of my unraveling. I hate that I’ve let him see me this weak.

“I’ll consider it,” he says. “After.”

“After what?”

“After,” he repeats slowly, “we go inside, and I finish stitching you back together without you bleeding all over my property.”

“I didn’t agree to be your prisoner,” I snap. “That wasn’t in our negotiation last night.”

“Tough shit. I’m not negotiating with you right now. You don’t even have clothes that you haven’t destroyed.”

My teeth clench. I glance down at myself again, taking in the ruin I’ve made of the gown. “I don’t want silks,” I say flatly.

His attention rakes over me. “Amara’s the one who picked out the dress. If I’d known you planned on mutilating my roses, I would have asked her to bring you something more…” He waves a hand. “Durable.”

“I’d like something practical.”

“You’re full of demands today, aren’t you? Heal me, clothe me, send me home.” He snaps his wings in irritation. “Do you dictate terms to every god generous enough not to gut you, or am I special?”

“If you want me to be your nemesis in this sick game, I have needs.”

He stares at me, head tilted. Surprised. As if I’ve caught him off guard.

I wait for him to put me in my place. To snarl that I’m nothing, that I’m only a human destroying his property with no right to make demands. That he’ll grind me under his boot until I remember what I am. What I am not.

But instead, he steps closer. “Let’s pretend I give in to this little tantrum and send you back right now like you asked. No weapons, no preparation. Not even a decent pair of shoes. Where will you go? What’s your plan?”

I glare at him. “I’ll stay alive long enough for you to get what you want out of this. Don’t fuss.”

“Consider me fussed. I’m invested. And I protect my investments until I’m finished with them.”

It takes every ounce of self-control not to spit in his face.

The Wolf makes a low sound. His fingers skim my jaw, tilting my chin up. “Who stabbed you? Your uncle? Another gutless noble? Vengeance and justice make a fine pair, Devaliant. Give me a name, and I’ll give you their corpse for trying to steal your death from me.” His head dips, lips grazing my cheek as he breathes, “Who do I hurt, vicious girl?”

It would be easy to give him a name. To let him unsheathe those lovely, lethal claws and ruin everyone who’s ever wronged me. There is violence in his voice, in the too-careful way he holds himself. He would make such a glorious carnage of all my enemies.

But that’s not what I want.

I curl my fingers around his wrist, noticing the way his pulse jumps against my palm. “No.”

He raises an eyebrow. “No?”

“I won’t give you a name. You don’t get to claim my revenge. I’ll take back everything they stole from me with my own hands, in my own time.”

Slowly, his lips curve into a smile. “One day, you’re going to set entire realms ablaze with the force of all that fury. And I want to be there to watch them burn.”

“You’d have to let me live long enough to see it through,” I say, caught in his gravity. In this strange, violent kinship.

And I realize that my death on the Duehavn changed me just like that first one at age five. I woke up different. This time, as someone with a purpose, and that purpose is to make the world bleed. And the Wolf? He’s the perfect god to draw out every dark thing that came back with me from the Void and expose all my ugly, snarling pieces to the light. To shape me into a monster as hungry and vicious as he is.

“I suppose I would, wouldn’t I?” he murmurs. “Shame you’re a Devaliant.”

The Wolf drops his hand and steps away.

“Don’t stay out here too long.” He nods toward the tower. “Bathe. Eat some food before your stomach tries to claw itself out of your body. Then come to me so I can finish healing you.”

OceanofPDF.com