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A low rumble slipped between my teeth, and I gnashed them, my uncle smiling sadly. “Exactly,” he said. “They created their own doom when Althon’s father slid that sword across your mother’s throat and then into her heart. And though your father had been tortured for days to agree to their terms, his agony was so violent that it shook the earth. It set him free, and thus the first war began.”
I hadn’t realized we’d gathered a small audience, but not even the generals and trainers cared to tell the other wolves to fall back in line. No, they did not care to talk at all, to interrupt any part of what my uncle was saying, though I was sure they’d heard it before. Some of them had even been there. The misery and unjustness, the crime that had gone unpunished, kept them rooted to the spot or quietly drawing closer.
“It ended just two days after, as you already know, with a spear through your father’s eye courtesy of Althon Gracewood.” I moved back enough for Serrin to sit up. “We were outnumbered severely, but when Joon, the Gracewood prince, fell too, they pulled back. They called an end to the battle of their own making, as though they were the judge, jury, and executioners, and we were nothing but beasts expected to blindly obey.”
That name chanted through me, cursed me, and I welcomed it, bowed to the desire to crush it from existence—Althon Gracewood.
Serrin wiped a muddied hand over his cheek, leaving dirt in its wake but uncaring. “She ran with hope, and in the end, that was what killed your mother. The hope that creatures would not be good and kind, but fair and just. Hope kills,” he hissed, climbing to his feet. “So kill it first and fight. Let this entire continent know they made the gravest mistake of their miserable lives when they stole from us.”
I shrank back into myself, more bruised and battered on the inside than out, but something had changed.
Something had irrevocably changed as I turned in a circle and took in the grim faces surrounding our enclosure. Some just stared, horrified, others had tears in their eyes, and some of them nodded in confirmation that every word Serrin said was true.
I’d known it was true. I’d known, but I hadn’t known how scalding the details of that truth would be—the brutal chill of them frosting through my bloodstream to freeze what remained of my heart.
I picked up my sword, barely feeling its hefty weight over the new one that had now become a part of me.
Serrin gri There was no unearthly way I could ever touch someone else, but my swan didn’t need to know that. Just as she didn’t know I was standing in the middle of a once beautiful town named Tulane. Of course, I enjoyed watching her jealousy drown her need to hate me. I enjoyed it, and I wanted more of it, but I couldn’t stomach the idea of seeing her. Not yet. The mere sight of her inquisitive golden eyes the previous night, so hopelessly lost as she’d stared beyond me into the ballroom filled with gamblers, fighters, fuckers, and royalty, tempted me to torment her some more. It wasn’t as though she didn’t deserve it. Flame danced upon my palm, its burn nothing compared to the ice my swan had left me with. She’d toyed with me. Tricked me. Tried to seduce me into becoming a malleable puppet easily remolded and duped. My swan would soon learn just how well such games would work out for her. Yet as I went to reduce the town to cinders, something stopped me, and I launched the flame at a smattering of trees instead, my teeth gritting as I hollered, “Clear out.” “No burning today?” Scythe asked, hurrying to my side with an armful of books and liquor. I trudged through the blood-riddled puddles caused by the rain and the fall of their beloved well. “If we burn everything, then we have nothing to take for ourselves when the time arrives.” Knowing I was right—I was always fucking right—Scythe turned back to order the wolves and our new friends to stop their pilfering and file out. Beneath my gore covered armor, something began to itch at my skin like a parasite. A few precious moments passed before I remembered I’d felt this itch before. I tore the metal off, charging for the horses, then growled and shifted when it didn’t abate, choosing to fly ahead instead. The wind howled in greeting, flooding my ears, each whoosh of my wings unable to propel me fast enough as the ravine opened into the sea below and the itch beneath my skin warmed to a steady burn. Snarling, I dropped with bruising speed to the cliffside. Opal. I knew it before I warped to the Keep and found her minutes that felt like an eternity later. Righting my shirt as I raced into the dungeon, that burn now searing, I tripped to a stop as I rounded the doorway and caught sight of her. Naked and caked in blood upon the dungeon floor. A crunch echoed, but I knew it was no one. That it was nothing but the stone organ inside my chest, rupturing with each rusted beat. The door at the other end of the dungeon creaked and groaned. Serrin entered with a pail of soapy water in hand and a healer trailing him. He stopped, the healer almost walking into him and then slowly stepping to his side. “Dade,” he said, blinking. My vision turned crimson. He’d touched her. He’d… he’d hurt her. He’d fucking put holes in her perfect body. He’d plucked her feathers, some floating about the room, a sack of them resting beside her against the wall. He’d terrorized my swan. “Dade, n-now just l-listen.” Serrin set the pail down and edged closer. “It’s not as bad as it—argh.” Gripping him around the neck, I launched him at the wall. He smacked into it with a boom loud enough to crack it. A sickening snap was heard beneath the crumbling of mortar and stone before he fell limp to the trembling floor. The commotion stirred Opal—her choked gasp tearing me in two. My fists curled, claws cutting into skin, my body torn between wolf and male and the desire to finish him off. To make sure he could never see her or so much as touch her, or anything else, ever again. Then she said, “Tulane,” and I wanted to turn those claws upon my chest and throw myself at her bloodstained feet to beg for mercy. To ask what this life of before was, what she knew of it, and how we could make it together if she’d only forgive me. She wouldn’t. She’d never forgive me. Hence why I was a bastard who just continued to make sure of that fact. So instead, I hurried to her, hushed her, and pushed her hair from her face before gently removing the chain from her bruised neck. Blood still rushed from a deep wound in her arm, and I covered it with my hand, willing it to stop, to seal. It did, but it would only hold for so long before needing proper medical attention. My stomach turned, rage and worry gnawing at each other and charging into each ragged breath I drew. Stars, the blood. Blood was fucking everywhere. Her other arm ravaged, too but neater, as though a stake had been driven straight through her flesh. Looking at the sack of blood-soaked feathers, I swallowed thickly. “Swan,” I rasped. Her eyes fluttered closed, and I carefully collected her into my arms, nodding at the healer who was watching on with a watery brown gaze. “Follow me.”
