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“The thing is, I wasn’t always the court artist. I had to work for a living. I slaved away in the stableyard for years working for your leech husband. I can tie up a pissed-off, wriggling pig faster than you can blink, and believe me, you are nothing compared to that. If you get any ideas about gutting me or ru
His eyes were a pale, icy jade in the daylight. So cold, I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought them pretty. Everything about him was repulsive, from the smug set of his mouth to the smell of his sweat and cologne.
I needed to outlast him. If I couldn’t run now, I could escape later. I just needed to keep myself in a position to regain my strength and find my opening.
“But, as I said, you’re valuable. I want you to come to terms with the fact that we’ll be together from here on out, and I’m willing to show kindness if you’re willing to behave. So—are you going to give me a reason to use this?”
Together? A chill ran down my spine, but I met those cold eyes squarely and shook my head.
“If you’re very good, I’ll let you have your pen back.” He tied the end of my leash to the saddle horn, giving me only about ten feet of leeway—not nearly enough to make a run for it. I gritted my teeth as Miro mounted the horse, holding out a hand to me. “Come on up.”
I could imagine him kicking the horse into a gallop, the rope between my ankle and the saddle snapping taut…
I took his hand.
He hauled me up, settling me in his lap sidesaddle. Too close, one arm around my waist, the other gripping the reins, and the feeling of his breath stirring my hair made me want to claw at his face.
If there was one thing I’d learned in life, it was patience. This was not my moment.
But when that moment came, it would be very satisfying. I would make sure of it.
He clicked his tongue, nudging the horse into a trot. We were moving east, the rising sun piercing my aching eyes, the mountains looming before us.
I pulled my journal out, balancing it on my knee. Then I turned my head, giving Miro a sidelong look under my lashes, glancing pointedly at my pen.
He smirked, that cocky look that made me want to kill him, and pulled it free. “It’ll cost you later, but I’m feeling generous. I can afford to be, now.”
What makes you think Bane isn’t coming after us? I asked. Deliberately using ‘us’, a subtle manipulation, hoping with enough time he would come to believe us on the same team, and slowly drop his guard.
Miro peered over my shoulder at the question, and laughed. “Here, give me the pen. You’ll love this.”
I handed it to him, and he shifted the reins to his left hand, the pen to his right, and reached around my waist to write in the journal on my lap. It was a bit shaky, given the horse beneath us, but I found myself breathless, a terrible blend of fury and despair filling me as my own handwriting filled the page.
Because he has a letter from your own hand telling him you’ve gone. You hate him. You never want to see him again.
My mind splintered in a thousand directions. Miro had perfectly imitated my writing. If I hadn’t watched him write it himself, I could’ve easily believed I had done it.
“He believes I didn’t inherit my mother’s memory. It’s been a very useful little secret worth keeping. I can imitate anything I’ve seen on paper,” he said smugly, tucking the pen back in my hand. “Any image, any writing. I had yours perfectly worked out in a few days. Ellena’s took a little longer, but she was always writing letters to the Sisterhood, and all I had to do was pretend to be sympathetic to the cause. It made it so much easier to get word to my people, pretending to be her.”
Chills ran down my spine, and I closed my eyes for a moment, putting it together. Ellena had been i
“But you were the clincher, Lady Silence.” He laughed, carefree and joyful. “Seriously? ‘Wargs and fiends are the same’? You couldn’t have made my life any easier if you tried.”
I remembered looking at that paragraph, debating whether to scribble it out, debating throwing it in the fire, and failing to do either of those things.
I had ruined myself.
“I left a little note from you, and it’s going to stab him right in the heart.” He shook his head, still chuckling. “I almost wish I could’ve stayed to see the look on his face. All those years of treating me like dirt, talking down to me like I’d never measure up to my saint of a fucking mother, and finally, I get mine.”
Why? I finally wrote, trying to keep my breathing even. What do you get out of this?
“Well, the why is pretty simple.” His hands twitched on the reins. “It’s not just that I have a Forian father. As you can probably guess, she was raped during the war. I’m the son of a warg. Did I ask for that? No. And yet they still treated me like an outsider. You should probably understand more than most what it feels like to always be on the outside of things. Just one little fault in your makeup, one you never asked for, and people will always look at you sideways for it.”
I hated to do it, but I nodded. In a way, I did understand, completely and totally—until I met Bane, I had always been the outsider.
“As for what I get, Hakkon promised me citizenship of Foria. I belong to my father’s people. So long as I bring them something of value, I’m one of his people, under his protection. That would be you.”
Because I’m the Lady of the Rift? I asked, a sour taste in my mouth. I had been warned there was a target on my back, and it had finally hit home. But you forged a letter for Bane. If he doesn’t come for me, I’m of no value to them at all.
“What? No. Because you’re a lai Darran.” Miro tilted his head, studying my profile. “I directed Hakkon’s agents to your estate weeks ago. Your parents were one of the wealthiest old-blood families in Veladar. The estate itself is practically brimming with gold to be made.”
By the Light, I was going to be sick. I had never wanted to think of them again, but they had, in a way, put me on the path to true happiness. I didn’t wish any ill on them.
Were? I wrote, my hand trembling.
“Were.” Miro brushed a lock of hair off my cheek, tucking it behind my ear. “Unfortunately, you won’t be able to say goodbye, as Hakkon’s men got there first. But look on the bright side, my quiet little mouse. You’re the last living member of that bloodline, which means you’ve inherited all that land and gold, and that makes you valuable beyond your wildest dreams.”
My sisters? I had only vague memories of them, of curly red hair, giggling under the covers, eating honeycomb in a pasture together, but… ancestors, to think that any relation to me would’ve torn their lives apart…
“Dead,” he said roughly. “They’re all dead, Cirri. Your parents, your sisters, your cousins, the servants… anyone living there has been dead for days now. Since Bloodrain, in fact. Aptly-named holiday, that.”
I couldn’t breathe. I stared out at the looming mountains, unable to think of a single thing to say.
Because of me, because of that tiny twist of fate when they’d chosen to give up a child, they were all gone. I could picture the wargs in horrible clarity, juxtaposed against my fuzzy memory of the estate, and see those creatures tearing through the only blood relatives I had.
I wondered if the wargs were there now. If they’d torn them to pieces and spread them all over the fields.
Miro cleared his throat. “Sorry, I know it’s shocking to hear. But that’s also what I get out of this: you. Your estate. Your family name. Most of your gold goes to Hakkon, of course, and the wargs will be living there, but that’s a small price to pay to become high nobility.”
He had done all this for a lai in his name. It seemed incredible, almost unfathomable, that he could speak of destroying my entire family for a single syllable.
I shook my head, pushing that aside for now. I could mourn for them later, when my own situation was no longer a sword poised over my neck.
How did you take me from Ravenscry? What is corpseflower root powder? Are you sure it’ll wear off?
Selfishly, I was more concerned about the lingering malaise and the nauseating pounding in my skull, than I was about the deaths of blood-kin.
His smile returned. “Just a little something to keep you compliant. Too much isn’t great for your health—there’s a reason it’s called corpseflower—but the muscle spasms and weakness should be gone by tomorrow. Agripin, my Forian contact, arranged for one of the wargs to leave a cache in Tristone.”
So that’s why you were so determined to go. You’re allergic to work otherwise.
“Obviously. I picked it up while searching for bodies. The rest of it was on me to get you out, but no one thought twice about their Forian slave labor ru
A muscle twitched in my jaw; a
“Better than being a dumb broodmare.”
I slowly closed my journal and gripped my pen, debating turning around and jamming it through his eye.
But even as I considered the limp weakness of my arm, Miro narrowed his gaze, and plucked the pen from my hand with ease. He tucked it deep in his waistcoat, shaking his head.
“You’ve really got to stop a
I tucked my journal away, wanting nothing but silence, and to wait for my moment.
The trail led up through the mountains, but Miro guided the horse towards a gentle slope through the trees. The trail under its hooves was nearly invisible, the faintest indentation in the dirt, and he led us towards a steep slope of dark shale.
As the horse picked its way under the pine canopy, I saw a mine shaft looming ahead. At first, I simply blinked: thousands of cold iron charms had been nailed into the support timbers, old bits of braided primrose and holly dangling from the charms. But there was nothing silly about that enormous, dark mouth of a cavern waiting to swallow us up.
In a panic, I turned to look at Miro. Even he seemed paler than usual, his smirk gone.