I backed up a step, still shaking my head, holding the black opal up between us. What brought me here no longer mattered. What mattered was this. “Why do you have Fell’s necklace?”
“When we were attacked, and they took him … he lost it. I picked it up.”
His words made it seem so simple, but nothing about this was simple—especially not the evasive way his gaze flicked away and then back to me again.
They took him?
That didn’t sound like Vetr had witnessed Fell’s death at all, and yet he had been so certain. He had claimed he saw the skelm kill Fell.
A lie.
My face was burning, eyes stinging.
I swallowed this reality,this, the actual truth, like a foul-tasting brew.
What else had he lied about? Vetr said they’d let him go in exchange for the location of the pride’s most valuable jewel minn. Was that the truth? Or was there more to it than that?
I inhaled a great, pained breath, looking at him like I was finally seeing him … and realizing he was not who I’d thought.
I opened and closed my mouth several times before managing to get out: “Is he really dead?”
That searing pulse in my palm jumped like popping embers, alive, reacting to my question, answering for him, screaming out at me, telling me what I already knew—what I had known, deep down, all along.
“Vetr,” I prodded, biting off his name like something hard between my teeth.
Time hung, suspended on air that crackled between us.
“I suspect he is alive,” he confirmed with a single hard nod.
The air left me in a great exhale. “How?” I croaked.
He stared at me flatly. “As I said, the skelm took him, but Ibelieve he still lives. I did not know for certain, not until the other night. Not until after I saw your hand glowing like a firebrand. That would only happen if he still lived. It’s the bond.”
My knees suddenly buckled, and I wobbled where I stood, ready to collapse, break like tinder under the slightest pressure.
Alive.
It was the only word I heard. Fell was still out there somewhere. A year gone by and …Alive.
Vetr was at my side, sliding a supportive arm around me. I yanked free from him as though stung by the contact. Staggering back, I bumped his desk, clutching the edge of it until my knuckles ached, but even then, I did not let go. “Don’t touch me.”
“Tamsyn,” he murmured in a voice as smooth as a windless lake.
“I believed you,” I said accusingly, my voice nothing like calm waters. It was all jagged bits of broken glass that left a bloody wake.
I thought about him lying to me, so easily, so smoothly, his voice and eyes gentle.Fell is dead, he had said, and I’d drunk up his treachery, gulping it down.
Bile rose up in my throat, mingling with smoldering char. I fought it, swallowing it back, determined not to be sick here at his feet. I shook my head side to side in a miserable roll.
Fell would not have given up on me the way I gave up on him. This came to me in a blinding flash of clarity. He would not have believed Vetr. He would have demanded proof. Misery curled around me, wrapping me in its fold.
Vetr inclined his head in acknowledgment. “I’m sorry for lying … but I couldn’t tell you the truth. You had to believe him dead. It was a … kindness.” His silvery eyes locked on me intently, snaring me like a bug in the silver threads of a cobweb.
“A kindness?” I choked. “Nothing about this feelskind.”
He gave me a grim look. “The truth is worse.”
My stomach bottomed out. The truth was …worse?
