“Praise the chains and preserve me.”
The voice is little more than a whisper coming from the doorway of the house, a lilting sound of roiling emotion, yet it’s said sharply enough that all of our faces whip over to the door in unison.
Iron Sister Keffa Caernyd stands in the door in her dirty gray robe, her wispy hair tucked behind her ears. Half a dozen small faces poke out from her sides—younger Chained Sisters gazing at the goings-on. While they look nothing more than curious and slightly suspicious, Keffa’s lined face is pale, her eyes wide as my hips.
A tidal wave of silence washes over us. The sardonic mirth has been sucked out of my mother’s features. Her face sinks with obvious heartbreak, eyebrows twitching.
Keffa rushes out the doorway, eyes glistening with tears as she bowls past me.
“Hello, love bug,” Jinneth says softly, opening her thick arms.
Love bug? What is going—
Keffa barrels into her and embraces her tightly, sinking the side of her face into Jinneth’s large chest. I can already hear her sobs, see the trembling of her bony shoulders as my mother wraps her up.
Then my mother pulls back slightly, stares down at the shorter, skinnier woman with a demure smile, and tilts her chin with a thumb, just like my mates do with me.
Iron Sister Keffa lifts her face and kisses my mother hard on the lips.
Chapter 2
Sephania
After my initial shock wears off at what I’m witnessing, Keffa wraps an arm around my mother’s wide waist and they head for the door.
I begin to follow them in a daze, before a voice stops me short.
“Sephania, wait.”
Turning, I find my three men standing in a semi-circle. They stare hard at me as I cautiously wander over. When the front door of the Chained Sisters’ house closes, leaving us alone, I raise my chin to return their potent gazes.
Now that we’re by ourselves, I want nothing more than to collapse in their arms after the trying few months I’ve had away from them.Was it all worth it? To uncover the “Relic,” which turns out to be nothing more than a human rather than some arcane tabernacle, and to learn that Lukain Pierken—no, LukainMortis,Overseer Verant, men I don’t know—truly did betray me?
The voice in my head comes in the form of my old friend Jinneth, not my mother, saying,Course it was worth it, you silly tart. You got the truth out of that slick cunt grayskin and a mother out of the deal! I’d kill for one of those, yeah?
“Yes?” I croak at the men, ashamed my voice fails me. It’s the brooding way they’re looking at me that does me in and makes me wilt like a damned flower.
Skartovius glances at his bloodthrall Garroway and the man he calls “brother,” Vallan. To me, he says, “While you were kept away in Sutlis Spire, did that brutish commonblood . . . harm you?”
When he speaks of Madame Kleora’s thrall manservant, Bregsitch, memories of his fists fill me—pounding into my stomach, battering me, doubling me over, stealing the breath from my lungs. Over and over, day after day.
I had been taught by Lukain Mortis himself not to feel such bludgeonings. The ability to stave off pain had been instilled in me from a young age, before reaching womanhood.
I try to hide the sudden rush of memories from my face. With a small smile, I shrug blithely. “Just a few bumps and bruises, love. Nothing I haven’t felt before.”
Vallan steps up alongside Skar. He’s even more menacing with his ridiculous height and stacked muscles. The dried blood and dust coating his armor, from his detonations that broke down the wall to get to Jinneth, add to the effect. “Nearly every evening, my bloodsight ran afoul, torturing me,” he says, “foretelling of harm coming to you.”
“Nearly broke the big bastard on a nightly basis, it did,” Garroway says, joining his brethren. He claps Vall’s shoulder, reaching into the sky to do it, and gives me a sly smile. I can see the hurt and fear behind it; the fear I’m hiding things from them.
“Nearly brokeallof us,” Vallan grunts in return, firming his lips at his smaller comrade. “Or were those not bloody tears I remember spilling from your eyes—”
“Let’s not get carried away now,” Garro murmurs.
“Bloodsight?” I say. “Is that what we’re calling your divinations now, Vall?” I try on a smile, attempting to make light of the situation.
Garroway bites. “We slap the word ‘blood’ onto everything, little honey badger. This is no different.”
“Don’t lie to us, Sephania,” Skartovius says. When he calls me by my name—not a pet name like “little temptress” or even “love”—I know I’m in trouble. “Nothing . . .” He struggles with the next word, leaning his head forward while he spits the word. “Inside?”
