Sirro addressed me. “I hear you Crowthers are having a family reunion, and Nelle’s staying with you for a while.”
I nodded, but my gaze momentarily shifted to Byron. I’d assumed he’d filled Sirro in as to what had happened to Nelle…up to a point, of course. At his daughter’s name, his outright hatred of me blazed through his returning glare.
“Well,” Sirro drawled, a smile appearing and growing broader as he glanced toward Byron. “I guess since her twentieth birthday isn’t that far away. You might as well get used to the idea that she’s not returning home.” He crossed a knee over the other, turning a cunning look my way. “And how is sweet, young Nelle?”
An urge arose to wrap my fingers around his throat and throttle him. Horned God or not, I didn’t care. Just the taste of her name on his lips had lust spiraling from him, strands of dark power shining a little brighter.
I forced the rising anger down because, in Sirro’s sly way, he was helping me chip away at Byron. Hitching a shoulder nonchalantly, I replied, “She’ll have a much more pleasantstay if she can have a moment with her mother and sisters and speak with them.”
“Byron?” Sirro asked.
The other man remained silent, square jaw locked, and his hateful gaze still fixed on me. I didn’t know if he simply refused to answer, or if his abhorrence of me choked the words in his throat.
Sirro sighed, leaning an elbow on the armrest, and swept his fingertips across his short, neat beard. “There’s nothing given freely in our world, is there, Byron?”
We needed what was in Byron’s treasure trove.
And he knew it.
But did Sirro?
Byron’s gaze hadn’t left mine, and so I smiled, flashing a sliver of teeth. I enjoyed his nostrils flaring and the way his mouth tightened in response.
“What would a moment with your daughter be worth?” Sirro mused in a conversational tone, a tone that didn’t expect an answer.
Everything.
Byron would put himself in a dire position by handing over what we desired. If it should be discovered.
What we wanted had been passed from Great House to Great House when the reigning family had been usurped or annihilated at the will of the Horned Gods. It was given over to be kept safe, but it was also a symbol of the family’s ruling authority over all the other Houses—Brangwene’s Hjarte.
And we desperately needed it. Enough to lay claim to Byron’s beloved daughter and threaten him with her welfare.
Byron steeled himself against me.
My hands gripped the edge of my armchair hard, fingernails carving moon-crescent grooves into the wood. Fucking hellsgate, Byron was going to be hard to break.
Silence once more descended the room while I internally fumed, recalculating what I could do to shatter the man. It wasn’t only his youngest daughter at risk. He had a wife and two other daughters. An entire House to safeguard.
We waited for Sirro to address the reason he’d called our House here, and still nothing from the Horned God. My father shifted forward, the woolen fabric of his Zegna suit whispering with the movement. “Master Sirro, Jett—”
Sirro snapped up a hand, cutting him off. “Just a moment, Varen, I’m waiting for someone.” He straightened his posture right before we heard hurried footsteps and a reedy voice barking at Sarnia from the hallway outside. “Ah, here he is,” he purred, but the tone edged with the quiet savagery of a mountain lion who’d finally spotted its quarry.
The solar door swung open, and Aldert Pellan barged in with a harried Sarnia behind him. Beyond the doorway, a spiderscuttled into view. Its hairy legs clacked against the boned ceiling, and its chittering was a creepy trill accompanying the noise of snapping fangs and guttural snarling coming from the pack of wraith-wolves awaiting Sarnia’s order to attack.
Aldert Fucking Pellan.
The air got sucked out of my chest. The room felt too small, too enclosed, with his vile presence in it. Danne and his brothers had all learned their cruelty from this man. A fierce need to end him tore through my entire being and set my teeth grinding, filling my ears with a chalky, grating sound. I gripped the arms of my chair to stop myself from lunging at the smaller man. Wood creaked beneath my ferocious grip.
“It’s fine, Sarnia.” Sirro relaxed back into his armchair. “Thank the Heads for waiting for me. We shouldn’t be too long here before we begin our meeting.”
Sarnia flicked a concerned glance Jett’s way and at the roll of velvet balanced on his trembling thigh, before nodding to Sirro. She closed the door and left.
I willed my blood to cool, drew in a breath through my nose, a second, a third, and loosened my grip on the armrests.
I glanced to the side and saw my father’s glare and fingers twitching, as if he desired to reach for his blade. Even Jett’s gaze, shot through with pain, was fixed on him. And when my sight returned to Sirro, surprise washed through me as I observed his hard features and unblinking focus locked on Aldert.
A heartbeat later, a calm state returned to the Horned God.
