And now with this ruse—had we just created a new conflict?
Whatever these things were, they had to have attacked prior shipments. So no, this was where we were always heading.
The words rumbled from my chest as I confirmed. “It was an attack on our empire. It is an act of war.” But fucked if I was going to apologize for not backing him up earlier.
There was a wrathful hint of something on the Horned God’s face I couldn’t place. But I felt it—as if some malevolent beast, as bitterly cold and ancient as the northern glaciers, stared at me from behind those golden eyes. I sensed it in my bones, my marrow, and that strange, wicked thing that shadowed me reacted, baring fangs and hissing.
Sirro blinked, and it was there and gone again.
And I was left trying not to stare and wondering if I had even seen it.
For a heartbeat, I considered how much Sirro knew or had pieced together. If we’d unwittingly provided him with the means to press for war.
The angered lines of Sirro’s features softened as he gestured with a curl of his fingers toward Jett. “Show me.”
My brother lifted the hem of his t-shirt, the bloodied fabric stickily peeling away from his wound.
Sirro eagerly leaned in, hungry for the sight. The wound was a ruin of blackened, putrid flesh. Sickly purple lines spread from the weeping gash, branching like dying vines, each tendril studded with barbed, swollen nodes that leaked slow dark fluid, as if the curse itself were rotting from the inside out. It crept around his rib cage, mottling the tattoos and staining his wyrm brand, the corrupted edge of it dangerously near his heart.
I couldn’t say I didn’t enjoy side-swiping the fucker. Now, I regret it. But if I’d hit him any later, our subterfuge would’ve been obvious.
Jett pressed a finger into his wound, and his ashen features twisted in agony as he scraped the nail along the gash. Light from the bronze lamps overhead danced over his clammy skin as his entire body shook. He raised his hand. On the tip of his fingernail was a tiny fiber of wood, so slender it could barely be called a splinter.
Pulling a cloth out of my pocket, I wiped the bolt’s fiber from Jett’s finger, already bursting with blighted nodes. Tossing the cloth away, I quickly palmed a syringe. The mossy-green concoction squirted from the needle, sprinkling the floor in a spray of fine mist as I gently compressed the piston.
Jett protested weakly. “I don’t need—”
“Shut it,” I hissed under my breath.
Carefully piercing his skin, I injected the painkiller into his upper arm. He flinched, grunting. The empty syringe clattered across the coffee table as I threw it away, swiftly pulling a second one holding the remainder of the rare elixir I’d previously pumped into Jett last night. I stabbed the needle right into the revolting lesion.
His stifled scream tore loose, tearing apart the quiet.
I injected the elixir, tossing the syringe away.
Jett sagged against me as the potion flowed through his bloodstream, and I eased him into the chair nearest the Horned God.
Jett lay limply, his legs spread wide. But he pushed aside a sweaty lock of hair, tucking it behind an ear, and relief sank through me to see him make such a simple gesture.
It wasn’t instantaneous, but after a while, Jett’s quick, shallow pants became slower and deeper, and he didn’t shiver as much. A faint touch of color bloomed on his cheeks, and the poisoncreeping like deadly ivy slowly faded. I took what felt like my first breath when the frayed edges of dead flesh fell away, revealing pink skin underneath and fresh red blood beading the gash.
Sirro’s gaze greedily soaked up the healing tissue. “Your unnatural healing… Such a blessing, andveryrare.” Propping an elbow on the armrest, he rubbed his chin with a forefinger. “Astonishing. Whatran through your mother’s veins?” His expression became strangely somber as he turned to look at me. He spoke his words slowly, as if he were carefully selecting what to say. “I’m sorry for your…loss…”
Sudden fury whipped my blood into a frenzy. He must have read the demand in my gaze as my mouth parted to bark—Who the fuck took my mother?
Sirro knew I’d been there that night. Aware that my entire family knew she’d been abducted, not killed in a car crash.
The words tumbled from him unusually fast. “As I informed you all the day after your mother was taken, Lyressa doesn’t know who the other Horned Gods were.”
My fingers fisted. A likely story.
He held up his hand, apparently sensing I was going to protest. “Lyressa was ordered to accompany two of her brethren to assist with capturing Tabitha and…” he faltered, hesitating with discomfort before continuing, “disposing of her.”Because that was what Sirro had been led to believe, that my mother had been captured and killed. “Lyressa didn’t recognize either of her companions nor learn their identities.”
I couldn’t hold it in. I didn’t care if I was questioning a Horned God who could rip my tongue out for daring to ask. “And you believe her?”
“Who am I to question one of my own kind?” There was a direct warning running beneath his tone to leave it alone.
Whoever the hells they were, if Sirro was to be trusted, wanted to keep both their identity a secret and their reason for feigning her death.
