Show no fear.
Show no fear.
Show no fear.
Like a wild animal, she’d be able to scent it.
A brisk current of air breezed through the arrow slit in the wall behind me, rippling the blue flames of the wildfyre torches braced on either side of the heavy wooden door.
The soles of my boots scraped against the landing as I shifted my weight from foot to foot, readjusting my stance as I stared dead ahead at the door to my residence.
I cracked my neck and rolled my shoulders, trying to ease the tension from my rigid muscles.
I was stalling.
And I knew it.
I might have also been freaking the fuck out, wondering what was going to greet me when I finally grew the balls to enter my room.
My. Own. Room. For fuck’s sake.
Except one tiny girl with a wild mane of hair and glacial eyes, full of pure spiteful wrath, had tormented the ever-living shit out of me for the past three days.
Fuck, fuck,fuuuck…
Do it, just do it!—I mentally roared at myself.
My hand balled into a fist, rising to greet the wooden door—
I yanked my fist back.
Shock slammed into me as I realized I was about to knock on my own door and ask to be let in.
It’s my fucking room!
Mine!
Blowing out a breath, I tried to erase the anxiousness that wrecked my chest and steeled myself for what I was about to do.
I reached for the door handle, twisted, and pushed it open, sending my senses shooting through first. Testing and prodding and feeling out for a girl who had used the adamere walls like a whetstone to file a handful of spoons down to a razor-edge.
Nelle had ambushed me yesterday, as I’d entered my room, and hurled her weapons at me. Sure, I was a Crowther, and she had absolutely no chance of outright killing me, and she knew it. But when she actually sank one into my thigh, her godsdamned gleeful laughter and the little dance of victory she’d performed annoyed the hells out of me, wounding both my ego and my leg.
Besides, I smoothed a hand down the front of my black t-shirt, the irritation flaring all over again. I had every damn right to be pissed off. I clung to that righteous fury and let it heat my blood.
It was oddly quiet except for the wraith-wolf making a strange chomping noise when I stalked into my room.
The chrome lamp’s tall neck curved over the couch, its golden light spilling downward. A few of the ceiling lights glowed in a dimmer setting, a comforting presence for a girl terrified of the dark. Towering brickwork shaped into pillar-like forms roseto meet the roofline of the outer walls, broken by the wide openings I’d carved out for Nelle. The tower’s magic acted like a windowpane, allowing light but holding back the evening chill.
Moonlight seeped into the room, glancing over the crown of Nelle’s pale hair and limning the edge of her features. She was curled up on the couch with soft cream blankets tucked around her legs, looking sweet and innocent as she read a novel, with the sleeve of her white oversized dress falling off a shoulder.
A lie.
A godsdamned fucking lie.
The girl wasn’t sweet and innocent. She was a wraith-wolf, with claws and fangs and a spiteful tongue.
Nelle didn’t bother to look up from her book when I walked in, just coldly greeted me with, “Evening, prick,” as she flipped over a page.
