They wanted to see Graysen in control. They needed to see me as weak and frightened. More importantly, they had to see thatGraysen wasn’t swayed. That he was in charge and the reason he had me trapped up in his tower had nothing to do with him deviating from his family’s mandate to use me. That he was keeping me up there to break me.
Except.
He wasn’t.
My fingers fiddled anxiously with the top layer of my skirt as I curled my toes on the rough stone floor while staring downward. Here, I was confronted by his brothers and what his family wanted: for me to break. Yet what he showedme up in his tower…
He wasn’t striving to break me. He was trying to keep me together.
In that respect, Graysen was going against his family, and he didn’t want them to know.
I pursed my mouth to the side, looking up at him from beneath my lashes. Yes, he and I were going to have a rather interesting conversation later on. 20 questions—definitely.
“Sirro’s already given me orders,” Graysen replied, crossing his arms over his chest and settling his weight onto one hip. “So, I plan to wait until I hear from Mela and restart the hunt for Yezekael.”
Yezekael.
Now, that wasn’t a name I’d heard of before.
“Zielenski’s had word that Jurgana’s stirring,” Caidan slipped in, ignoring his younger brother, as he wandered over to a table and jumped up to sit on it.
“It won’t be much longer before Jurgana will attend the Emporium,” Jett added with a cunning glance my way.
I held onto that bit of knowledge as if I were a dragon and it were a precious bauble. Though this bauble wasn’t shiny, it was tarnished, because the mention of that merciless place stirred something else deep inside.Fear.Zielenski ran the Emporium.I’d seen him once or twice at House Gatherings. Charming. Sinfully handsome. But there was something dead inside him. You had to be soulless to run the Emporium. And the Crowthers were trying to gain interest from the Horned Gods to first obtain a Goods Appraisal.
Me.
They neededmeto pique Jurgana’s interest.
My soul shriveled up in terror at the mere thought of stepping inside the Emporium.
The things I’d overheard my father speak about… What I’d read… The horrific sketches of it in old books in my family library. It was one place I never wanted to investigate.
“I’m going to the Emporium?” I asked, my voice slightly shrill. Because it was obvious that I was. And they were timing the visit with Jurgana, one of the witches that slumbered between events in a nest deep inside the Heart of the Hemmlok forest. “Because you haven’t received a request for a Goods Appraisal, right?”
Were they intending to let Jurgana know I wasother?That I was a wyrm?
Tucking my trembling hands behind my back, I gripped them together.“What…”I licked my lips and cleared my throat. “What do you intend to happen there? How do you plan to useme to get a request?”
Graysen paced back and forth, growing more agitated. I caught the roll of his shoulders, the way he cracked his neck. A gleam in his eyes, fast and swift, quicksilver seeping through the black. There and gone again.
Tamer.
The air was taut with tension.
Three pairs of eyes flicked from Graysen to me, surveying my face, perhaps to weigh my worth, how I’d react being hauled into the Emporium because that was how I’d go. My fingers gouging wood trying to stop myself from being dragged in there.
Jett leisurely strolled closer. There was an empty smile on his handsome face, but his eyes were glassy, and on the crease of his top lip was a light sheen of perspiration. “Ah, where would the fun be if we told you that?” he answered, tapping me on the nose with a finger. A finger that shook slightly.
Scowling, I batted his hand away hard.
A softly given snarl, and it hadn’t come from my wraith-wolf.
I realized here, right here in front of Draxxon, was the worst place Graysen’s brothers could have discovered us for the first time.
My spine stiffened at the silent exchange between Kenton and Jett, the sharp look from Caidan. The glance that went from Draxxon’s scaled body to Graysen and then slid to me.
This aspect of Graysen and I, wyrm and tamer, unnerved them. It was a variable they hadn’t anticipated. It turned a spotlight on Graysen that revealed he wasn’t completely trustworthy. That this thing between him and me could cause their brother to sway.
