“Am I a prisoner?”
“No. No. Of course not.” Zane spread his fingers wide, showing me he wasn’t a threat. “The woods aren’t safe?—”
Remy threw up his hands in exasperation. “Your mother is alive.”
His words didn’t make sense. Alive? My mother was alive?The ground seemed to shift beneath me, and I gripped the log to keep from swaying. Twenty-five years. Twenty-five years of believing she was dead, of grieving a woman who was … what? Living somewhere else? Choosing not to come home?
As a little girl, I’d longed for a woman with a gentle voice to read my bedtime stories. I’d ached for someone who’d comfort me when a nightmare woke me in the middle of the night. I’d have traded anything for loving hands to smooth the snarls in my hair before plaiting the strands into a neat braid.
“It’s true.” Zane’s voice was soft, almost gentle. “Hope Ford is alive.”
A million emotions hit me at once. Relief. Joy. Hurt. Anger. So. Much. Anger. She’d abandoned me. “How could she …” I whispered. “How could she leave us like that?”
Remy rolled his eyes. “There are things in this world more important than you.”
His words were the last straw. Something inside me snapped. I’d spent weeks being told I was worthless, expendable, less than human. From Drake, from Carron, from men who saw me as nothing more than a tool to be used and discarded. I was done.
Magic sparked at my fingertips, fueled by my anger. For a heartbeat, I hesitated. I could be the bigger person and walk away. But where was the fun in that? I could let his cruelty slide. But why should I? Letting men walk all over me had gotten me nothing but scars on my back. The magic raced from my fingers before I consciously decided to release it, hitting Remy squarely in his chest.
His body flew backward and hit a tree. Hard enough to shake every flake of snow from its branches. And every single particle of white landed on top of him. I made sure of it.
“What the fucking hell?” The snow muffled Remy’swords, but he sounded incredulous, like he couldn’t believe I’d so easily bested him.
Zane chuckled. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
Something rustled in the trees behind us, and Zane tensed, reaching for his axe.
Remy dug his way out of the snowbank. A vein bulged in his forehead, and a dull red suffused his neck and furious face. “You dare?”
I planted my hands on my hips and glared at him. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are, but what have I ever done to you?” I’d been in the clearing for less than an hour and had done nothing to earn Remy’s ire. Well, until the tree. “What is your problem?”
His lips peeled away from his teeth, and he snarled.
If I weren’t incandescent with anger, I might have found him scary.
Instead, I stepped forward and jabbed a finger into his chest. “In the past few weeks, I’ve been forcibly taken from my home, assaulted, whipped, and poisoned. I’ve fought multiple mythical creatures and been attacked by rebels. An innkeeper sold tickets to rape me to cover the guards’ room and board. Now I found out the mother I thought was dead simply abandoned me. I don’t have the emotional capacity to deal with your hysterics.” I didn’t mention Gladys or the visions. Some things were just too traumatic to talk about. Besides, there was no possible way those visions could be real, because hell would freeze over before I let Remy bury his face between my legs.
“An innkeeper sold you?” Zane’s voice was cold enough to make me shiver. “Did anyone hurt you?”
A bird gave a startled cry and took flight, and Zane shifted his gaze from me to the woods.
“No one touched me,” I told him. “I’m not helpless.”
Remy sneered. “No. You’re a whiner.”
The man was insufferable. “Again, what is your probl—” My breath caught, and I raised my hands, sending a spiral of magic at a monster. Dingy white scales covered a sinewy humanoid body. Its claws were long. Its fangs were longer. Its snarling mouth revealed a forked tongue. And the fiendish gleam in its crimson eyes was the stuff of nightmares.
My magic hit its shoulder, and the thing screeched in fury before crashing to the ground, hard enough to shake the clearing.
Remy spun around, drawing his sword. “Nian!”
I hoped he’d add that nians were misunderstood creatures, as docile as baby bunnies, but he didn’t. Instead, with a sweeping stroke of his sword, Remy cut off the nian’s head.
Black blood sprayed across the snow.
I retreated a step—not just to avoid the blood. I retreated because I was tired of death, which was too bad, because Gladys had promised my future was full of it, with ample sides of pain and suffering.
“Haven, can you ride?” Zane’s voice was laced with urgency.
