I turn the full force of my glare back on Dante. “What made you so cruel?”
“You, Fallon. You made me like this. Before you awakened the shifters, I didn’t thirst to dethrone my brother.”
“You crossed Filiaserpens!”
“So what?”
“So it’s a rite of passage for Lucin kings! Which means you thirsted for that throne before I gifted it to you, so don’t you fucking dare blame me for the heartless man you’ve become.”
He snorts. “If I’m heartless, what does that make your little buzzard king? Do you know how many dead bodies he’s left to rot on my soil?”
I’m fully aware that my mate is lethal and has spilled blood. The same way I’m aware Lore considers himself a monster, but no one is as monstrous as the male whose hands are still holding me clamped against his body.
“At least Lore protects his friends. Will you have any left at the end of your vendetta against the Crows?”
Dante’s mouth firms into an unyielding line. “This is not a vendetta; it’s a fucking war. One you brought about.”
Under my breath, I mutter, “What a man you are. Forever blaming others.”
“What was that?” His eyes are black with indignation because, of course he heard me. After all, our faces are so close that his rank breath pelts my damp cheeks. “You best stop insulting me or I’ll take it out on your little sailor.”
I squash my lips tight because I don’t want additional harm to befall Antoni.
After I’ve kept mute for a full minute, he says, “That’s better.”
Again, I’m clipped by his foul breath. I pop my lips open to ease the assault on my nose. Did the inside of his mouth always smell like stale seaweed and decaying gums or is it a side effect of the Nebban chemical he’s been ingesting?
I decide not asking is safer for Antoni.
“Must I keep you bound or will you start behaving?”
“I’ll behave,” I grumble, because who in their right mind would advise their tormentor to keep them cuffed?
At the same time as Dante releases my hair, the vines recede from my legs. My skin prickles as blood gushes back into the strangled sections of flesh.
“Justus, open the vault!”
Of course the general is here. I’m almost surprised he wasn’t part of the procession of soldiers who marched me over.
Also . . . “Why are we going inside a vault?”
Dante’s palm finally comes away from my back, but it’s only to land on my upper arm and curl there. “Because that’s where I keep my newest treasure.”
Does he mean Meriam?
He drags me out of the entryway and into another windowless room. Although obsidian covers most of the surfaces, one wall is a solid gold panel tiled with faceted onyx in the shape of a giant ‘R’ full of swoops and whorls.
Dante jerks me toward where Justus stands with his back to us. I really don’t appreciate being manhandled, but a glance at Antoni’s motionless form has me biting the complaint off my tongue.
As I stare at my friend, my mind wanders to Imogen and that human rebel leader, Vance, who went after Antoni and both vanished as a result. Are they here? Or are Aoife’s qualms about her sister having been turned into a forever-Crow justified? I don’t ask in case Dante isn’t aware that they tried penetrating the tunnels.
Like my cage, like the Acolti vault, the armored gold wall is being unlocked with magic. Justus streams water from his palms at the faceted stones. I note that he doesn’t project his magic on all of them. He spurts water in fits and starts, hitting a low stone before aiming for a higher one.
I don’t even try to memorize the sequence because I’ve neither water magic nor access to a pole I could use to press on the stones—if that could even work. At some point, the metal groans and a seam appears from ceiling to floor.
Justus directs his liquid magic at the vein, widening it until it can accommodate a full-grown body. Only then does he turn and level his blue stare on me—a stare I, once upon a time, thought I’d inherited from him. “Meriam, our granddaughter has arrived.”
I recoil at the term. I may share blood with the woman, but she’s by no means my grandmother, just like Justus is absolutely not my grandfather.
