She’s given me an opening and I can’t waste it, no matter how much it hurts.
I rise from my seat, drawing on every shred of cruelty I can find in my heart and pulling it like a cloak around myself.
“A Blacksmith like you,” I snap, my voice overly loud in my ears even as I try to distance myself from what I’m saying.
The blood drains from Asha’s cheeks.
The pain in her eyes is instant.
And it hurts me.Damn, it hurts. But I can’t stop.
I glare at her as I push my chair out of the way with a loudscreechthat I’ve already calculated will jar her nerves. It will also rankle the Vandawolf, because I saw how he winced at the fae’s raucous voices during dinner. His hearing is truly like that of a wolf’s. Just as Thaden’s hearing is as sharp as a dragon’s.
They are both dangerous men.
“Yes,” Asha says, her voice strangled as she gestures to the band of black metal attached to her left palm. “With this medallion, I’m capable of great darkness.”
She has never been a liar. She has always spoken the truth, even when it hurts her. Her acknowledgment tells me how hard she’s fighting the darkness of Malak’s metal.
I want to tell her that she could never do what Malak did, that she is nothing like him and never will be.
But I can’t reveal my compassion and love for her right now.
I lift my chin and turn my glare on the Vandawolf. He is as much a looming figure at Asha’s side as Thaden is at mine.
But he is also changed now. Gone is the sharp tooth that used to protrude between his lips on one side of his mouth. Gone is the wolfishly amber color of his left eye.
I didn’t think it could be possible.
When Asha begged me to heal him, I was certain he would only succumb to his wolfish instincts and imprison her again.
I wanted her to be free.
Free of the past. Free of everything that chained her, including him.
How wrong I was.
He looks at me now with a nearly human face. He has intelligent, deep-gray eyes like the color of the sky at dusk right before night falls. His hair has remained the same gray color as a wolf’s pelt, but there is no savagery in his jaw. No rage in his face. No anger tightly controlled.
He is an inexplicably calm force at Asha’s side and, by the saints, he appears even more powerful for it.
But now I need his anger. I need his fury to rise. I need it aimed at me.
“When you kept our sister away from us,” I say to him, “I believed it was because you hated us and wanted to hurt us. But now I wonder if you did it to protect us.” I harden my gaze as my focus switches to Asha again. And then I spit the words, “Because she’s so much like Malak.”
Asha flinches. Her chest stills, as if she’s struggling to breathe.
Oh, I’ve hit her hard.
I fight the voice inside me that wants to scream at what I’ve done.
Beside me, Thaden is looming even closer, his eyes wide and his hand still, his fingertips frozen against my upper arm.
For a moment, I think he’s going to jump to Asha’s defense and rebuke me.
Nearer to Asha, Gallium has taken a step back. Like me, he has silver hair and pale-green eyes, which have flown wide.
His lips have parted in apparent shock.
