I drew back slightly, caught between asking and pretending I hadn’t noticed.
Lucette caught my expression and sighed. “The uniform they provided came with a fucking skirt. I’d rather wrestle a feral dragon in a thunderstorm than wear that.”
“So you borrowed pants,” I drawled.
She lifted one shoulder. “So, I borrowed pants.”
“From a giant?” Pip whispered, then immediately looked stricken. “I mean—not that there’s anything wrong with—I just meant they’re very—” She shrank smaller. “I’m going to stop talking now.”
Lucette’s eyes softened. “Pip, I once shifted into a bear in the middle of a formal dinner because someone told me the dress code wascreative. These pants are fine.”
Pip’s face brightened immediately. “Really? You’re a bear?”
“No. But you should see your face right now.” Lucette grinned.
Pip huffed but smiled despite herself.
I narrowed my eyes at thegianthovering over the stove. “You gave Lucette your pants, didn’t you, Calder Grimm?”
“She needed them more than I did,” he said without turning around, flipping something in the pan.
Lucette tightened her belt. “In my defense... the skirt they gave me wouldn’t have survived the first Mortalis competition.”
“Fashion disaster averted by Calder’s questionable sense of charity,” Pip declared. “This is going in my collection of favorite moments.”
“Mine too,” I said, winking at Pip.
Cal finally turned. “You don’t collect memories.”
“Pretty sure I do now.”
Over Calder’s excellent cooking, our conversation flowed carefully around topics that mattered without quite touching them. The weather. The quality of the tea. Whether the compound had always been this oppressive or if it was just the current occupants.
I had an opinion there, of course. I hadn’t always lived in Grimora. My parents and I lived in the Ash, near Envaris before the hunters came. My grandmother feared that living among the Erelith—the deposits of eternal flame that plagued the world—would expose us, especially since I alone was immune to their burn. So she fled to Grimora, which, at the time, offered a little more safety. The calm before the storm. Before Tiberius Veyne.
Pip, honey-drunk and tactless as only she could be, flittered over to Aureth and chirped, “Why did someone try to kill you, anyway? You just tell fortunes!”
The Oracle’s laugh was unexpected, bright and genuine. “Child, I am far more than a fortune teller. I am a promise of destruction should fate demand it. The bearer of hard truths.”
The kitchen went suddenly, completely silent. Even Lucette stopped pushing food around her plate.
“I’ve never been allowed to ask about the Furies,” Pip said, floating down to sit on the table in front of the Oracle. “Are you allowed to tell us? It’s okay if you aren’t.”
“You should have the freedom to ask questions that feed you knowledge necessary for your task, little one. So, listen well. This is not a story often told outside the Sanctuary.”
Riot shifted in his seat, drawing my attention, though he kept it subtle. He was acting strangely. Even now, sitting more rigidly.
“Once there were four sisters, not three.” The Oracle’s voice took on a quality like telling a story written a millennium ago. “Beautiful beyond mortal comprehension. Powerful beyond demon dreams. They were born of vengeance and crept into the Underworld.”
Pip’s hand shot up, flailing. When the Oracle paused, the little sprite practically vibrated with her question. “If they were in the Underworld, weren’t they already dead?”
“No.” The Oracle’s face turned toward Pip with uncanny accuracy, no doubt aided by the raven on her shoulder. “The four sisters were there, yes, but they were living beings. Breathing. Bleeding. Mortal in all the ways that matter, despite their power.”
She paused, letting that sink in. “They bargained with the demon princes, who promised partnership but delivered chains. The demons wanted servants, not equals. And unfortunately, the fourth sister discovered the betrayal. When she tried to warn her siblings, the fourth prince murdered her.”
The temperature in the kitchen seemed to drop. I watched Riot’s jaw tighten as Aureth spoke. When she mentioned the fourth brother, his hands gripped the table. I wondered if he was feeling the bond with his Fury. Not Aureth, but the one he’d come into this world bound to protect. The Fury who was waiting in the Sanctuary while he traveled without her. My mind raced. Could reuniting with his bonded be a big enough motive for him to be conveniently absent when someone got dumb enough to try killing the Oracle? Had he known it was coming?
“The three surviving sisters,” Aureth continued, “escaped in a storm of stolen magic, locking all four demon princes behind the veil and birthing magic into this world with fire and the vengeance they were known for.” Her voice carried weight now, the kind that pressed against your chest and made breathing difficult. “Magic was their anger made manifest. Everything you know, everything you can do with spells and runes and power exists because three grieving sisters refused to let their fourth sister’s death be meaningless.”
