Cassian took the letter from me and stood there, confused for a second.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
His cheeks pinked. “Nothing… I just don’t know that my courier has ever been to the Dregs. How will he find your mother? I hear the homes there are not numbered.”
They weren’t. And calling it a house was kind. It was a glorified stack of wood and moldy thatch roofing.
“Everyone knows everyone in the Dregs. He can ask where Brynn Brighton lives, and they will guide him.”
He nodded once and left with Jasok. Then it was me and Kaelric again.
My arm still hurt, but it was seventy-five percent better and no longer swollen or blue. I looked up to see Kaelric staring at me with a concentrated expression.
“What?” I snapped.
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“You sound like an old pissy woman. Just out with it.” I knew he wanted to say something.
“Fine! You have no magic. I can smell that. You’re skin and bones and likely the weakest fighter I will ever train with, and yet… she chose you.”
I tried not to let his words hurt me, but they sank into my soul and settled there.
He was the second man to call me skin and bones in the past few hours. Weak. No magic. He was right about all of it.
“She?” I assumed he was talking about the sword. But I wasn’t sure.
“Valkaryn.” His tongue rolled the R, and I didn’t recognize the language. “The King Killer.”
“And what do you know abouther?” I pressed the sword to my side, and I swear I felt a pulse of power go up my arm.
He peered at the weapon longingly. “Everything.”
He was so cocky, it was annoying.
“How can you knoweverythingabout a weapon no one has wielded in a thousand years?”
He looked sad then, desperate, as if he wanted to reach out and steal her from me.
“Because she was my father’s,manymoons ago, and next she’ll be mine.” It sounded like a threat, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up at his declaration.
I snort-laughed. “She was your father’s? That would make him over a thousand years old.”
He said nothing. And I realized I had no idea of how the wolfkin aged. It was a sobering thought. The man before me didn’t look a day over twenty-two. But was he really?
“I vow to you, Brynn Brighton, I will slay any Elite that stands in the way of your winning this trial.”
He held his fist out to me. A promise.
I glanced at the X mark on his chest. “I can’t trust a traitor. Your words are empty.”
I could see the rage build in his gaze, eyes flashing green to yellow, green toyellow.
“Nevertheless. My promise stands.” He shoved his hand back into his pocket and left the room.
I peered at the sword in my grip, examining it closely for the first time.
There, in the hilt of the weapon, was a howling wolf, and for the first time, I noticed a crown at its feet.
