I scream it to myself while scrambling through my insides, sweeping through my veins, hunting those beads of luster—finding seven … ten …thirteentiny ones glimmering in the dim.
Not enough.
I gather them up, squish them down, and bog only the worst cracks, keeping hold of what’s left and tucking it somewhere safe.
“Come.” Black dots distort my vision of him glancing again at Rhordyn’s sword, before he gestures toward the chunks of meat piled on his plate. “You’re just in time for us to break our fasts together.”
My steps feel heavy as I move through the room, unbuckle Rhordyn’s sword, and gently rest it upon the polished stone floor. I drop into the seat at the table’s opposite end, not bothering to flick my hood back.
I stare at the hog. At the pear perched between its lifeless jaws.
At its charred and scored flesh.
Cainon kicks his leg off the arm of his chair and sits straight. “You’re very quiet, petal. Is everything okay?”
No.
I feel like his puppet—strings strung to my arms, legs, and heart. The blood of the man I love dripping from my hands.
“Perhaps your silence has something to do with that sword on the ground? Is there something you need to get off your chest?”
Another splintering sound, and I almost whimper, using what’s left of my remaining luster to bog the cleft in the dome containing my ravenous rage—though it still leaves it eggshell thin. The furious might sawing beneath it grinding it down from the inside out.
Wavering, I swallow thickly, catching the furrow between Cainon’s brows while soiled truths gather on my tongue, threatening to choke my airway if I don’t set them free.
His frown deepens, staredigging.
I squeeze my hand into a ball; the one with a cut that dripped a trail of blood.
That led—
“Did you …dosomething, Orlaith?”
Yes.
I killed the man I love.
“How did you obtain the Western High Master’s sword?”
I barely hear the words, deafened by the sound of those crystal domes popping—one by one—caving to the internal pressure swelling beneath their frail shape. To the sprouting,viningemotions that fill my chest with drowning sorrow and a crippling stab of pain. With a flush of gray morality and a twist of thorny rage that shreds my chest, threads up my throat, and coils on my tongue like a sitting serpent.
I draw a shuddered breath, blow it out.
Feel like the world’s rocking beneath me.
“Did you kill Rhordyn?”
Rhordyn …
His name flutters through me like a silver-winged butterfly, seeking somewhere to land. Perhaps a pretty flower to perch atop of.
But there’s just a graveyard of crystal splinters and thorny vines waiting topierce.
I’m sorry …
“Did you?”
The two short words come to me like a distant tug—repeating—and I realize my eyes have closed. I snap them open, waiting for the black dots to fade as I reach down, absorbing the hollow thump that pulses through me when I lift Rhordyn’s sword off the floor and set it upon the table.
