Why pretend?
Unless–
My heart thudded in my chest.
Unless they were scared of something.
The crater?
Me?
Whoever wanted tokillme?
“Did you send them properly to your gods?” I asked, trying to wring answers from three stone-faced men. “Did you mourn them?”
Lioran stuck his nose higher in the air, but said nothing.
“I’m confused, Huntress.” Beren arched his open palms. “I thought this was a negotiation, not an opportunity to fling around accusations.”
“If you didn’t attack, then what are we even negotiating?”
“Why, more access to the crater’s powers, of course,” Beren said. “I’m sure my nephew told you everything about how he caved under pressure and chose to appease instead of facing us.”
I sensed it, in the shadows crowding his gaze and the way his smile sharpened, that Beren thought he was revealing some great conspiracy that would permanently taint Ryker’s image for me.
The great warrior who’d chosen diplomacy instead of destruction.
Who’d cared more about protecting his people than his pride.
“Yes,” I said simply.
His smile flickered.
“That boy’s a coward.” Edrin spit on the ground. “A bane on the Greycrest name.”
“For someone you call cowardly, you sure love to claimyournephew,” I said.
A strange territorial impulse took over me.
Ryker wasn’t justhisnephew.
He didn’t even use the Greycrest name.
Whatever semblance of family relations they had paled in comparison to the crater’s claim on Ryker.
Myclaim on him.
“Simply stating facts,” Beren said, voice now colder, but still masked. “He is my nephew and what he did is not, shall we say, becoming of the warrior he claims to be.”
My eyes narrowed further.
“Didn’t see any of you three facing me at the rim of the crater,” I said and looked at Dax over my shoulder. “Did we?”
“No, I would’ve remembered these faces,” Dax said with an eerie grin. “Glad I got the chance to sear them into my memory now. Who knows when we’ll bump into each other again. Accidentally, of course.”
“Boy, I will rip that tongue out of your throat,” Edrin said.
“Many have tried, none have succeeded. But I wish you luck in that particular murderous endeavor.”
