I stop, hovering in the threshold. “Good morning,” I greet.
“More like ‘good afternoon.’ You finally decided to drag yourself from his furs.” Not a question or statement. A condemnation she delivers with squared shoulders and quivering nostrils, as though she could smell something pungent on me. “You killed Cyphus.”
“Cyphus killed Cyphus.”
“The profa would never have happened if you weren’t here.”
I consider that and then reject it. Tage and Cyphus were heading toward a definite collision. My presence might have just hastened it.
I inhale, reaching for my composure. I motion to the basin. “Can I help you with that?”
“What you can do to help me isleave,” she hisses. I stare at her, uncertain if she means leave the room or leave here entirely. She must read some of my hesitation because she clarifies, “You need to leave this pride. Go and don’t come back.” She lifts a sopping wet pair of trousers from the tub and begins to wring them out.
I cross my arms. “How do you propose I do that? You think Tage is going to let me just walk away?”
She sneers at me, her eyes raking me in a way that makes me cross my arms tighter around myself. “Because you’re so very special? You think your magic cunny has trapped him? That’s right.” She nods furiously. “We all heard you, bleating like a goat in rut.”
My face flames, and I flinch. Not only because of her coarse speech, but because of the veracity of her words. I was loud—so was he—my throat even feels a little raw, my vocal cords unaccustomed to making noise. I certainly was not accustomed to emitting that kind of volume in my former life. There had been no reason to, after all. No one had been able to hear me.
Former life.I wince. There isn’t anythingformerabout that life. It’s still now. Still present. Still the life waiting for me in Penterra.
Once I join my family, invisibility will be my lot again. Unless I find my witch. I wince anew as I accept the unlikelihood of that. I could never find her before back in Isstad. I spent years trying. What are the chances I could find her now?
Danhy continues. “Now that he’s had you, he will not care if you take yourself off,human.” The wordhumanis uttered as the greatest, most vile insult. Because to her, it is. “In case you haven’t noticed, variety is not rich among us. For no other reason would he have lowered himself to bed you.”
I don’t bother pointing out that he is not above venturing into Penterra and consorting with humans as he’s done in the past. She must know that I’m not his first human lover. It doesn’t feel like the time to offer that argument. Hostility throbs from her...along with an undercurrent of something else.
The question nags at me, teeth nipping, leaving bloody little bites on my tender skin: Hassheever shared his furs? Occasionally perhaps? Her possessive attitude, the bitterness edging her expression, hints at that.
And yet it is none of my business who shared his furs in the past. Just as it will be none of my concern who shares his furs in the future. At the thought of that, I inhale a deep, jagged breath that hurts going down.
I refuse to let jealousy settle and sink and spread its poison through me. I cannot judge him. Not for his past and not for an undetermined future that doesn’t include me.
I could not begrudge him finding happiness with someone else. He deserves that. Especially as we do not belong in each other’slives, a truth everyone in this den knows. I will not be the solitary individual blind or stupidly resistant to the glaring truth of that.
Danhy waves vaguely. “Go. Vanish into the Crags. He won’t give you another thought, human.”
Footsteps sound behind me and I turn to see Merik advancing, his prismatic onyx eyes close enough to Tage’s to give my heart a small squeeze.
His gaze sweeps over both of us with a quickness that reminds me this one had been living an untamed existence just a short time ago. Of them all, he’s perhaps the most feral, the most unpredictable, the most connected to his dragon core, and the one most likely to kill me for simply crossing his path—like a baby adder whose bite is far more deadly than that of a fully formed adult.
I gulp a breath and resist the impulse to step back.
“Viggo told me to fetch a shovel and bucket to collect the ashes in the firepit,” he says.
With a curt nod, Danhy moves to fetch the items for him.
I step forward. “I’ll clean out the firepit.” It will give me something to do and remove me from this room...and Danhy.
She shrugs. Before passing the shovel and bucket into my hands, she holds onto them tightly, drawing my gaze back to her face. “Think hard on what I’ve said.” Her focus flicks to Merik’s watchful gaze, then back to me. She steps closer, whispering for my ears alone. “You’re just a pet. His plaything until he tires of you. Is that how you see your life? Have you no dignity?”
I pull back and respond evenly, not caring if Merik hears my words. “Don’t act as though you care about me. You’re not looking out for me.”
With a wary glance for Merik—apparently, shedoescare if he hears her—she whispers, “I can help you. Truly. I will help you leave this place. I’ll direct you on how to get down the mountains. Supplies. Warm clothes. I’ll see you well-equipped.”
I startle at her offer, her words—tempting, thrilling...frightening.
Suddenly escaping feels real and not a distant possibility. A true prospect. I could leave this place. I...could...leave.
