A chill in the flame, p.37
A Chill in the Flame, page 37
The thorn tore at her once more with another woman’s name on his lips. “They killed your partner?”
He rubbed at what might have been a budding headache, then looked at her with deadly seriousness. When he spoke, his voice was grave but was free from its hate. “No, Svea wasn’t my partner. She was my family, my best friend, my everything. I know what you’re going to say. I know what you’re going to think. And honestly, I understand how it sounds. I’d had her for six years, and it was she and I against the world. And I had no skills, no powers when I needed to defend her. I was so weak. I was just a teenager, and they were so cruel. I…”
She scoured his face, seeing only his pain.
“Svea was my dog.”
Dwyn’s jaw dropped open.
Tyr looked at his feet. “She was not just a dog. She was all I had. She deserved the world. She was smart, perfect, and loyal, and innocent. And those bastards deserve so much more than what’s coming for them.”
Ophir’s eyebrows shot high, shoulders straightening.
Cord-taut silence strung between the three.
Dwyn’s eyes and lips mirrored one another in near-perfect circles of shock. “There’s no way…”
His lips pulled back in a sneer. He spun on her. “Shut your goddess-damned mouth, you absolute bitch. You want to play with fire? Try me.”
Ophir reeled. “You want the power because…”
He pressed his eyes together as he thought about the best way to respond. He looked at her finally, choosing honesty. “Vengeance fuels a lot of us, princess. Spite is as good a reason as any, don’t you think? Because I don’t think those men deserve to draw breath. The psychopaths who held me down and tortured and killed a dog for no reason other than fucked-up cruelty? They deserve to meet the fate they doled out. They’ve sealed their fate, and I’m on a mission to deliver it. Don’t you think the people responsible for Caris’s death deserve the same?”
“I do, but…”
“I don’t have a sister,” he said. “I don’t have parents or siblings or anyone I care about. I don’t have a community. I had a dog, and she was my goddess-damned world. Yes, that’s why I want to be able to do what your stupid witch does. And no, I don’t talk about it. I don’t think my vengeance is Dwyn’s, or Anwir’s, or anyone’s business. They shouldn’t get to determine whether the men deserve to die. I know they do. She’ll be avenged. I want to be the one to do it. I want to look in their eyes when they die the same way they killed her.”
“For your dog?”
His challenging glare remained. “For my dog.”
The silence that stretched was one of the single most uncomfortable pauses in the history of the written word. Ophir didn’t know how to categorize any of the information she’d been given. She knew why Dwyn had tried to alienate her affections for Tyr—the girl was openly possessive. That part didn’t shock her. What did surprise her was the way the thorn had dislodged, healing itself as if it had never been there in the first place. The idea that Tyr loved another woman had injured her more than she’d been able to absorb. The knowledge that his murderous rage was fueled by man’s best friend was…well, she knew neither what to think nor how to feel.
“Say you’re sorry,” Ophir said quietly, looking at Dwyn.
Dwyn swallowed, lips twisting off to the side as if fighting the urge to argue. She balled her fists at her side, visibly struggling against whatever it was she wanted to say.
Ophir repeated, “Apologize. You did this to hurt him because you were treating me like I’m a toy that only one of you gets to play with. That was cruel, Dwyn. Both to him, and to me. Now, tell him you’re sorry, and stop being a bitch.”
Dwyn inhaled sharply, searching Tyr’s face. She shook her head, black hair dancing around her shoulders like a ghost haunting her. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?” Her voice dropped to the register barely above a whisper. “All this over a fucking dog.”
“Dwyn!” Ophir repeated.
She closed her eyes against the scold. She wouldn’t have let anyone else speak to her this way, but she had a vested interest in maintaining Ophir’s favor, and Ophir knew it. The room had seen Dwyn go all in when she should have folded. She’d gambled in an attempt to regain the high ground between herself and Tyr in the princess’s eyes, and she’d lost, badly. All of this and more was clear on her face. It wasn’t guilt. It wasn’t shame. It was the brand of regret that only came from someone who’d been punished.
Dwyn’s eyes dropped to the floor. Silence stretched between the three of them, triangulating their positions around the room while discomfort hugged its points. “It’s wrong, what they did to your dog. I’m sorry.”
“…and?”
Dwyn exhaled slowly. “And I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.” She raised her eyes, then asked “But can you blame me? How was I supposed to guess this woman he was avenging was a dog? How could I—”
“Dwyn!”
“Right, right.” She returned her sights to Tyr, and for the first time, there was no hate in her large, dark eyes. They weren’t exactly kind, but a lack of enmity was a major improvement. Her posture softened as she did her best to conjure sincerity. “I’ve said and done a lot of things to you that I don’t regret. And I do still usually wish I could kill you. I think you’re the worst. But…I would have wanted to murder anyone who had hurt my dog, too. And I’m…” She struggled with the last word, rolling it around her tongue like a child unable to swallow their vegetables. “Sorry.”
“Wow, Dwyn,” he said, voice tart with vinegar. “That was convincing.”
“I tried.”
Ophir remained trained on Dwyn. “Well, could you try not being a bitch in the first place? I’m not trying to get rid of either of you anymore. It would mean a lot to me if you stopped trying to rip each other’s throats out. I hate to pull the trump card, but isn’t tonight supposed to be about comforting me? I have something of a major life event in six hours. I’m not going to get enough sleep as it is. Can the two of you try to hold it together?”
Tyr relaxed into the wall. This wasn’t a secret he would have shared willingly, Ophir knew, but it was out. They knew. Perhaps he understood that the same sensitivity that made him a target for three dead fae walking might very well be the same sensitivity that earned him judgment now, but he was who he was. It was injustice against something innocent. It wasn’t fair, and the men deserved to pay.
“Where’s Sedit?” Dwyn asked suddenly.
Ophir’s lips parted, mind flying to her own beloved hound. She pouted, looking around the room that was empty without her hound. “I didn’t think it would be safe for him in the city, but he crossed the desert with me. I hope he’s okay.” She winced as she returned to Tyr. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”
He waved her away. “You don’t have to apologize for worrying about your…vague hound. I know you care about it, and I won’t get between you and your pet. Even if I do think it’s a nightmare embodied.”
Dwyn made it clear she was ready to stop talking about Tyr. They all knew it would win her no more friends if they remained on the topic. Her tone stayed dry as she spoke of Sedit. “If he’s anything like your snake, he’s going to be just fine.”
“What do you mean?”
They explained how they’d tried to kill her serpent, only to watch it knit itself together. Ophir was just as shocked to hear this as they had been to witness it. Dwyn began to make a comment about how, if Ophir made all the dogs, then Svea would still be alive.
Tyr looked like he’d been slapped.
“For fuck’s sake, Dwyn.” Ophir gaped at the woman.
Genuine regret rearranged her features. The joke had presumably been born of good intentions for winning favoritism, but it had promptly backfired. She was on a losing streak. Instead, she redirected to painting a very graphic visual of the enormous, black-blooded snake they’d tried to kill in the woods.
“But on the cliff!” Ophir protested. “Harland beheaded the thing. Didn’t he?”
Dwyn cast her an apologetic look. “We rolled it immediately into the ocean, remember? We didn’t give it the chance to self-heal. We could try a few experiments with one of your creatures if you want?”
Ophir recoiled. “Are you suggesting I make something just so we can cut it up? That’s sadistic, even for you.”
“It’s for science.”
“Science can wait.” Ophir sat down on the bed, the world’s gravity pushing down on her with exhausting intensity. “Do either of you need something to eat? Should I get anything? You’ll have to forgive me, but this is all uncharted territory. Tyr, I have no idea how to comfort you. Dwyn, you have been a bitch. He’s right. I don’t really know what to do or how to play hostess in someone else’s palace on the eve of my debut as executioner. I’m sorry if I’m not on my best behavior.”
“Were these not good?” Tyr picked up one of the half-eaten cookies. There was something off about his voice, though she assumed it was something to do with having his shattered heart strewn on display for all to see.
“They were fine. I just wasn’t sure if they’d all have the same filling. They do. I’m not in the mood for orange marmalade.”
No one knew how to proceed, but perhaps that was okay. Maybe there was no right way to act the night before one was set to kill a man. Dwyn sat next to her, looping her arm around the princess’s back. She ignored the idle chatter and returned to the pending execution. “Are you tired? Nervous?”
“Anxious, mostly. I want to do it. I want to scrub him off the face of the earth, no matter how big or small his role in Caris’s death was. He’s still a part of it.” She rubbed her arms almost as if she were cold, despite the warmth of the night. “I doubt I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”
Dwyn pressed in closely. “I can help with that.”
Ophir’s eyes widened as she looked to where Tyr still stood. She hoped Dwyn was talking about how she used to hold her in order to help her with her nightmares. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to tackle the inappropriateness of the siren implying anything else while Tyr stood arms’ lengths away.
He made a face telling them that he’d understood exactly what Dwyn meant. “I’ll give you two some, um, privacy. I’ll go find the kitchen. I could use a few minutes to myself anyway. Maybe I’ll bring something that isn’t orange-flavored.”
“Tyr,” Dwyn began, frowning, “I am sorry. About…”
“I get it.”
“Great.” She smiled. “Bygones? Over that whole thing? With the…With your, I mean…”
“Stop talking about it, please.”
“Super. Don’t come back,” Dwyn called after him with her light, singsong voice as he stepped into the place between things.
***
Food was the last thing on Tyr’s mind.
Dwyn’s pettiness clung to him with sticky, tar-like insistence. Her attempt to alienate Ophir from him over Svea had been cruel, but it was hardly the most dangerous thing about her. If anything, fighting offered the bit of normalcy he’d needed to distract himself from outing her. He needed to focus on the issue at hand.
No, not there. He eased another door shut. Goddess dammit, how many rooms does this place have?
It took him several tries and pressing his ear into numerous doors before he found what he was looking for. Tyr quietly opened the bedroom door and slipped in just in time to see Harland go rigid. The guard scanned the empty air in search of the disturbance. Samael stood near him against the wall, hands in his pockets as the men discussed Berinth. If they’d been asleep, he wasn’t sure if he would have had any hope of finding them.
Their gazes flew to the opened door, eyes straining against the dim, flameless fae lights for evidence of an intruder.
Though Harland’s room was far smaller and more sparsely decorated, it maintained the high ceilings throughout the palace. If Ophir was nervous, then Harland was a wreck. Tyr looked at the doorframe but was dismayed to find a lack of runes. They’d have to stay quiet.
He closed the door behind him before stepping back into visibility.
Harland was on his feet in an instant. Tyr wasn’t sure what kept him quiet, but the man didn’t go for his sword, nor did he cry out. Perhaps it was Samael’s lack of reaction that kept the guard from lunging for him. Harland’s hand stilled against the hilt at his waist, tense and ready.
“Nice to officially meet you,” Tyr said, wondering if Harland recognized him from their brief meeting at Guryon’s estate. His guess was yes a Sulgrave fae who’d escaped with his princess moments before he was knocked unconscious was hard to forget. “My name is Tyr. We have a problem.”
Forty-eight
12:30 AM
6 hours and 15 minutes until execution
“I knew it.”
Tyr’s laugh was humorless. “I very much doubt that. I didn’t figure it out myself until about twenty minutes ago.” He knew he was at a disadvantage. These men neither knew nor trusted him, and Harland certainly didn’t like him. Tyr walked to the desk and turned the chair around, swinging his leg over it to straddle it while he continued facing them. It was meant to put them at ease, posing in a way that would leave him disadvantaged in a fight. This was not how one sat if they needed to throw a punch.
He did his best to look relaxed, but his ears hadn’t stopped ringing since taking a bow from Dwyn in the dungeon. They’d barely survived their attacks on one another, and his adrenaline wouldn’t let him forget it. He wondered if her heart was also thundering, if her stress hummed through her body, if she felt hot and cold at the same time as if under the threat of an oncoming flu, if her eyes danced with the dizzying stars of nauseating, impending unconsciousness. Probably not. He was beginning to doubt she felt anything at all.
Harland stood firm. “I did know it. I knew from the moment I met Dwyn that she was not Ophir’s friend. She knew what Firi could do. Somehow, she knew. She was behind this. I just couldn’t have fathomed…”
“How deep the rabbit hole went?”
Samael followed suit and took a seat. Harland shot an uncertain look at his companion, then relaxed, though not fully. Samael leaned back in his chair, twisting his lips as he considered the information. “If this Dwyn person is behind Berinth, why is he in Tarkhany? Why isn’t he in Sulgrave?”
“Because Tarkhany has motive for revenge. Not only did she create and frame so-called Lord Berinth, but she crafted a failsafe. Tarkhany was primed to be framed for Caris’s murder, should her Berinth scheme be discovered. It’s why she sent him to the farthest corner of the desert before her hold on him came to an end,” Tyr said.
Samael pressed further. “You’re saying this with certainty. What do you know?”
With little to lose and Ophir’s life at stake, Tyr told them everything.
He explained that he could disappear into the space between things. He told them of the Blood Pact, of the tattooed bond and its restraints, of following Dwyn down across the Frozen Straits. He told them of the shapeshifter in the gardens and the conversation of stolen lands. He told them that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Dwyn wanted power enough to do anything. The others looked on with abject horror as he explained her borrowed powers, her ability to drain, and the trail of husks she left in her wake.
He’d known she was a witch, but he’d made one critical error. He’d severely underestimated just how wicked she was. Dwyn wasn’t just motivated to win Ophir’s heart. She was conniving enough to create the situation that had required Ophir’s need for hope, for a friend, for a lifeline in the first place. Ophir had been in dire need of salvation, and Dwyn had offered it.
She wouldn’t get her own hands dirty, of course. It would have been too easy to cut her out if someone had seen a girl from Sulgrave plunging a dagger into Caris’s abdomen. But what if someone were clever? What if they were smart enough to understand that Berinth wasn’t a lone actor? What if they traced him back and found that such a name had existed for only two years, that such a title, such a man was entirely new to the continent? Had she really thought no one would check?
…had no one checked?
Tyr had been thinking it through in the moments he’d seen her panic, in the minutes when she thought she was about to die. He’d assembled the puzzle pieces when she’d offered her power and when she hadn’t denied her role as puppet master. He hadn’t given her enough credit, but she’d given him too much. She thought he’d figured it out and had snuck away to inform Ophir.
She’d been wrong.
Her powers had their limits, of course. She could brainwash a man to a point. But she’d have to either eliminate anyone who’d ever known Berinth before he took on his new name or come up with a contingency plan, should he be discovered. Alas, their journey had led them to Tarkhany. Two Sulgrave fae on two horses traipsing across the blistering desert—a woman who always knew it was where she’d end up, and a man who was just along for the ride because she couldn’t kill him, and he wanted the powers of shadow, flame, and ice.
“You have to go back,” Samael said to Tyr.
“What?” Harland’s brows nearly disappeared into his hair. His first word came out a bit too loud before he controlled his temper. “No! We need to go in there and secure Ophir. If she’s still with the witch—”
“You need to know,” Tyr said, cutting Harland off. “Ophir is not helpless. I know you see in her a certain light because you’re her guard, but she is immensely powerful. I don’t just mean that she can manifest. She crossed the desert on her own. She survived the worst horror a person can endure. Perhaps vengeance isn’t the most noble of fuels, but she isn’t defenseless, and she isn’t weak. She’s resilient and more competent than you or anyone around her gives her credit for.”
