Granted.
“It’s her. Any doubt I might’ve had was squashed the moment she told the High Chancellor of The Fade he has a microcock—and at her own murder hearing.”
There’s a stretch of silence before Pyrok chuckles, snatching some random chalice off the table. “I’ll toast to that.” He drains the vessel, slamming it back on the table. “Hate that dusty old piece of shit.”
“If she has no recollection,” Veya says with slow, steady precision, “how do you explain the fact that she calls herself by her middle name?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know, Veya.”
“Then how is she here? Alive?”
“I don’t know that either.”
A line forms between her brows—the stain of frustration I feel in my marrow. “Well, what are her first memories of this life?”
Another shake of my head.
Veya finally loosens from Grihm’s grip, the latter crossing his arms over his broad chest, gaze firmly cast on my sister stalking toward me with war waging in her bloodshot eyes. “Do you know anything?”
Fuck all.
“The only time I tried to pry, she compared my cock to the size of my brain,” I bite out. “Unfavorably.”
Some of the anger drains from Veya’s eyes, the corner of her mouth twitching as Pyrok chuckles. I slice him a glare, and he drowns the sound in another guzzle of someone else’s mead.
He won’t be laughing when she cuts those sharp teeth on him.
Agni hands Pyrok the purple-blotched cloth. “Wave this in front of her nose every few moments. I don’t want her rousing mid-etching, and your hands look like they need something better to do than drink everyone else’s mead.”
“Agni, you know perfectly well how good I am at multitasking,” Pyrok says, flashing her a grin.
Agni’s cheeks flush, and she shakes her head, muttering beneath her breath.
“Where did you find her?” Veya asks, seemingly immune to the shit coming out of Pyrok’s mouth.
“I stumbled upon her at the Hungry Hollow, but her face was half-hidden. I thought I was going mad.”
Still do.
“I later found her rotting in a cell.” I scrub my beard as Agni paints a bonding agent over the snowy flesh I’ve kissed more times than I can count. “A Truthtune confirmed she had no prior recollection of me before our chance encounter. None.”
“So she doesn’t know about—”
“No,” I say, cutting Veya off.
She opens her mouth, closes it, shaking her head. “And you’re certain you watched Slátra—”
“On her life,” I growl, my words bouncing off the walls like one of Rygun’s rumbling exhales.
Saw it. Lived with the bruising memory for the past one hundred twenty-three phases—while sleeping and awake.
I’ll never outlive the vision nor the jagged cleft of pain that broke through my chest at the sight. Even with her here, on this table, breathing …
I’ll wake up from this utopia eventually. I’m sure of it. I’ll jerk up off my pallet and realize it was all one vicious, beautiful dream.
Veya moves around the table and tucks Raeve’s hair back from her pointed ear—the one that’s clipped into. “She bears the southern mark of a null.” She frowns, inspecting both lobes. “No beads. Not even a hole for them to hang off. Do the Creators still speak with her?”
“Clode and Bulder,” I say, crossing my arms over my ravaged chest. “Though I’m not sure about the other two.”
Straightening, she mimics my stance—twice as fierce but half the size. “Her veins flow with Neván blood, Kaan. And she wears no song-silencing Aether Stone. If Tyroth finds out she’s here, he’ll be blowing flames upon our doorstep before we’ve had a chance to properly prepare. He’d be stupid not to, and we both know he’s far from stupid.”
“I’m well aware of the risks.”
She cocks her head to the side. “Well … what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. But if you want to talk about war strategy, now is not the time.”
I’m tired.
Angry.
Bleeding.
Hungry.
I have a million things to attend to and only one I’m interested in.
My gaze flicks to Raeve, Agni beside her mixing tinctures, preparing for the procedure—
“Are you afraid she’ll see him and … remember him?” Veya asks, her narrowed stare like iron arrows shot straight through my chest. “Leave you again? That the note was true?”