Page 95 of Revealing Fate

Murder, white hot, pulsed through Kal’s blood at the thought of his uncle’s hands on Kitty. Devereux Santaire was close to him as a brother in blood and bone, but in that moment, he regretted telling him about his uncle all those years ago. Not even Santhe or Cinah knew.

“I told you. She’s not going back.”

Adder drained his whiskey and pushed up from his seat. He clapped Kal on the shoulder as he passed. “Then you had best start thinking up a workaround, mate. If ever a mortal could outwit a god, it’d be you.”

Chapter 35

A THIEF AND A LIAR

FELÍNE FED SIG THROUGH THE corral’s wooden fencing. His needy velvet lips pressed over her open palm, searching for additional kernels of grain. The bucket of oats sat forgotten by his front hooves. He much preferred to take treats from her hands. She wasn’t complaining. The temperamental beast was docile as a newborn lamb now that he had gotten his way, and Felíne enjoyed his quiet company. Sig even permitted the unnamed wolf to settle inside the tree line and watch them so long as he didn’t approach the fence.

“You need a name,” she informed the wolf. He watched her with glowing yellow eyes. Eyes like the grimalkin. Felíne shuddered. Sig snorted, sensing her disquiet, scattering oats into the grass. The memory of the pit resurfaced, her untenable fright surging despite the absence of immediate danger. Fear was funny that way.

Felíne remembered the first time Mender Alcuin had secreted her to one of his infirmaries in the city. She’d been fourteen. Her panic attacks had all but faded into distant musing. Yet when she’d stepped across that threshold into a patient’s room and seen a strange shurii woman waiting patiently in the examination chair, she’d frozen. Her anxiety rushed back like water around a breaking dam. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Strangers were dangerous. Wasn’t that what she’d always been told? What if the woman knew who she was? What if she were a member of the Cozened? What if she tried to take Felíne? She couldn’t let that happen. She held too much responsibility. Everyone was counting on her.

Mender Alcuin had guided Felíne to an empty room and talked her through her breathing until her racing heart had slowed, her shallow breaths became regular once more, and the vice clamping her chest in its anxious grip had loosened.

Then he led her back to the patient’s room. Felíne had balked, looking up at him in confusion. He’d smiled and said, “However will you master your fear, dear one, if you refuse to face it?”

Felíne glanced back at the wolf and held its unblinking gaze. His silver belly was pressed into a bed of clover, pink tongue lolling.

“Grim,” she said to him. “We’ll call you Grim.”

Both animals perked their ears. Felíne turned to see the woman, Santhe, exit the cabin and make for the dense hedge that separated Kal’s property from the darkened interior of the forest. Felíne stepped back from the corral, dusting her hands of grain.

Santhe noticed Felíne and paused. Then she changed her direction and approached, cold and distrustful. Felíne couldn’t blame her. Oh, how she missed Imogen’s steadfast companionship.

“Are you really who you say you are?”

Felíne nodded.

Santhe’s focus narrowed.

Felíne tried to find some irritation or anger to fortify her, but she only felt sadness. She missed her friend and wished she were meeting Kal’s under better circumstances. “I don’t fault you for distrusting me. I’m only sorry that I’ve earned it.”

“My…friend is still there. In Asteros,” Santhe murmured. The way she said ‘friend’ made Felíne think they were more than that. “We risked so much to get Railah out of the city. And now? To realize we took the Prima instead?”

Compassion welled. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen. It was a misunderstanding.”

Santhe’s brown eyes sharpened to splinters. “Yet you said nothing.”

“I didn’t,” Felíne agreed. “I did not know Kal’s intentions. I feared for my life.”

“Selfish,” Santhe muttered.

There was the irritation she’d been seeking.

“Selfish?” Felíne bristled. “A fear for my life is a fear for yours. For your friend’s. For every single shurii living.” Santhe struggled to hide her surprise. Felíne continued. “Do you have hope for a future? For children, perhaps? Grandchildren? If anything happens to me, it’s not just me who suffers. I may be many things, Santhe, but selfish has never been one of them.”

The space between Santhe’s brows creased deeply. “You really believe the prophecy, then?”

“It is not blind faith,” Felíne said. “It is certainty. If I don’t return…”

They could hold Asteros accountable for every wrong ever committed, and it would all be for naught. They’d be doomed regardless.

The door to the cabin creaked, and Santhe glanced over her shoulder. “And Kal?” she asked. “It’s clear the two of you care for one another, despite this…complication. He believes he can keep you.”

Felíne’s heart squeezed. “Kal will accept reality,” she said, though her voice had lost some of its conviction. “He must.”