Page 41 of Season Warriors & Wolves

He was the first to break our locked gaze when he looked over at Fren’s dismantled body and shook from rage and pain and grief and whatnot.

He raised hand to wrap around my throat and squeezed hard enough to cut all air from my lungs. “Next time I throw you in with my snakes, I’ll make sure to have starved them for months.”

“I am already in it,” I rasped breathlessly. “Now, are you quite done? If you’re not going to bite, let me go. This is enough family time for me today.”

Even though he had let go, I could still feel the mark of his fingers on my skin. It hurt to swallow, and it hurt to breathe, but then again, he’d done worse to me.

Satisfied, I strutted out of the throne room, humming to myself. “Hush, little baby, don’t say a word, Papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird.” I gave Melanthe a smile when I brushed past her. “And if that mockingbird don't sing, Papa’s going to buy you a diamond ring.”

Demir’s eyes trailed me all the way down the corridor, not once leaving mine.

Least to say, I was satisfied. Especially when I saw the sly smiles the Isjordian guards wore when I walked past them to my room. Their heads lowered, bowing before me.

Yet…I felt so dull. Grey. Hollow.

So tired.

I was so tired.

It wasn’t until I found Nissa’s mother sitting at the edge of my bed with a tray of tea in her hands that I collapsed to my knees, attempting to drown the silent sobs threatening to rip my throat that burned worse than hellfire. I dug my fingers on the rug beneath me, trying to keep a promise I’d broken so often after I’d given it to the man I loved—to the man who would wear my pain and hurt with me, and for me. The man who had lost his mother, too. The man I couldn’t hold in my arms as he had held me when the world had taken from me. The man I was starving to touch, to breathe in, to comfort.

When Nissa’s mother wrapped her arms around me, it broke something I’d tried to hold from breaking. I cried on her chest till I shattered every inch of strength I had tried to preserve to avenge my sister. How many more did I have to avenge? How much longer did I have to grieve loss for? How much longer did I have to keep losing?

The old woman sighed, rubbing a soft palm to my back. She brushed her fingertips on my neck and her jaw trembled as she spilled silent tears for me. “This world is so cruel to you, child.”

“It wants my anger.”

“We either die angry or live long enough to know it was really grief to start with. Grief heals. You can heal it, child. Let the word take from you, but don’t let it take you because of your anger.”

Why not, that voice purred at the back of my mind. What is there left to lose?

So much.

So, so much.

“Shut up,” I murmured. “Shut up.”

Time. I had bought Kilian the time he would have lost. While he would bury Driada, father was burying Fren. I had not just killed his child, I’d possibly killed an alliance between Elias and him. Father could not afford to lose Elias. People trusted him. People loved him, respected and looked up at him, more so now that he’d taken his father’s spot.

The new heir of Venzor had not spared me a single glance and it was enough to tell me that father was looking for blame for what had happened that day—him probably being the first suspect. A calculation I had not made.

Kilian would figure it out how to take father down before he could raise the guardian. Father was waiting for him to make the first move. Waiting to catch him knowing he had just the right bait. He’d even waited to retrieve the Vrammethen piece last. I was glad Kilian knew better and that he mostly reasoned with his brain and not his heart.

Though priests in Isjord were known to keep it simple during funerals, this one did indeed not keep it simple. For at least an hour he had praised and raised all sorts of prayers for a woman who was not even blessed, let alone Krig blessed. Had Fren been alive, she would have loved to know, so there is that.

By the time the last lines of Eirlys liber were recited, a thick blanket of snow had covered all the attendants. Except for my father. The man was steaming from anger, hot enough to not let a pellet of snow set on him.

He had not spoken a word to anyone. He chose to speak to me, however and unfortunately. “I tried to raise a soldier, make you the pinnacle of power, but you became a monster who slays its own kin mercilessly.”

Touching, really. “Became?” I asked, throwing the white rose on Fren’s casket and turning in my seat to face him. “I am all your doing. From the way I walk, talk and even the way I breathe. I am what you made. You emptied me of feel. You marked me with pain. You fed me hate. You taught me rage. I. Am. All. You.”

Beat her till she cannot feel a kick anymore. Break her right hand so she can learn to use her left. Break both her legs so she can learn to stand on pain. Make her bleed till her blood turns black. Make her bleed till she forgets to rely on it to live.

Break. Take. Ruin.

It was all he had done.

Every scar on my body reminded me of it, what I was beneath them remained the wound he’d made me to be. “You have never humanised me, father. Why should I humanise you?”