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There’s a flash of hostility. “As a man, I doubt you’d understand.”
Noé waves his sister’s nonsense away. “What did the woman have to say?”
“She said nothing,” I grit out, heading for the door, then go back and rip the fur off of her body, leaving her with only the woolen blanket that she’s lying on.
“Nothing?” Noé sputters. “She d–”
“My deve!”
I ignore Yvette.
“Luka!”
That pulls me up short and I turn to glare at her.
Does she heed the warning? No.Instead of shutting her mouth, she adds a pinch of pleading to her next words. “Where are you going with that? And she needs clothing and water for bathing.”
“She getsnothinguntil I have her cooperation.”
I don’t wait for a response. I can’t. The thought of having to punish Yvette for insolence turns my already sour stomach.
“You can’t let her get away with that,” Noé says, following me out.
“Your sister is –”
“Not my sister,” he says with disgust. “The girl.”
At the stairs, I stop in front of the recruit on duty. “No one but Yvette comes up or down these stairs. Am I understood? No one.”
“Yes, Deve.”
Noé and I make our way down and he continues to henpeck me. “You can’t let it stand.”
I stop off at my chamber and pitch the fur inside before I head back for the stairs. “And what would you have me do? Pull out my future bride’s finger nails? Or perhaps you’d have me tether her to a whipping post in the courtyard?”
“That’s where she’s headed anyway.”
At the bottom, my arm shoots out to stop him, and when I see he’s being serious, something in me snaps. My fist is against his jaw before I even realize what I’m doing. And that first crack is so satisfying that I go back for another. And another. There’s a reason that I’m deve and no one has dared challenge me in the past year and a half of my rule. All of my elite warriors are strong and skilled, but it takes a very singular mindset to fight like your life depends on it every single time. My father instilled that in me from a very young age. Some see it as savagery, I see it as survival.
Noé doesn’t allow the fourth shot to connect, but he’s on the defensive in the small space of the hall.
“A little old for brawling, aren’t you?”
Somewhere underneath my anger and sick satisfaction, I recognize my uncle’s voice.
“He’s right,” Noé pants.
Getting him against the wall, I shove my forearm across his throat, trusting that he won’t pull a dagger and sink it between my ribs. Unwise, really. Suddenly it comes to me that Rina’sI’m readyisn’t as crazy as it sounded. Sometimes life is beyond exhausting.
My Uncle Teo’s wry inquiry of, “Are you finished yet? I’d like a word with you, Luka,” echoes against the stone.
Noé tenses at my uncle’s lack of respect and just like that we’re back on the same side. As my arm falls, I turn to my father’s brother and Eldon’s sire. Teo was my father’s Second for many years and he despises that I don’t come to him for advice, that he’s been made irrelevant by the younger generation. Short-sighted or not, I refuse to taint my rule with anything related to my father.
“Pardon?” I ask, redirecting my savagery into the question.
“My deve,I’d like a moment of your time.”
With the heat of violence still running through my blood, I doubt I have the patience for Teo right now, but he’ll continue to seek me out until he gets what’s on his mind out in the open.
