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Zehr scoffed at the threat and brushed off his jacket. “I assumed he needed to lash out before he could forgive me.”
“Don’t speak to me like I’m a child,” I warned him.
“You just punched me like you’re a child,” Zehr drawled in return.
“And you’re all pissing me off,” Honor cut her in. “Let’s get to work.”
“We have to assume Joachim has Teris’s Scourge stone,” Branok said. “Both our fathers always carried theirs—unlike the other Elder Royals—and so if Joachim was able to get his hands on it when Teris died—”
I dared a glance at Talisyn. He didn’t react to his dead father’s name, but none of us reacted much. That didn’t mean anything.
“Joachim would have it now,” Branok finished. He smiled grimly. “It’s time for me to end him.”
“No.” I stepped forward. Better for him to hate the former friend that killed his father, than to hate himself for killing him. He might be full of patricidal impulses now, but he wouldn’t always feel that way. “I’ll kill Joachim. You’re his son—that was a sin to the old gods.”
Branok scoffed. “The old gods don’t have any hold on this land.”
“Ebba was one of the old gods,” Honor said.
I looked to her, and found her looking back at me.
“Let Arren do it,” Honor said. “If he can get there first.”
She smiled at me, and I wondered what she saw in me right now when I felt like I was still a monster.
Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if it was the Scourge that made me one.
CHAPTER29
Honor
Later that afternoon,I walked through the castle, hunting for Damyn. This haunted castle that was full of ruins and nightmares felt different, alive, now that almost all my men were here. Jaik and Caldren had to stay with their shifters, but I missed them terribly.
No matter what Branok and Lynx said, I worried about them on a mission where Joachim was likely to end up dead. We all knew he probably wouldn’t give the stone up without a fight. After Lynx had stolen his stone, this was the only one he could get his hands on, and he knew what powerful magic they held as well as Kallus.
I looked down at the hilt of the sword I was carrying, where Amily’s Scourge stone glittered like a sparkling egg. The sides of the stone were jagged and spiked, since the stone was a broken fragment of what had once been an orb.
There was one person I trusted the most to know how to deal with my men when they lied that they were fine.
As I was heading out of the castle—if I knew Damyn, he’d found his way out of doors to train—Zehr fell into step alongside me.
“I need to talk to Damyn.”
“Of course,” Zehr said. Then, abruptly, he grabbed my shoulders, pressing me into the stone wall of the castle. My first impulse was to fight back, but then I saw the way he was looking down at me, his dark eyes haunted. “Are you done with me now that you have them again?”
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Are you jealous? Because I’ll want to spend the night with the men I loved before you stole me away from them?”
He scoffed. “You came with me willingly.”
“To save Arren.”
“And now he’s saved. And you’re just keeping me around to break the Scourge curse.”
“Yes.” But I wasn’t sure if it was true. I had stolen the memory of how he had taken the crown so I could take it myself. I could steal his memories of Lysander’s deal, of that first wild breaking of the magic.
But I wanted the zombie king by my side.
“Hey,” Damyn shouted, striding toward us. “Get your hands off of her.”
