Page 34 of A Frozen Pyre (Villains #2)

Ophir’s world spun. “It wouldn’t matter. I won’t sleep with Ceneth. Is that what you’re afraid of, Tyr? Fuck me. Give me a Sulgrave baby. Let’s show Farehold and Raascot exactly how willing I am to do my duty to unify the continent.”

He huffed impatiently. “Will you let me finish?”

“What!”

He dragged his fingers slowly through his dark hair. “The rings intended for your wedding? The ones your father is presenting as gifts?”

Ophir rolled her eyes at the memory of the bands with bitter irritation. “They’re meant to strengthen bonds, yes. He wants Ceneth as an ally, should war befall him. There’s no honor in the rings.”

“It’s not just that.” Tyr said each word carefully. “The rings would fuse the two of you together.”

A long silence echoed between them like a hollow word ringing through a cavern.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying”—he scrunched his face—“it wouldn’t just strengthen your bond.

That wouldn’t be enough to ensure Farehold against a war party from Tarkhany.

They’re looking for absolute devotion. They’re looking for certainty.

What one wants, the other wants. When one dies, the other dies.

They want an heir, yes, but it’s more than that.

Farehold needs to know that your minds will become one in the same. ”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“His will would fade into yours. But it’s more than that.”

She gaped at him with horror, asking, “It’s more than what?”

“Clearly, your father knows neither of you want this union. Maybe Eero sees the gift as a kindness. Perhaps he thinks stripping Ceneth’s true free will would help to soften your path.

Farehold means to make you…one. There will be no way to know where Ceneth ends and where Ophir begins.

If Eero knows that you and Ceneth are both reluctant to take the union, between the fusion and the fertility, you’ll be so intertwined, you won’t have a choice. ”

“I won’t sleep with him,” Ophir snarled.

“It’s not just Cybele and her gift. With the manufactured objects Eero brought… All you have to do is marry him. With those rings on your fingers, you’ll both disappear.”

***

“Talk to me!” Dwyn demanded. She’d pushed her way into Suley’s room once more, anger boiling over as if she was little more than a neglected teakettle left to scream.

Suley’s lips quirked up serenely. She reminded Dwyn of those lost to the addiction of the poppy haze as her eyelids drooped. “It’s so quiet.”

“We had a deal, Suley!” Dwyn’s voice cut through the cold stones of the third-floor bedroom, echoing off the corners and filling the space like thunder and lightning all at once.

Suley’s smile was slow, her eyes glazed and distant. “And I told you everything. Everyone in that room—”

“It’s not possible.” Enraged, Dwyn spun toward the table. She battled against the urge to flip it on its side. Her fingers dug into the wooden surface. Tiny splinters threatened to shove their spear-like shapes beneath her nails.

She grunted as she shoved off from the table. “What can they possibly know?”

“Tyr told them,” Suley said simply.

“Impossible. He’s just arrived, as far as they’re concerned. When could he have possibly told them?”

Suley wandered to the window, leaning toward the birds that had rested beneath it.

She picked up a single cage and carried it from her bedchamber.

She smiled at the lutist, asking the musician to begin the process of carrying the birds from her room.

The scent of cloves and eucalyptus seemed to lessen ever so slightly, as if her first breath of calm air in decades had allowed the perfume to dissipate.

She informed him that once he was finished, she would ensure he was compensated for whatever the expected duration of his stay might have been.

The young man hurried off, rose-colored bird in hand while it chirped maddeningly at the brethren it left behind.

Dwyn looked down at her hand, fingers twitching at the urge to drain Suley simply for fucking up her entire goddess-damned life.

“I can only hear what they’ve thought near me,” Suley said.

“I have no idea when, or why, or the context. I heard a voice echo through the heads of Samael and Harland. Harland told Eero. I, of course, told Zita. I expect she told Hassain, though I don’t spend much time with the man.

We all know who you are, and what you’ve done.

They know you are Berinth, and Berinth is you.

Are you wondering why King Eero doesn’t fear you?

Why he hasn’t tried to eliminate you? Yes, I assume that’s where your thoughts would spiral at this stage.

He knows you’re less of a threat if you’re unaware. ”

Dwyn stumbled backward toward the door.

“Don’t be dramatic,” Suley said as she hoisted another birdcage from the wall and carried it toward the corridor.

“I believe they’ve known since Tarkhany, yet nothing has happened.

Besides, they believe the problem will resolve itself as soon as Ophir and Ceneth are fused.

Their bond will nullify your influence. Clearly, no one plans to tell Ophir. ”

“Ophir isn’t my problem.”

Suley paused with the third cage in her hand.

She quirked her head for a moment, straining her ears.

She smiled. “Ah, that’s nice. I listened, and nothing came.

I will admit, I’m curious as to why you don’t worry about the princess, but then again, I don’t care.

You gave me what I asked, and I’ve given you your weight in diamonds when it comes to information.

It’s not my business. Care for her as you will. ”

“There has to be something you aren’t telling me,” Dwyn insisted.

Suley considered this, fourth cage now in her hands. Her lip puckered as she nodded.

Dwyn gripped her shoulders, fingers digging into the bare upper arms just above where the cuff cut into one bicep. Once again, she was surprised by the subtlety of the cloves and eucalyptus that were barely more than the memory of a perfume on the fae.

She pushed past the thought, glaring. “Tell me what you know, Suley. You don’t have to read my mind to understand that perhaps, yes, it would be detrimental to kill you.

Maybe people would put the pieces together.

But maybe you’ve seen enough of my mind to know that I don’t give a single fuck about you, your life, this castle, or its people.

Take that risk, Suley. Look into my eyes and gamble with your newfound silence. ”

True concern wandered onto her face. Her brows met in the middle as she surveyed Dwyn. Yes, now she had something to lose. She shrank slightly against the increasing tension of Dwyn’s fingers.

“Tell me.”

Suley flinched in agitation. She didn’t seem bothered by the pinching, the nails, the anger, or by Dwyn herself. She was deeply irritated by Dwyn’s interference with her day of peace.

“Will you let me enjoy my evening?” Suley asked, voice ripe with displeasure.

Dwyn stumbled backward toward the cold glass window filtering gray, overcast daylight into their room. She lifted her fingers, flicking them ominously. “You don’t need to read my thoughts to know where I’m going with this.”

“Make your threats, siren.”

Dwyn’s eyes widened.

“That’s what she calls you, right? That’s what she thinks you are, despite learning of blood magic and the Reds?

It’s a lovely cover. What an organic way to hide who you are and what you do.

A siren. A woman of the water, too beautiful for wayward sailors to help themselves.

Such pretty lore for someone who borrows against lives to drain.

Does she know sirens are a myth? No, I don’t suppose she does.

I would have heard if the princess understood that what you do can be learned. ”

“Are you just going to taunt me?”

“Are you ?” Suley challenged. “Clearly I know something more you need. That was my curse, wasn’t it?

That’s why everyone needed me to wallow in the noise?

Nothing can be hidden from me.” She exhaled heavily, setting the cage in her hands on the floor in front of her.

“If I tell you, you’ll leave? You won’t bother me again? ”

“I swear it.”

“I don’t just mean now, I mean—”

“I’ll never harm you,” Dwyn promised. “Not now, not ever.”

Suley eyed her for a moment. She bent and picked up the birdcage, turning her back on Dwyn.

She cooed to the blush-colored bird, speaking to it in a nonsensical language of soothing chirps while it eyed her curiously from within its gilded cage.

Eventually, she said, “Tyr’s voice was the one echoing through their memories.

He told the two men accompanying King Eero.

I don’t know when or where or why, but he told them who you are and what you do.

He told them what you did to Caris, and how you did it. ”

Dwyn may as well have been made of paper. She felt so thin, so frail, so chilled against the nonexistent wind as little more than cold blood pumped through her.

“I only know this because Harland couldn’t stop thinking about you during the meeting.

He hates you. He knows you’re Caris’s murderer.

He knows precisely how you brainwashed a lordling, named him Berinth, and set up the beautiful, opulent trap that Ophir would be unable to resist. She’s the weak-willed princess, after all.

She was the one you could bend, if only she had a wound you could exploit.

So, you created that wound by killing her sister, then arrived to make it all better.

Harland knows. He blames you for everything, and rightly so.

As such, he knows that once you’re informed, you’ll be the single most dangerous person on the continent.

It’s why no one has told Ophir. They think she’s safer in the dark.

So.” Suley paused, having succeeded in removing the last of the birdcages.

“Were they right? Was she safer before you knew?”

Dwyn’s lip curled in disgusted snarl before her expression leveled out.

Finally, she said, “Ophir knows. I used the last of my stolen powers and told her the morning of Berinth’s execution that I was responsible for his puppetry, for Caris, for everything, so the reveal couldn’t be used to turn her against me. She knows.”

Suley made a face of mild disinterest. Dwyn wasn’t sure if woman didn’t understand or simply didn’t care. She waited with gritted teeth until Zita’s advisor spoke again.

“And now, it appears, so does everyone.”