Page 93

I considered that, my mind working over all the things I’d learned about Furies while looking into Kaiser at Never Keep.

They were a strange and rather rare breed, their need for fear making them both bloodthirsty but also unpredictable on the battlefield.

They were usually risk takers, ever hunting for ways to claim more fear from their prey, though Kaiser didn’t seem to fit that description at all, the calm in him eerily dominant.

“Is he threatening you with your greatest fear?” I guessed, but Everest shook her head.

“I wouldn’t let fear control me.”

“Control…he made you his Fearsire,” I accused, and her eyes widened in shock, her lips parting though no words came out. “Well that is shit for you,” I went on, pleased with myself for having figured it out. “But why would he waste such a gift on a random Raincarver?”

“I’m not just some random Raincarver,” Everest objected.

“I’m meant for greatness.” Her desire to claim glory flooded over me more powerfully than any other want I’d felt from her, and I nodded thoughtfully.

“You owe me a truth now. That was the deal. Tell me why you just lost your shit so spectacularly when I mentioned Cayde.”

My lip peeled back in a snarl at his name and I turned away from her, staring instead at the flames which blazed over the only exit from this room.

I didn’t want to voice that truth, but what was the point in hiding it from her?

Shame? Did I really care so much about my precious reputation?

No, I didn’t give a fuck about that anymore.

But I knew Dragor did and I was still beholden to him, awaiting his permission to hunt down the man who had taken everything from me.

I couldn’t tell her all of it. I couldn’t admit to her that he had been a spy from Avanis, but I could give her enough of the truth, and for some reason I found I wanted to. I wanted someone to tell my woes to so that there was at least one other Fae in this world who understood my pain.

Dragor was the only Fae who knew the full truth of it, but he didn’t count.

He didn’t care. Moraine and Dalia had been nothing to him, and I doubted he even remembered their names now, but Everest had known them.

Not enough to have called them friends or even liked them particularly, but I had the feeling she wouldn’t simply forget them, that she would have memories of their last hours which would stick with her just as I had memories of them which would forever haunt me.

“Cayde betrayed us,” I admitted, still not looking at her as I let the words spill from me.

“We fought the Vampires off. We threw three of them through one of those archways and even managed to kill one. Dalia did that. She ended one of those monsters and her reward was to give her life for mine when Cayde struck.”

“He attacked you?” Everest gasped, and I nodded hollowly.

“He killed Moraine before I even realised what was happening, and then he came for me, but Dalia…” I trailed off, the words sticking in my throat, my heart racing frantically at the memories, pain twisting through my chest.

Everest took my hand in hers and I stiffened, glancing at her and finding she looked as awkward about the gesture as I felt.

For a moment, I just stared at her, my hand unresponsive in her hold, and her cheeks reddened as she moved to pull back, but my fingers snapped shut around hers to keep them there, squeezing hard.

I wasn’t sure anyone had ever offered me comfort like that before.

The Fae who had raised me in the waif house certainly hadn’t cared for me in any kind of emotionally supportive way and the other Sinfair had only ever feared and reviled me, hating me for the truth of my conception, envying me for the position I’d clawed out for myself above them.

Even my sisters had known that I was too savage a creature to ever require softness from them, but this Raincarver, an enemy of mine in every respect, whose land I’d sacked and pillaged, whose people I’d butchered and terrorised, was offering me refuge in the storm of my grief.

My distrust of all Fae rankled at the thought of me taking this small comfort from her but I could feel her desires plainly enough and all she wanted was to offer me some brief reprieve from the pain she could see so clearly painted across my heart.

“Did you kill him?” she asked, a vicious note to her voice which betrayed a need for vengeance in her which mirrored my own for Cayde.

“Not yet,” I growled.

“You will,” she said so forcefully that there was no denying it. “Just as I’ll be the death of the man who took my mother from me.”

I nodded, agreeing to that wholeheartedly.

“How did he escape you?” she asked, eyeing my neck where a small scar marked the point where the Vampire had bitten me.

“He was coming after me but I led him into a trap. I took him through the archway which led to the Dragon,” I admitted.

“No way,” she said, her eyes lighting with excitement. “You tried to use a Dragon to kill him? Damn, Vesper, I knew you were a badass but that’s just insanity. How did you even survive that thing for a second time?”

I considered whether I should tell her that. Dragor hadn’t wanted me to breathe a word of the Dragon to anyone, least of all a warrior from an enemy land. But Everest already knew about the Dragon, so it wasn’t like I was really giving her anything new.

“I set it free and it thanked me by ripping its way out of that cave and saving me from Cayde in turn.”

“That thing is free? Where the hell did it go?” she asked in a hushed whisper.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly because Bastian still hadn’t arrived here to rescue me and I was beginning to think he’d taken his chances with the seven years of bad luck and abandoned me to this place.

“And what about Cayde? Why did he turn on all of you like that?”

“He figured out what the archways were and wanted to give the information to his people,” I said, realising too late that I’d just betrayed the full power of them to her as her eyes widened in understanding.

“Those things led to the other lands? Not just different places in the Keep?” she asked, a million thoughts buzzing through her expression and I cursed internally, knowing I couldn’t let her live with that information, yet for some reason I hadn’t lunged, hadn’t wrapped my hands around her throat or even so much as moved to attack her.

“Prince Dragor came to the Keep,” Everest blurted, not seeming to understand the danger she’d awakened in me with her realisation, the memory of what she’d witnessed bright in her eyes.

“That must have been why he destroyed all of the archways – so that no one else could ever find them and make use of them against Stormfell. I guess he didn’t think it was worth the risk of trying to use them in case another kingdom got to them first.”

I blinked in surprise, relaxing as I found I didn’t have to move against her after all. My prince had already fixed the problem, and now neither she nor Cayde would ever be able to use that information or those archways against Stormfell.

“I guess,” I agreed, though I was surprised to hear that Prince Dragor had destroyed the archways instead of utilising them.

I’d thought that knowledge would have been invaluable to him, that he would have wielded the magic of that place to transport his armies right into the heart of enemy lands.

It was the kind of thing that could have won the war for us if wielded correctly but he’d just destroyed them instead?

“He went to your chambers and stole a bunch of your stuff too,” Everest said, drawing my attention away from that question.

“Bastard,” I muttered. “I wonder if he’ll give it back. Anyway, how do you know what he took from my chambers?”

“I was there,” she said all too innocently, and I arched a brow at her.

“Why?”

“I might have been stealing some of your stuff too. That windrider thing of yours nearly hurled me out of a window by the way.”

I wasn’t sure if I should have been angered by that or amused, so I shook my head in exasperation.

“I suppose the rumours of my death allowed all manner of scavengers to assume they had free range to take my personal property. Next you’ll be telling me the Flamebringers stole my undergarments to use for hats.

How did you even get into my chambers anyway?

The doors and windows were all warded heavily against intrusion. ”

“Maybe you’re not as good at magical wards as you think you are,” she said quickly, taking her hand from mine and turning to look around the room as if she’d only just decided to make a full inspection of it. Her desire to conceal the truth from me was plain enough though.

“Bullshit,” I stated, and her bronze eyes darted back to mine.

“I’m actually really good at disabling wards,” she insisted.

“Bullshit,” I repeated. “Not mine.”

“Now that I think of it, you hadn’t warded it. You must have forgotten that morning – were you running late, or-”

“Don’t make me say it again.”

“You can tell when I’m lying, can’t you?” she accused, narrowing her eyes.

“Yes.”

“Well that’s fucking rude of you.”

“I’d argue it’s rude of you to lie.”

Everest considered me for a moment, then shrugged. “I offered you some truths but I can’t give you this one. Just like I’m sure you aren’t telling me all there is to know about Cayde. Tit for tat, Vesper.”

“No one calls me that,” I muttered.

“I do. So at least one person does,” she contradicted, and damn her, but I almost smiled again.

“Fine. I can feel it when you don’t want to tell me something, but I’m no Cyclops, so I can’t pluck your secrets from your mind and I don’t feel inclined to torture them from your lips right now. So you can keep them.”

“I’d never break.”

“That’s what they all say, kitty cat,” I drawled.