Page 63 of House of the Beast

Chapter

G rab her,” ordered Kaim.

Two Dreadguard seized me by either arm. Now that the threat was gone, Kaim was furious—furious and brimming with new power. The man who’d had his arm broken was nursing it with muffled whimpers on the ground. A couple more sported new injuries.

I was all too aware that those were my responsibility, as was the Dreadguard we had left behind, dead. I had led the mimic here, after all.

Hiding a wince, I said, “I apologize for bringing this situation upon you. I didn’t mean to—”

“Shut up,” said Kaim, so harshly that it made me freeze. Any hope I had of finding even footing with him dissipated like smoke in the air. “You came crawling to me for help and put my men in danger. You, who my father named as his heir. What did he see in you?”

I almost snarled in frustration. Of course, I should have ex pected him to bring that up.

Kaim had dedicated his whole life to one thing, and then had it thrown onto the ground and spat upon—by his own father, no less.

He had probably been seething for days. Now he finally had a chance to confront me, and his blood was running hot from battle, feeding his anger.

“Kaim,” Fion tried. “She can tell us about what House Goldmercy wanted.”

I felt a wave of gratitude. He was trying to help, just like he had promised.

“I don’t care,” said Kaim. “I defeated them, just like I’ll defeat anyone who gets in my way. Including this fraud of a vessel, who needed me to kill a mere mimic.”

“I let you have that kill on purpose,” I snapped in response. Embarrassment made me defensive. I had denied my god, let go of a great advantage, all for the sake of trying to win my cousin’s goodwill, but he had rejected me without a second thought. It stung.

Too late, I realized it was the wrong thing to say.

“Let me?” repeated Kaim, eyes blazing. “You think you’re good enough to pity me?”

“That’s not what I said.”

It didn’t matter. He was too angry, too hurt, to listen to reason. I thought of my uncle, mad with bloodlust—how he had come out of the umbral plane changed after his Pilgrimage.

Kaim had disliked me before, but now the ichor singing in his veins was pushing him over the edge. He pointed his blade at me. “Perhaps my father’s words have given you too much confidence. You want to prove yourself worthy of First Hand? Prove it against me first.”

His men clamored for me to take the challenge the moment he raised his sword.

I had inadvertently insulted their lord and brought them danger.

The two Dreadguard holding me let me go, backing away to give us room to fight.

My heart sank. Nothing was going the way I had wanted it to.

Perhaps it was my fault for expecting too much.

Desperately, I tried to think of a way to salvage this situation, but all that filled my mind was a memory from years ago, of a sunny afternoon back in the Avera training halls.

When Kaim had stood over me, poised to bring his wooden sword down upon my head, I had thought to myself that if we were ever to meet as competitors, one of us would end the other.

It was Fion who interrupted our standoff. He pushed himself in front of Kaim and faced him, mouth set determinedly.

“Stop your posturing and just listen for a second, you stubborn idiot,” he said. “Your father named her his heir—so what? You don’t want to be First Hand anyway, not for real.”

Kaim’s expression darkened. His eyes held anger—but also something more vulnerable. “Don’t start this now,” he growled.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Fion bit back sharply. “I’m not your servant and I’m tired of fighting about this. Should we wait until I’m dead before you want to find a solution?”

I had never heard anyone speak to my cousin this way.

I half-expected Kaim’s men to leap to their lord’s defense and reprimand Fion for his tone, but they seemed reluctant to step in.

Their eyes flickered between the two uncertainly, which led me to believe that Fion’s words weren’t an empty threat.

He really was going to die if Kaim didn’t stop.

Kaim made a noise of frustration. “I told you it won’t come to that. But I need to secure my position. After all my father’s years in service of the Beast, I won’t let our House fall into some bastard’s hands.”

Fion tilted his chin up defiantly. “You’re a coward, Kaim. You let your family walk over you and convince yourself that’s what you want. You’re so scared of failure you’d rather kill yourself, and me —”

“I would never—”

“—to prove a point. You pluck out the best parts of yourself and feed them to your god, hoping at the end that it’ll be worth it, but it won’t.

I can tell you that right now, but you never fucking listen.

Every time you come out of commune you’re going to be less, until one day you’ll open your eyes, and I won’t see you there anymore. ”

“What else would a son of House Avera and House Metia do?” said Kaim, frantic now. “I was born into this. What is there for me if I give it up now?”

“Come away with me,” begged Fion. “Just like we said. Just you and me. No more nightmares. No more killing.”

The expression on my cousin’s face would have broken anyone’s heart. For the first time ever, I wondered what sort of person Kaim would be if he hadn’t been born into his role. So quietly I almost didn’t catch it, he said, “I can’t. You know I can’t.”

Fion was silent. When he next spoke, his voice was cold.

“Fine. You want to condemn yourself to a life like your father’s—just don’t drag me down with you. Let me go.”

The space between them crackled, the energy shifting as Fion took a step backward, twisting to walk away. Kaim lurched forward, grabbing his wrist and forcing him to turn back around.

“Go?” Kaim snapped, taking a threatening step closer until his face was a mere hair’s breadth from Fion’s. “Go where?”

“Wherever my life won’t be a dead end.”

I saw Kaim’s grip tighten until Fion’s skin under his fingers turned white. “You are bound to me by sacred contract. I’d like to see you try.”

Fion pried his arm free. He took a step back, then another, until he was standing beside me, still looking at my cousin with dogged determination.

Kaim looked as though his entire being had been lit with fury. The air around him seemed to tremble, a grim and sudden reminder that he had just gorged himself on ichor. Divine power ran through his veins, and now he was turning all of it in my direction.

“You’re leaving me for her?!” he spat at Fion.

“Calm down, Kaim,” I said quickly. I had no place interrupting their argument—except when my cousin looked ready to murder me for the perceived slight of his person. “I have no claim on your aide.”

“She’s right,” said Fion calmly. “I’m not leaving you for her. But she is going to help me leave you.”

There was no warning other than the way Fion’s spine went suddenly rigid beside me. He gasped out, as if in pain. Then, with all the power granted him by their arcane connection, Kaim surged forward like a black tide of vengeance, his blade slicing at me viciously.

I barely parried in time, the force of it knocking me a couple of steps backward.

He did not relent. Fury propelled his blows, each meeting my sword with a sonorous clash.

His blade whipped through the air with such brutal speed it was near impossible to keep track of.

On an average day, my cousin was fast and merciless, and his moves had the powerful grace of many years of the best training Avera had to offer.

Now he fought like a wild animal, like something dangerous that had finally been cornered and now had nothing to lose.

I was quickly driven away from Fion’s side—and still Kaim kept going, as if to beat me back as far as he could manage.

With Aster’s help, I could have stopped him. But I did not want to heed the call of death to win this fight. I wanted to calm my cousin down—not kill him.

So I was left to fend for myself, using only the skills I had learned from my father over the years. Only, Kaim had learned those skills too, and he’d had much more opportunity to put them to use than I did. He pursued me with relentless ire, in a way that was far too reminiscent of his father.

“Kaim!” Fion called desperately. Another spasm jolted through his body, and he collapsed onto the ground.

“Mother was right,” Kaim spat at me, his eyes wild. “Uncle Zander should have never brought you to us. You’ve ruined everything!”

“You’re being ridiculous!” I barked back at him, doing my best to disengage even as he steadily drove me back. “I came to you for an alliance, not for us to kill each other right here, Kaim!”

He adjusted his grip with both hands to put his full, devastating strength into the next blow. “You should have thought about that before you tried to take everything from me!”

Mirroring him quickly, I gripped my own sword two-handed to block him, metal scraping between us, my joints threatening to buckle. “Don’t blame me for the unhappiness you’ve sown!”

“Kaim, you blistering idiot!” shrieked Fion from the ground through his agony.

It didn’t matter. There was no arguing with my cousin now.

Here on the umbral plane, in its perpetual gloom with all the stars singing above, he looked just like my Uncle Maximus.

The manic light in their eyes was the same.

I wondered how long he had pushed himself—if he had known his limits and willingly gone beyond them, hoping it would relieve his father’s burden; if he had prayed that being born of not one but two prestigious bloodlines might have eased the toll; if he had been afraid when he found that wasn’t the case at all.

Under his perfect facade, that beloved veneer of the handsome young lord born to rule, he was just a jealous, maladjusted boy who had somehow learned to care for someone who no longer wanted to be by his side.

And he thought I was the one responsible for it.