Page 59 of Of Blood and Banes (The Arterian #2)

THE EGO AND THE ANGER

M arge doesn’t come in the night to fetch me for training.

And for the first time in a long while, I’m able to sleep uninterrupted for more than a few hours.

Though, my dreams are still haunted by flames, blood, my mother and brother, and this time, Corvin’s bug-eyed gaze.

The tendons in his throat bulging as he gasped for breath.

Lucky for me, when I wake sweating, Darian’s undisturbed next to me. One less thing he can taunt me about.

“How was the flight yesterday?” I ask Daeja in the Pinepoint community hall at breakfast.

Taking a bite of cheese, I glance up to where Archie sits a few seats down, bumping his shoulder into Melaina’s with a grin. Based on how she glows around him, she must know he loves her. And it would be foolish to think she doesn’t feel the same.

“Next time you commit me to a ride like an oversized show pony, you’ll be owing me more than two elk carcasses,” Daeja grumbles.

I grin, keeping a laugh to myself. “Would three suffice?”

“…”

“Come on, was it really that bad? You love Archie?”

“I’d argue he’s a better rider than you.”

“Going for the heart today, are we?”

“Fine. It wasn’t terrible. But tell him next time if he tucks a flower in one of my horns, I’ll bite his ass.”

“You temperamental, merciful thing.”

She snorts with a snide amusement. “Odd way to say thank you, but I’ll take it.”

The forest surrounding Pinepoint thins out to long stretches of plains.

A snow-tipped mountain range quadruple the size of Dragon’s Back Ridge—the Serahaven mountains, Sethan explains—spans out across the northern horizon.

Rather than flying on dragonback to Mossmead, Sethan instructs us to walk along with the horse-drawn wagons, since Mossmead is a town built on an old, shallow lake.

While the water may only be hip-deep and well-trafficked enough the water dragons never venture to it, it makes the fire dragons uneasy.

As we come to the outskirts of Mossmead, the sunset bathes the waters around the quaint, stone town in golden ripples as small boats cut through the waters.

Sethan leads us to the northwestern part of town where the streets and bridges are extra wide leading to the dragon rider sector.

As we venture farther into town, I quickly realize why they call it Mossmead.

Every stone archway, building corner, and bridge is dusted in moss.

Sethan mentions all of the Dragon Lands source their mead here, with Driftmond producing the most ale.

And after I try a stein of mead at dinner, I quickly realize it’s not for me.

We all turn in early with the buzzing anticipation of starting an early morning scouting Vitalis and, day after next, we begin the last stretch to the castle.

We’re so close. The apprehension and hope stirs like an itch I can’t yet scratch.

After Gavin and Nolan deliver Darian to my room and secure his shackles, the door falls closed behind them.

Darian eyes me with his arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t take it you decided to hold up your end of the bargain and have a flask hiding somewhere underneath that blouse of yours, do you?”

“I’m not really in the mood,” I retort. But really, what I don’t want to admit to is the fact that if I fight him, if I get close enough to touch him…

I’ll be tempted into a repeat of what happened last night.

Or into something further. Every time I think of how he touched me, how he drew out every moan and shake of my legs, I blush.

When Sethan asked me a question, Daeja had to whip her tail into my boot to warn me I was zoning out—replaying the moments of last night for a second time today.

It’s enough to convince me I’m letting things get out of hand.

Darian smirks. “In a life-or-death situation, nobody is going to give a shit if you’re in the mood.”

I snap my attention to him. “Do you have to be such an asshole all the time?”

“I’m not a coddler.” He pushes off the wall. “Come take it out on me.”

Oh, no. I know what that means. Because it’s is exactly how things started off last time. I walk over to the bed and pull back the sheets. “No.”

“You’re still upset even though your pathetic friend wasn’t the one who died?”

I snap my gaze up to him at his disrespectful mention of Archie as I ball the sheets in my fists.

He knows exactly what to say to tempt the fantasy of me gutting him.

Testing, poking, prodding every angle of my self-composure.

And I’m about to break it just to teach him a lesson to shut his godsdamned mouth.

He smiles, finding my weak spot. “He should have, though.”

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” I say through gritted teeth and rip my eyes off him before I do something stupid.

“Why? Because you know it’s true?”

I blink, and somehow I’ve cleared the space between us. Rearing my left arm back, he opens his hands and stretches back, exposing his chest. “Come on. Hit me. Show me what you can do with that left hand.”

I swing, and he catches my arm as if I’m nothing but a toddler on the offense.

He taunts, “Is that all you have?”

Throwing my next punch with a grunt, he boils my blood with a mocking laugh. I erupt into a typhoon of swings, punches, and kicks. Anything that will land me a blow. But each of my movements is halted.

“Hit me,” he grunts with each missed strike. “Hit me!”

I fake him to the right and slap him on the cheek with the left. As soon as I make contact, the collision stings my hand. A horror spikes in me, and I shrink back as soon as I’ve hit him. He swivels to me with a red-hot handprint outlined on his face.

His eyes burn, his lips pulled up to reveal his teeth. “Good. But slapping a foe isn’t going to do much other than piss them off.”

He jerks his chin toward the opposite wall. All of hell’s wrath simmering behind his eyes, and he visibly struggles to maintain composure, spitting out each word through gritted teeth. “Grab your fucking sword. Before I change my mind.”

Without turning my back to him, I retrieve it from the wall and walk back to him.

He taps underneath my elbow. “You’re getting lazy. Keep it raised.”

“It’s heavy,” I admit, stuck in his gaze and watching the fury recede.

“Would you prefer a knitting needle, my lady?”

I narrow my eyes. “Need I remind you who’s holding the sword here?”

He laughs, crossing his arms over his chest in defiance. “A toddler with a sword would scare me more.”

“I could kill you if I wanted to.”

“You don’t scare me, kitten. Try me.”

As soon as I swing, he swats the sword out of my grasp, and it sails off a few feet before landing on the ground. He tilts his head in a gesture that says, see?

Good Gods, am I relieved we’re doing this in the privacy of my room. I’m not sure I could stomach embarrassing myself in front of an entire crowd entrusting me to save the realm.

I throw a punch, and he deflects. A second punch, and he grabs my arm and twists me into submission as he always does. He laughs, my ears ringing from the sound. I glare back at him and slam the heel of my foot down on his boot.

He grunts and shoves me to the ground, pinning my back with a knee as he still holds my arm. “Say you relent.”

I growl in stubborn protest. “No.”

He pushes me harder into the ground. “Re lent .”

I wiggle underneath him, fighting for space to free myself.

“I could break your fucking arm right here,” he hisses, and throws my arm out of his grasp, the pressure spiking my spine disappearing.

He walks around to the front of me and stops, his boots filling my vision. “Your problem is you lead with your emotions. If you go into a real war, with a real battle, your ego and your anger will be the death of you if you don’t learn to control it. I keep telling you, and you’re not listening.”

I push up to sit, glaring at him as I spit, “Then stop taunting me.”

“How else are you going to practice if no one else is challenging that side of you? When you’re weak, you train until you’re strong.

Just thinking you’ll be strong will do jack shit.

You have to put in the effort, the time, the blood, the sweat, the tears.

I’ve trained until my tears ran dry and my body was beat to a pulp, every day, for years .

You’re fucking lucky I’m easy on you.” He turns his back to me and begins to stalk off.

“Why? Because your father didn’t take it easy on you?”

His back is to me, and he stops mid-step. “We don’t talk about him.”

“And why’s that?” I stand up, lifting my chin to him. I use his same words from earlier. “I’m not a coddler .”

“Remove my chains from the wall.”

“Or what?” I challenge.

He swivels to me, anger blistering in his expression. “I don’t need to answer that. Just listen to me, and fucking do it.”

I hold his glare. A chill runs down my spine as calm lethality washes over his features. I’ve hit a soft spot. I undo his shackles as he asks, and he kicks his boots off and slides into bed.

Constructing the pillow wall between us, I mutter, “You want to talk shit about Archie all day long and push me until I’m pissed off. You think you’re so much more composed than I am. And now look at you.”

“I’m not the one who needs to be trained,” he growls, flipping his back to me. “Watch it. Or I won’t hesitate to remind you of your place.”

An awkward burn crawls up my throat. Perhaps I shouldn’t push him so hard. But it feels like I’m teetering on the edge of something monumental. “Why don’t you refer to him as your father? Why do you call him by his first name?”

“Get to your point,” he grits out.

“Sethan…mentioned your stubborn arrogance. He said it was never…” my voice grows smaller.

“Beaten out of me?” he finishes for me. “Yes. Jurrock had a short temper and rough hands. Terrible drinking problem. Sethan has known me since I was a boy and had been best friends with him for longer than I can remember.”

My breath escapes me in a single exhale, a coldness spreading throughout my limbs as I stare at the back of Darian’s head. “So, he…he knew?”

“He more than knew. He saw,” Darian tosses out plainly. “Now, will you be quiet so some of us can sleep?”

Anger bubbles inside me at the thought. Where Cole had a similar experience, Darian had an adult witness it and still not stand up for him. I fight against the temptation of letting my horror win and storming off into the night to find Sethan for answers.

But I know what I’m doing first thing in the morning.

“Fine. Let her in,” Sethan’s muffled response sounds from behind his thick, wooden doors.

After a soldier slips back out, he invites me in past the two guards posted outside of Sethan’s quarters. As soon as Sethan’s eyes connect with mine, he recognizes my fury and dismisses the other guards inside the room.

“We aren’t leaving for Vitalis until tomorrow, and the dragon riders aren’t to scout ahead for another two hours. Why are you in here at the crack of dawn?” he asks.

As soon as the door closes, I explode. Even training with Marge last night wasn’t enough to channel my horror into something productive.

“You watched Jurrock beat Darian, and you did nothing ?” I nearly snarl. “How could you do that? He was a boy. And to throw it in his face like you have in front of everyone back in Driftmond?”

“That happened weeks ago, and you’re just now wanting to talk about it?

He’s a grown man—he has no excuse to act the way he does now.

That all happened a long, long time ago.

” Sethan turns his attention to writing a new sentence on his paper, as if I were simply sharing what the weather was like outside.

“Something like that follows you, Sethan! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

His head snaps up, glaring at me through his lowered eyebrows. “I know that. And I’ve had to carry the fact I didn’t step up to help that boy my entire life. But he has so many other skeletons in his closet he’s responsible for, that part of me doesn’t feel so bad anymore.”

“Do you fucking hear yourself right now?” I bubble over and close the space between me and his desk. Gripping the edge of the wooden piece of furniture, I lean over it. “He was a child!”

He raises an eyebrow, watching me with fascination, before something clicks. He tilts his chin up in recognition, tosses his pen onto the table, and leans back into his chair as he crosses his arms. “You care about him.”

“No. But it doesn’t mean he should be subjected to torture or ridicule! No matter how long it’s been!”

He shakes his head, jaw clenched. “He’s a dangerous man, Katerina. You’d be wise to not involve yourself with him.”

Too late for that, though I won’t admit it to him. Besides, it was only sex. Only something to distract me from the oncoming war that could only mean death and destruction.

“We’re all dangerous people, Sethan. You involved me when you started beating the absolute fuck out of him back in Midkeep!”

“It was necessary.”

“It was not fucking necessary!” I slam a fist into the desk.

He smirks. And I’m so godsdammned furious I’m ready to throw myself over the desk and throttle him.

His voice is quiet. “You’re quite angry. Tell me, have you gotten those answers from him you were so confident you’d get?”

Not backing down from his gaze, I hold my anger behind clenched teeth. His quiet tone alone prods the fire within me. Testing me.

He stands from his chair, never breaking eye contact. “That’s what I thought. Because for men like Darian, you will not bend him. You have to break him.”

“Have you ever stopped to consider people like you are the reason why he is the way he is? That maybe if you had stepped up to help him, if you’d shown him kindness, he might have turned out to be someone else entirely?”

“It doesn’t matter now. You need to keep a comfortable distance from him, Katerina. If he had no problem killing his father, he surely would have no problem killing you.”

All the blood drains from my face. “Wh-what do you mean killing his father?”

Sethan dips his head slowly, confirming his statement. “Darian killed Jurrock.”

“No. No…Celeste said Jurrock died in battle?—”

Sethan shakes his head, his brown eyes sad.

“I told her that because I was trying to protect her. She loves Darian, and if she knew he killed her father, it would have destroyed her. I had to create a cover that Jurrock died in battle, but it wasn’t the truth.

The truth is Darian was young, and he possessed the same temper his father had. ”

“I don’t…I don’t believe you,” I mutter, taking a few hesitant steps back.

“Then ask him. But you keep it between me, you, and Darian. You do not tell anyone else.”

“Why would you tell me such a thing and ask for me to keep it a secret?” I ask angrily. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t need to know such a heavy secret.

“You weren’t going to take my warning seriously, otherwise.”