Page 37 of Court of Wolves

“If you look at me like that one more time, I will rip your fucking throat out,” Maia hissed at Bryon as they walked side by side in the middle of a retinue of guards and saint lackeys. He’d been glaring at her all morning, which made her feel justgreatafter having sex with the bastard. He was allowed to regret it, but did he have to look at her like she was a shit stain in his favourite pants?

She should have been paying attention to the fishing town they’d been transported to. Marszton rose above them on all sides, new storeys built upon existing structures until every tavern and tailor and teashop hung crookedly, looking like a rough wind would send them toppling onto the salt-stained cobbles under Maia’s feet. The wood itself had been stained by the salt, dyeing the buildings grey and, the closer they got to the ocean where the scent of fish intensified, most buildings were white. Maia had never seen anything like it. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to know what was in the water to do this to a place.

At the head of their retinue, Karmen—Ismene’s bestie, the Eversky, king of the saints—and her pet soldier Heweryion strode through the tight-packed streets like they owned them. Marszton was eerily silent, the people quiet and still as the saintmade progress through the town, following the natural slope that led down towards the dock and the sea. Maia scanned all the faces they passed, searching for familiar cruel eyes, for honey-blonde hair and a poreless face, for Ismene. But her aunt wasn’t here, just the saint who’d given her unlimited power. Maia wasn’t sure that was much better.

Her eyes returned to the hulking, grumpy bastard at her side. Bryon was already watching her, nostrils flared and eyes shuttered of any hint at emotion. Like hiding his annoyance would make her any less aware of it.

“Bastard,” she called him for no reason at all. He tore his stare away, looking at the row of stalls built beneath the tall, crooked buildings on their right. Fish hung from ceiling hooks all the way down to the sea, boxes full of ice and seafood on display. But the men and women who stood behind them were silent, not hawking their wares. Frozen in fear. Their eyes tracked Karmen and the rest of them, tracked Maia without recognition. She knew from Karmen and Hew’s murmured conversation as that Ismene and her army had rolled through the town last week, slaughtering their leaders and taking it for Vassal.

Maia wasn’t sure where Ismene was now, whether she’d gone up the bridge of land to Upper Aether or if she’d swept her conquering ruthlessness further east to the villages on the edge of the kingdom. Maybe she’d even gone into the mountains to murder the solitary fae and beastkind clans who lived there. The thought made her cold, and she wanted to insult Bryon again just to discharge some of this shaky energy in her veins, but then Karmen laughed under her breath a few steps ahead and Maia’s whole body flinched.

At the end of the cramped road, a small space opened up, little more than slick cobbles in a semicircle that backed onto the water. Skeletal masts and proud sails filled Maia’s sight asshe gobbled down details of the dock. There had to be twenty ships here, in varying sizes from multiple kingdoms. She spotted the deep gold sails of a V’haivan ship and her chest clenched. Her soles itched, her hands twitching at her sides, and she desperately wanted to flee onto that ship.

Warm fingers encircled her wrist, holding tightly. Maia curled her upper lip back from her teeth and glared at Bryon as he edged closer. She wasn’t actually going to run. She wasn’t stupid enough to try. If she was, she’d have run during those years at the Delakore Palace. But Maia knew running would get her captured and tortured until she wished for death. And the saints had her mates. She wouldn’t forsake them by running.

She shivered and blamed it on the cold wind rushing off the sea as they crossed the cobbled square, five-storey buildings leaning against each other around the dock. Maia glimpsed faces in their upper windows, and didn’t blame the people of Marszton for staying safely inside. Maia wished she could hide, too.

What had these people seen in the past week? Enemy soldiers storming their streets, ripping away any sense of safety. Killing people who resisted or simply got in their way. Murdering their mayor, their council, their leaders. Maybe the smart people were those who’d run, leaving the streets ghostly and quiet, instead of those who hid. How much effort would it take for Karmen to bring these buildings down, to kill all the crooked charm of this place, to wipe it entirely off the map? The way Enryr did to Eosantha.

Maia swallowed hard, a knot aching in her throat. Bryon’s hand squeezed around her wrist. She didn’t look at him, didn’t want to see what those eyes held. Was he thinking of the massacre in Venhaus, too? Was he thinking there was only one person to blame and she walked right alongside him?

“This will do,” Karmen said, patting her lover on his bulging shoulder. Heweryion was even bigger than Bryon, though builtwidely instead of tall, and much younger. Experience versus the strength of youth. Maia wasn’t sure who’d win in a fight, wasn’t sure what grace and magic had been granted to him while he lay in the Eversky’s bed. Even the guards around them could possess enough magic to kill Maia, and that wasn’t even counting their training and quickness with the swords that clanged on each man’s hip. No women in this retinue Maia couldn’t help but notice.

“Wise people of Marszton!” Karmen shouted, her voice loud enough to shake the dead in their watery graves.

Maia went still, Bryon stopping beside her, a little closer than he’d been a moment ago. He didn’t let go of her wrist, holding it between them as if hoping the other wouldn’t notice that weakness. Maia thought of her mates as she’d last seen them in the saints' circle. She thought of the pain that haunted her, sometimes her own, sometimes not. It had to be theirs, had to be her mates’ suffering. Sometimes she heard screaming inside her head. Sometimes she heard howling. Sometimes, like the early hazy hours of this morning, she swore she heard their voices, saw them in her dreams. It was wishful thinking, but she liked to think the bond connected them to her. SheheardAzrail promise he was coming for her.

In her dream, she’d been in her cell with Isak, and she’d been smiling, but then the dream shifted into a nightmare so fast she got whiplash. Terror and cutting panic made her chest erupt with pain when one of those dark, scaled monstrous things from the island crashed through the door, grabbed Isak, and tore him limb from limb while Maia was frozen, shaking.

She woken with a scream, craving arms around her and gruff reassurances in her ears. But she’d told Bryon to stay away from her, even if she had a nightmare. She remembered that nightmare now as Karmen raised her arms, beseeching the people who hovered, watching, listening. Did they think she’dcome to liberate them from Vassalian control? Didn’t they know everything Ismene did was at her command?

How long until Maia’s nightmare became real? Would those monsters burst from the sea here and devour Bryon? Or would she return to the prison to find her mates waiting there, dismembered, screams of agony on their grey faces? She could see it all too clearly and her heart quickened, her dark wings shuddering behind her. Even from here, she felt the horrible, crushing weight of the saint’s presence. It made her eyes throb, her teeth ache, her bones groan. There was nothing Karmen couldn’t do with that power. Maia’s mates might already be dead. But she'd know, wouldn’t she?

“Come forward, and you’ll be granted a boon—anything of your choosing,” Karmen called to the people hiding in the alcove behind a stall selling huge, pink fish. Karmen was beautiful and striking, so completely out of place in this grey, salt-stained fishing town that it was laughable. She wore a long dress of resplendent gold today, a fabric finer than silk cut from her sandalled feet all the way up each thigh to bare smooth, onyx skin. The bodice was cut from shoulder to navel, her shape womanly and appealing. She looked like a queen. Like the saint she was. Maia wasn’t surprised when a man in a heavy grey canvas jacket and trousers rimed in white salt came forward, pulling the cap off his silvery hair. Sharp, pointed ears stuck up from his head. He was fae. But would he have enough magic to be of interest to Karmen? Maia hoped not.

She shot a rapid glance at Bryon. What should they do? They couldn’t just stand here while Karmen killed people. Because there was no doubt—no blood had been shed yet, but the cobbles would run red by the time she was done. She certainly hadn’t come here to buy a tuna.

“Yes, yes, come,” Karmen encouraged, holding out her hand to the man. “I’ll grant you anything you desire. All I want is the answer to a question.”

“What question?”

Karmen’s expression was open and curious, deceptively sweet. Maia opened her mouth to warn the man but the fingers tightened around her wrist in clear warning, and Maia swallowed the words down. She was a coward, but being cowardly had kept her alive. She needed very little encouragement to put herself first. No wonder Bryon was so repulsed by her.

Karmen flowed forward a step on the slick cobbles. Heweryion remained where he was, an ever-present threat. “Where can I find the saints' circle?”

The Aethean man jerked back. “I will not tell youthat.No one here will tell you. We’re sworn to keep it hidden.”

“We’ll see,” Karmen replied mildly. Maia didn’t like how placid her tone was. A slow crawl of foreboding made its way down her spine until she shuddered again. She wanted to ask Bryon why he thought they were here but she wouldn’t draw the saint’s attention to them. Still, more power swelled in the air, making her bones quail and grate together. She had to gasp down air at the dull pain, tasting salt and fish and blood. Shit. She’d bitten her tongue.

“You,” Karmen said, pointing to a woman dressed in a long coat with dark braids wound around her head. “What do you desire more than anything?”

The woman froze, trying to vanish into the shadows behind a stack of crates. “To protect the saints' circle,” she answered. “It is sacred. It’s our lifeblood. It gives us magic, gives us strength. I won’t endanger it by telling a stranger where to find it.”

“Suit yourself,” Karmen replied, again calm and unoffended. She asked an old fisherman, a woman trying to push herchildren into the building behind her, a grizzled shopkeeper, and more and more people. Ten, then fifteen, then twenty. Each one answered the same: the circle was sacred to Aetheans and they would not give up its location.

“I think that’s enough, don’t you, Hew?” Karmen asked with a sigh.

“I do,” he agreed right behind Maia and Bryon.

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