Page 42 of Feathers From the Sky

I don’t realize what I’m looking at for a moment, but when I do, a whimper makes its way up my throat.

Sasha is laying in my bed, sobbing into Zuul’s side. Her fingertips curl into his fur, and he nuzzles her head. My heart drops into my stomach, and I feel nauseated.

“How long has she been there?” I whisper.

“Since last night when you didn’t come home and Hale called her.” His words vibrate against my back, and I feel a slight tightening of his arm around me. “You get it now, sweetheart? Why I’m doing this?”

When I feel his breath on my neck, I don’t move. I don’t even breathe.

His hand squeezes my hip, demanding an answer.

“I do. I get it.”

14

ROMAN

I enjoy watchingher more than I should. A few weeks into her captivity, we’ve only completely gone through two boxes of Bill’s belongings. I’m making her go through everything with me and explain any context she can give. There’s still no word on Charlie Palmer, and Margot isn’t hopeful we’ll figure out that mystery. After I’ve thoroughly questioned Gwyn each day, I don’t go to my home outside the compound. I spend my time in Margot’s living room-turned-office instead.

And I watch.

I think about how we’ve uncovered nothing useful as I trace the outline of Gwyn’s shape on her bed. I’m not sure if it’s a nervous habit borne out of the months I spent doing this, but knowing she is there brings me comfort. Watching her on the screen reminds me that the answer to Remy’s murder is just a few floors below me, waiting for me to wrench it out of that pretty little head.

There are some things in the boxes which give her pause, usually assigned to some memory of her childhood, and she doesn’t enjoy sharing them with me. It’s cheap entertainment to watch her clench that sweet jaw, furrow her brows, and ball her hands up into fists as she fights the compulsion. She’s getting better at it, fighting me just a bit longer each time, and I get a strange sense of pride from it.

But other than that, she’s been the perfect prisoner. Since the moment I showed her Sasha crying in her bed, and I agreed to show her footage occasionally, it’s like she truly understands why I’m doing what I’m doing. I don’t let myself entertain the idea that she really wants to help me figure out what happened to Remy. Her curiosity stems from the life her father has hidden from her, and anything she shows me is forced.

A hand claps over my shoulder, and I swear when I knock over my beer. I catch it before a drop can spill, grateful for my abilities or else Margot would have killed me.

“I’ve been sent to ask for an update,mon grand.”

“You snuck up on me, Uncle.” I scowl at him. “We’re about a third of the way done with his belongings. He wrote her a letter about what she is, but he wrote it in a language she made up as a child. Real code-breaking happening here.” I roll my eyes.

“Quite pedestrian,” Emile says as he steps around me and bends over the desk. His pale face glows in the monitor light, and the fine lines around his eyes look deeper than normal. “You seem to have a comfortable prisoner, Roman.”

“She’s doing what I ask of her with little effort. No sense in making her last days worse.”

My jaw tightens when I hear her in my mind, begging me to tell Sasha she’s dead. “So she doesn’t have to wonder. Like you with Remy,” she’d said.

“I thought your mother’s pacifism would have left you the day she died.”

“Why waste my time on torture? There’s no need when she’s being cooperative.”

“Cooperative, and yet you have nothing worthwhile. Maybe she needs motivation.” He crosses his arms, walking away from the desk. “It disappoints Björn, you know. That you haven’t used her as leverage for more blood oaths.”

“What do you mean?” I lean back in my chair and take a sip of my beer.

“You don’t have as many as me.” He shrugs.

“You plan to challenge me, Uncle?” I smirk at him, and he laughs.

“If I thought you’d pose a threat once your father Slumbers, I might.”

We joke, but it isn’t as lighthearted as it might seem to an outsider. The coven belongs to me, and Emile knows it. Though he’s stronger than me, Björn will make him swear a blood oath to me before he Slumbers beside Agnarr. While Emile is more level-headed than Björn, his morality is just as far gone. While Margot and I don’t hunt people to kill, that’s not the case for many in the coven. It will get us caught one day, and Emile is just as stubborn as Björn. I’m better for the coven, and I have far longer to rule than Emile does. But the way he is looking at me currently, contemplatively, I wonder if I should do as he says and make sure enough people in the coven are sworn to me.

“I think it pitiful to use her blood as a lure for it. Disgusting.”

Now I’m laughing. “You really ought to try it. It’s fucking delicious.”

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