Page 9 of The Wrath of Ashes
“Shh.” She glanced toward the stairs, focusing up the stairs for a lingering moment. “Drat… I’ll be back when I can.”
“Elin!” the earl’s voice barked, carrying through the halls.
“Don’t bother.” Asha stepped away, shaking his head. “You’re here to make yourself feel better, not me. Far too late to have given me any sort of affection, mother dearest. Your gifts were kind, though.” Asha took a few harsh breaths, fists curling as she stared at him with fear and guilt before running off, her shoes clipping against stone. Asha returned to his indentation of hay and snuggled small into the depression to find his warmth as the world around him grew dim and comfortable.
“Boy!” The earl slammed his fist against the bars, keeping Asha from gaining that last bit of sleep. He opened one eye wearily, earning a sneer of disgust.
“My lord?” Asha carried himself back up to the bars and lowered his head, inches beyond his reach.
“Was Elin down here, spouting nonsense at you?”
“Elin? Oh. The Countess Wyverncrest… Why would she want to speak to me, my lord?” Asha was a terrible liar but wonderful at asking questions.
“Don’t turn your cheek to me, boy. Answer!”
“I have no business with the countess. I’d assume she’d want nothing to do with me, considering my station.” Asha let the insinuation of meaning fill between words, but truthfully, he had no idea why he lied to the earl, though it certainly explained a lot of his anger. Asha was the living proof of another man’s conquest of his wife.
“And it should stay that way. She’d do well to keep her distance or meet the same fate as your flippant chambermaid.” The earl laughed. Not his usual titter at a joke he’d made, or a chuckle at the misfortune of another, but the dark chortle of a man who’d done something vile.
“What did you do?” Asha glanced up, his heart racing.
“Did what the law mandated for whores and slatterns in this country. She hanged this morning. My boys have been digging her grave today. If I didn’t think you’d turn savage, I’d have you dig her hole. My apologies you won’t be there for the funeral, but I did give the chambermaids an hour after breakfast off to mourn. But really? Turning her skirts for you, flower boy? I should have drowned you, but that would have caused problems. At least you have some value.”
Asha went cold. Half of him had a burning fire in his chest and wanted to lash out and slam the bars, claw at the earl’s throat. The other half of him wanted to return to the comfort of his hay bed and sleep the awful nightmare away. “Rather I’d be a flower boy than whatever species of promiscuous rodent you are.”
Earl Tippin snarled and hesitated, his hand hovering near his belt where the key to the keep and cells hung. Asha stared directly into his eyes and waited, mentally daring him to open that door, but he seemed to have that much sense about him. Asha huffed humorlessly and turned back, stalking to his hay bed, where nothing else would bother him that day. He vowed it.
As sleep took him fitfully, tears following his dreams, a soft voice called to him,Asha. What pains you?
Chapter Four
Mezerath
Rath woke with an awful headache, fist clutched into his silken dark locks, trying to reconcile with the memories of the night before. Jeron’s warmth curled into Rath’s side, hand on his bare chest, face nestled in his neck, where Rath often liked him to lay—a comfort rather than something sexual.
“My liege! You’re awake.” Jeron pulled away, not offering the soft kiss he usually did upon waking, or the proposition for something more. He understood his role now.Comfort.
“You take your role as valet seriously, my boy.” Rath yawned and stretched before running his sharp talons down Jeron’s back with the barest force, sending shivers up his spine.
“I admit, I did sleep, but I had the alchemist come check you earlier today.” Jeron cast his eyes away, a demure countenance that, at one time, made Rath all sorts of enticed.
“Earlier today, pet?” Rath stared up at the ceiling above him and frowned. He’d had good dreams, he recalled.
“You slept an entire day, my liege. The physician agreed with the alchemist that you were exhausted from the dirge of your mate’s call.” The fact they’d allowed the red bastard into his room without his knowledge irked him, but Graylan was anything if not an honorable male.
“That and so much more. I need to send a messenger to the Earl of Tippin and King of Monsmount to negotiate my love back to me.” Mezerath climbed to his feet and stumbled, his head spinning from the poppy milk.
Jeron’s cheeks went pink, and he cast his gaze away. “That’s not necessary, sir.”
“What is it, pet?” Rath stared at him for a lingering moment.
“You spoke quite freely in your sleep, and I spoke with your advisor, and she agreed that word should be sent. The King of Monsmount grants you passage for a token which is being sent.” Jeron sat up, his smug smile a show of how very pleased with himself he was.
“And the earl?” Whatever token the king requested was likely insignificant to the hoard where they stored their magic. Gold, once used too many times, failed to hold magic, lost its capacity to charge with their fire and became, basically, waste. What was a cask of fire rum and a salt urn of spent gold for his mate?
Jeron chuckled, his eyes rolling smugly. He extended a letter from near his nest, already opened, but he supposed the conversation, at that point, was not his own. “He asks for half a fodder of gold.”
Rath blinked slowly and glanced up, catching Jeron’s eye. “A half fodder? He thinks he asks the world when he says this. Send word ahead that I come to claim him. We bring our half fodder, but be prepared to negotiate because anyone this greedy may—”
