Page 28 of Grim and Oro
That’s when I realize I haven’t seen the hearteater eat even a single heart. I remember my general. His flair was being immune to curses. He enchanted the very metal charm I wear, to be able to walk in darkness.
The thought occurs to me.
No. It can’t be.
She looks nothing like him, I think, remembering my general. He had been serious and mostly silent—not given to talking about his private life.
Not that I’d asked. Still, he hadn’t looked anything likeher. Could she have taken after her mother? Could he truly be her father? Could she ... have inherited his flair?
Impossible. I’ve never heard of flairs being passed down directly. Cronan and I have several generations between us.
I’m desperate for answers. So desperate, I storm out of my castle, then portal to a creature that can’t be trusted.
The augur is waiting at the mouth of his cave. His smile is serpentine. “It’s been a while, ruler ...” he says. “To what do I—”
I hurl a vial of blood—my blood—at him. The creature isn’t getting close enough to me to draw my blood himself.
The augur’s smile grows, the intricately marked skin around his mouth creasing.
“I don’t have all day,” I growl, and that just makes him laugh.
He pries the lid off the vial and turns it over, allowing a single drop of blood to trickle toward his hand. I was careful not to include enough for him to keep or use for making enchantments.
He presses the blood-tipped finger to his lips and makes an interested sound. The crimson void of his eyes gleam.
“What is it?” I demand.
He shakes his bare head, his cape furling. “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. But that’s not the answer you were hoping for, is it?”
It isn’t.
“I’m not cursed? Plagued? Poisoned?”
She had to have afflicted me withsomething. Something that had her catching my interest immediately, something that ensnared me and my emotions after just one simple glance.
He only shakes his head. “Not by anything new.”
I turn around and leave without another word. I can hear his laughter echoing through the cave.
She isn’t cursed. Which means, if my theory is correct ...
Her mother ... ruler of Wildling, an enemy realm.
My general ... the most trusted position in my court ...
She is both Wildling and Nightshade.
My curiosity rises, my interest crests—and with every ounce of centuries worth of self-control, I smother it. I tamp down my fascination, my inexplicable pull to her that I now know isn’t because of any curse. I destroy it. I kill it for good.
I will stay away from her.
She is no one. She is nothing. As long as she keeps to her own realm, as long as she leaves me alone, then I don’t have reason to think of her again.
CALCIFIED
Dreks shoot out of the scar, one after the other, filling the sky with their screeches. One of my warriors is torn in half, his blood blanketing the dirt. Another is gutted.
I fling my arm out, shadows thinning into slivers sharp enough to decapitate one after another, after another.
