Page 35 of Ember and Eclipse
“Your pack. I imagine it is like having an entire group of brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers.” She was envious of the fact even. Rel couldn’t imagine having a room full of people who would do anything for her, who wouldfightfor her. The only time anyone had gathered in a room for her was to watch her bleed.
“Pack politics and relations are complicated. There are few I’d consider family. Packs aren’t necessarily a choice, especially ours.”
She didn’t want to waste another question, so she let the silence settle again.
Chapter XXI
Thatnight,thechillwithin her was so bad that she sat before the fire, shivering.
Devdan was holding out a leather skin, the stopper already off. “It’ll warm you up so your chattering teeth aren’t keeping me up all night.”
She leaned forward and took the heavy container. Bringing it to her nose, she sniffed curiously. It smelled like liquid fire. “I don’t think that’s how spirits work. Though, yes, you usually feel warmer, it is a rather dangerous trick.”
He shook his head. “This isn’t ale from Gavenport. This is Veritas. It is fermented and collected once every century beneath a rare moon. It has many uses, one being that it can warm those who drink it.”
Rel had heard of it in passing. It was also said to loosen one’s tongue and make the drinker incapable of lying. Interesting that he left that particular detail out. There was a rumor that it was sometimes used in interrogations and when completing oaths.
His eyes gleamed with a challenge. She raised it to her lips and took a single gulp.
Itwasliquid fire. The burn was just on the edge of too much. She held eye contact with the hunter even though he became a blur as tears filled her eyes, and her throat felt like she’d swallowed embers.
Devdan arched a brow at her when she eventually handed it back.
After blazing a fiery path down her throat, it did leave her with a tingling and fuzzy hotness that spread throughout her limbs, even down to her fingertips and toes. It was the type of warmth that came after sinking into a scalding hot bath and then slipping between heated blankets.
He took three large pulls before trailing his tongue along his full bottom lip as if he couldn’t waste a single drop of it. Wholly unaffected by its burn, there wasn’t even a hint of a grimace on his face.
“So?” he asked.
“I do feel much better,” she conceded. “Thank you.” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them. Had that been the Veritas or habit?
He inclined his head and took another mouthful before pushing the stopper back into the top.
If it really was a concoction that made one tell the truth and more loose-lipped, she wanted to test it out. “Why did I never see you at Romul? I’d heard of you and your… victories, but I never saw you.”
“Because I rarely was. Well, while you were there.”
“You saw me?” She’d lived over nineteen years in the heart of Romul after the Imperatoress and princess took her from the streets at thirteen. But she’d never seen him. She would have remembered the Wolf of Romul.
He’d collected a whetstone and was sharpening one of his many knives. “Yes,” he finally said.
She waited, having learned he had to conquer some internal struggle before responding most of the time.
“I saw you several times over the years.”
That surprised her. She was observant, painfully so. Especially when she was in Romul. Always overly aware of everyone around.
His hands paused in their work as if he were conjuring up the memories. “You seemed happy. But I wasn’t there much—off on missions, mostly in the west and far northern territories.”
She knew, of course, all about the many wars Romul was involved in. Most of which they started and ended.
“So, when you’re not hunting witches, you’re what? A wolf fighting a man’s war?”
He shrugged off her insult. “I didn’t choose it.”
“Does your entire pack fight for Romul?”
“No,” he said, a frown tugging at the edge of his mouth.
