Page 10 of Prince of Night and Storm
the train car whooping and hollering like crashing to our deaths below
is going to be a grand time. And the Prince is waiting at the bottom of the pit.”
“He frightens you.”
I turn to stare at her. “That’s a given.”
“What do you fear?”
“Vengeance.”
“What do you really fear?”
I look away. “Justice.”
I still, slamming the brakes down on my instinctive reaction to leap across the desk and throttle him. Ipick up the report and begin shredding it into pieces. Baba has a copy. “My mother wanted?—”
“Don’t tell me what Maryonne wanted, girl. She was my Lord.” Édouard turns away, striding to the lone window in the office. He looks out, probably struggling to restrain his violent urges the same as I. We are kin.
Tereille watches him, resignation and patience in his half smile. Then he glances at me and shrugs, leaving the desk to approach Édouard and slide an arm around his shoulders.
“We don’t stop, we don’t question. Not until her death means something,” the Commander says finally, not relaxing in his mate’s embrace, but not pushing him away either. “Not until they pay.”
“You’re feeling out of control of your environment and the situation.”
“Out of control? I was never in control. It’s always been someone else.
I can’t think of one time when I was allowed to make a decision about
my life, independent of outside input, outside of. . .control.”
He speaks as if he has a greater claim to vengeance than I, her damn daughter.
“If the Prince comes, what then?” I stride to the door and jerk it open, pausing to look back. “That’s a rhetorical question, by the way.”
I slam it closed behind me and march down the hall and up a flight of stairs.
1 Ninephene, the root of the bastard Everennesse dialect, works on inflections. So you know how in English you can have two words that look alike but mean different things? In Ninephene you can have two words that look alike, but they areinflecteddifferently, and that changes the meaning. They use the word “cousin” a lot in the story but there are two different meanings. One the literal definition which is a blood relation and they'll apply that to anybody who has a proven blood claim traceable within a reasonable number of generations, or they also use it like we do when we say “hey cuz!” to someone you consider family. So, no, not everyone Aerinne calls cousin is a blood relation.
Chapter
Four
NO PRICE TOO HIGH
Hypocrite. Tortured, guilt-ridden, hypocrite.
Both of us.
Sometimes I wonder how much of my relentless drive to punish Montague at all costs is my own, and how much is Édouard’s insidious influence. He’s trained me since I was a child. Chances are I’ve internalized some of his crazy.
Alone in my room, I sink onto my bed. Here I don’t have to maintain a pretense of strength and certainty for my House.
“I feel like I was born broken. Born angry. Even before
my mother was killed I felt this.”
I’ve been silent too long, so she does something she rarely
