Page 128 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
I wanted to sip from this peace for just a few moments longer, before I revealed Orion’s fate.
The masks.
The betrayal.
But Evie’s next question shattered whatever calm had been slowly drawing me back from behind the ice.
“Or anything about ritualistic Clan killings that involved slash–slashing someone’s throat?”
An ugly silence settled between us.
My heart began to pound.
“Why do you want to know?” I asked.
A thousand emotions, all of them painful, flashed across her face. “That’s how my parents were killed. The attackers slashed their throats and I want to know why.”
My legs began to tremble with uncontrollable shivers as the world tilted off its axis once more, dragging me in the whirlwind.
Evie’s parents' necks had been slit.
Orion had slashed his own throat.
All of them had been Protectorate.
The coincidence was too great to risk ignoring.
“I can ask Soryn,” Clara said. “He knows everything. He can recite the Code by heart. Every line. Who does that?”
“Do you trust him?” Evie asked.
“Not in the least,” she said without hesitation.
“Then best not to.”
“Quorilith,” Dara whispered. “The Clan that hid in the Forbidden Swamps, right? Super violent, super old?”
“You tell me, you seem to know more about it,” Evie said, leaning forward in her seat.
I did, too, listening to every word.
“Not much, they didn’t exactly leave written traces behind. They were suspicious of everyone and the feeling was quite mutual. Old scholars theorized they engraved their dangerous spells on the walls in their dungeons, but nobody has ventured into one of their sunken temples in centuries. Nobody who came back alive, that is. They dealt in dark magic.”
“How dark?” I asked. Because only wretched and filthy magic could have tainted Orion to such a degree.
“They only worshiped gods of death and lies. It’s said the water in their swamps turned red with the blood of the ones they sacrificed before battle,” Dara went on, entrancing us all. “Legends say that’s why their temples fell. Because the blood seeped into the ground and swallowed them up. Others say the blood turned that place into a swamp, that it had been a beautiful, lush forest before. Hard to say when that happened so long ago. The Quoriliths seemed unpleasant, I haven’t studied their Clan all that much. I’d rather read about the Bone Bridge.”
Blood.
Orion had said something about my blood being important.
I’d selfishly thought he’d only been concerned about my veins–but I wasn’t the only one who carried the powerful Vegheara blood.
Dara jerked her chin at Evie. “But why don’t you ask your prince about it? He must know more and I’m sure they must have at least second-hand recollections hidden somewhere.”
Evie frowned. “Why would he?”
“Because his ancestors defeated the Quoriliths. The few survivors of their heinous Clan were absorbed into the Blood Brotherhood.”
