Page 117 of Realm of Wind and Vines
“No, not that one,” the woman replies with a laugh. “Azaroth’s flame, honey, we’ve been married for four hundred years, and you still don’t know which bowl is the salad bowl?”
“It’s a bowl,” a man’s voice responds. “They all look the same.”
“Honestly, Dad,” another female voice says in a teasing tone. “You really are hopeless.”
He chuckles. “Says the daughter who refuses to move out.”
Anger streaks through me, and I have to squeeze my hand into a fist to stop myself from moving closer. Why do they get to have a happy family life when their clan has destroyed mine forever? By Mabona, I want to kill them all.
The front door is pulled open.
“Ferver?” Mama Osteria calls from the kitchen. “You’re early, darling. We weren’t expecting you for another half hour.”
Alistair strides in through the front door and closes it behind him. I shift my gaze to him from where I’m standing at the other end of the hallway. He gives me a nod. Moving on silent feet, I sneak closer to the doorway that all the voices are coming from while Alistair walks towards it with more determined steps.
“Dinner isn’t quite ready yet,” Ferver’s mother calls as we draw closer. “Do you need to get back early?”
Just as Draven said, Ferver comes back to eat dinner with his family every night before he returns to his post at the scouts’ headquarters. Though, as his mother just commented, he usually arrives half an hour from now.
Alistair and I reach the open doorway at the same time. I give him a nod to indicate that the garden outside is empty and that there were no signs of their neighbors either. He returns it, confirming that it was the same at the front of the house. Since this might get a little loud and messy, we had to make sure that no one would hear us and sound the alarm.
Once we’ve confirmed that we’ll have as much privacy as wecan get inside a crowded city, we round the corner and step inside the spacious kitchen.
It’s much bigger than I would have expected. There is a stove and an oven connected to a chimney on the back wall, and lots of counters on both sides that provide ample space to work. Logs crackle and pop in the fire underneath the metal stove, and two pots are resting on top of it. The scent of herbs flows through the air as the food in the pots bubbles merrily.
Between the kitchen section and the doorway is a large table for six. Four places have been set with shining plates and cutlery. I sweep a quick glance over everything before fixing my gaze on the three dragon shifters in the room.
Mama Osteria is chopping salad that she is scooping into the bowl next to her while her husband stirs one of the pots. Ferver’s sister is searching for something in one of the drawers, which makes a rattling sound.
My heart jerks and then squeezes painfully as that rattling sound triggers a memory of my mother. I panic as my lungs threaten to cease working again, so I quickly throw open the doors to the rage burning inside me and breathe it in.
“Ferver?” his mother says and starts lifting her head to look up towards the doorway. “Did you?—”
She gasps.
The bowl is knocked clean off the counter as she jerks back. It hits the floor with a wooden clattering and rolls to the side, sending salad and beans tumbling out onto the pale stone floor.
Papa Osteria whips around, the ladle in his hand flinging drops of stew through the air, and Ferver’s sister jerks upright from the drawer with a knife in her hand.
“Put the fucking knife down,” Alistair warns, his voice as vicious as it was back when we were living in the Seelie Court. It has been a long time since I heard him sound like that.
“You—” Papa Osteria begins.
Fire roars through the kitchen. The entire family gasps andstumbles back as Alistair sends flames rushing up all around them.
Summoning my own magic, I latch on to the bone white sparks of fear in their three chests and blow them into wildfires. Panicked cries rip from their lungs as they throw their arms above their heads to protect themselves.
“You heard him,” I snarl at them, rage still coursing through my chest like a living breathing thing. “Put the fucking knife down.”
Metal clatters against stone as Ferver’s sister drops the knife in her hand. Even Papa Osteria drops his ladle.
“Kick it towards me,” I order.
With terrified green eyes staring at me as if I’m a demon, Ferver’s sister kicks the knife towards me. It slides across the stone floor, the scraping sound almost drowned out by the flames that still crackle in the air around them.
I just stare her down with merciless eyes. “Kneel.”
With my magic still increasing their fear, they’re too terrified to resist so they just drop to their knees. Alistair finally lets his fire magic fade out, but the Osteria family still doesn’t dare to move. I keep my magic connected to them, increasing it until all three of them are shaking with terror, while Alistair stalks up to them and pulls three lengths of rope from his belt pouch.
