Page 23 of A Dream Shrouded in Fury
My shoulders sagged, and I turned towards the wall to collect my thoughts.Although I would never tell him so, not wanting to feed his ego, Corban was right.Revenge had been my fuel for so long, I hadn’t remembered I could live off anything else.But now a different burn had kindled inside me—this one made of hope and a deeper, softer desire—and the two fires warred with each other.
But the Coynfare was my family.Kalla had her fury, and I had mine.She would understand.
“All right,” I said, my voice as empty as my soul.“Let’s come up with a plan.First we need to get out of here, then we need to deal with Brynna—and once she’s dead, we’ll track down the fucker who ratted us out to the city guard and show them how dangerous it is to cross the Coynfare.”
Kalla
XVI
I stood next to Cliff in front of the map he’d sketched on the wall with a stick of charcoal.My name was right there among the others with a line scratched out for yesterday.A shift I’d missed because I’d been away from the fury.
When I’d approached my friend after finishing with Thorn, he’d shown an impressive amount of restraint in not laying into me, but the quiet consideration on his face now didn’t make me feel any less like a piece of shit.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get word to you,” I said.
He shrugged and cast his gaze to the map.“It’s fine.If you had, it would have taken me days to pull myself off the floor, too stunned to find my feet.The predictable and reliable Kalla hiding away in the mountains with a fae?It’s the kind of story Grove would make up to entertain the children.”
I grimaced and leaned my shoulder against the wall.“I know, right?I finally take a step outside the familiar and bring down the wrath of the entire fury.I never want to hear anyone tell me to try something new again.”
Cliff chuckled, but the look he cast me was full of confusion.“I’m trying to understand it, Kal, but I’m struggling.Explain it to me.You had to know it wouldn’t end well for either of you.”
It’s not over yet, I wanted to say, but didn’t bother.I didn’t want to fight with my best friend.
“I found him, and he… I don’t know.He changed my world with a single look and a few half-lucid words.I’ve never experienced anything like that before.I couldn’t let him die.My plan was to learn everything he had to tell me about the fight, then kill him, but that plan lasted all of one night.I couldn’t pull myself away.The more time I spent with him, the more time I wanted to spend.”
They weaponize the truth.They deceive.They play you to get what they want.
Thorn had sounded so certain it was true, but what would Jael have gotten by choosing to stay with me?
“This is a problem.”Cliff stated it as nothing more than fact, and my shoulders slumped.
“Yeah, it is.”There was no point denying how fucked up I was when we all knew what was at stake.I wasn’t sure what options Thorn was debating between, but I doubted any of them would come without pain.“What about the other fae?What’s the story there?”
Cliff snorted and shoved his hands in his pockets.“We were out scouting when we stumbled on the ambush site.Unlike you, I wasn’t captivated by what I found.At first we thought they were all dead and were talking about what to do with the corpses.Then the loud one groaned, so we had to go through them one at a time.I wish now I’d run my dagger through the prick’s chest and finished what the other fae started.”
“Pain in the ass?”
“You have no idea.The other two are all right.Judgy fuckers, though.Especially about food.”
I laughed.“They have that in common, I guess.Our vampiric menu is not up to the standards of their refined palates.”
Cliff rolled his eyes.“Anyway, we debated killing them there, but Birch made a good point that if more fae came through, we needed to be prepared.So we brought them back here to question them.”
The temptation was strong to triumph that I’d had the same idea, but this hardly seemed the time.I also doubted Birch had suggested anyone get naked with the prisoners.
“The two I don’t want to throttle gave us the story, while the third one—Corban—kept ordering them to shut up.Pretty telling of their hierarchy that the others didn’t listen to him.”
“Why not kill him and keep the other two?”It seemed a logical move to me.
“We wanted to keep them talking.Couldn’t risk they’d shut down if they saw us as ruthless and bloodthirsty.”
“We’re vampires.That’s the very definition of what we are.”
“Sure, but they didn’t need that shoved in their faces.Diplomacy, Kalla.It still counts for something this deep under the mountain.”
I quirked an eyebrow at the teasing gleam in his eyes.“Did it work?”
“To a point.They were unconscious for the first two days and only woke up the night before last, so it’s been a slow process getting the details out of them.We’d just finished our interrogation shortly before you arrived so, traitor or not, you have great timing.”
