Page 90 of Beneath a Shattered Sky
“Don’t look.” I pull her away, cradling her head against my chest so she can’t see. “Rose, he wouldn’t want you to see this.”
Drystan curses, and a glance reveals he’s looking over us at the severed head in the closet.
Bram’s eyes are wide in death, and the sun-shaped brand on his forehead is framed by decaying skin. The smell is awful; a mix of rot, decay, and the damp stink of reptile excrement that seeps into the room like a plague, making the back of my throat itch.
I finally manage to pull Rose away, out of sight of the closet. My heart is still pounding. If I’d been just a fraction of a second slower to recognise?—
Cutting the thought off savagely, I pass her to Jaro, who cradles her as her breath hitches in a half-sob, and crouch beside the head. Drystan takes the spot on my other side, both of us examining it for clues.
Lox nudges at my mind, and I hold my hand out for him to drop the head of one of the snakes into my palm. With a grumpy caw, he disappears back into my skin as I turn the dark snakehead over in my fingers.
Nathairs. Young ones, given their size, but still deadly.
Someone wanted to sentence our mate to a long, painful death.
Beneath it is an empty chest that must’ve held the snakes, and I pick it up, grimacing. It’s a jewellery box, the kind one might give to a child, and it’s charred and blackened, though Drystan’s fire left the wardrobe untouched.
At the top, in tarnished silver letters, is a single name.Máel.
I drop the box.
“Eero did this.” It’s so out of character for the seelie that I doubted it at first, but this is so targeted—so personal—that it can’t have been anyone else.
“His spies must have reported that she was here,” Drystan mutters, picking up the box I dropped. “And he was making a point.”
“Can I kill him yet?” Lore asks, and there’s a manic kind of glint in his eye as he blinks onto Drystan’s shoulders, swinging his legs. “I have plans to try every single knife I own on him until I find the one that breaks unbreakable skin.”
“Lorcan,” Drystan growls. “Please take Rose and Jaromir to the market to purchase some new clothes. She’ll need them when she reaches the Winter Court. Jaromir, glamour her. They can’t know she saw this.”
It seems callous, to expect her to focus on something as banal as shopping right now, but I understand his reasoning. LettingEero’s spies see that this has affected her will only put a target on the back of anyone Rose cares for. That knowledge doesn’t stop a part of my soul from shrivelling at the thought of Rose being away from me. Someone literally just tried to kill her.
A blade digs into Drystan’s neck in the next second, poking out of the heel of Lore’s boot.
“Leaving me out of the revenge plot would be rude,” Lore comments, as mildly as if he were commenting on Spring Court weather patterns. “You wouldn’t do that to me, right, dullahan?”
For once, Drystan doesn’t lose his cool. He simply shakes his head. “No. I believe whoever did this deserves every single second of whatever crazed vengeance you can deliver. Bree and I will hunt down this assassin until you return.”
“And then I can flay his cock and gift it to Rose.” Lore blinks away with a grin. “There are so many blood vessels down there?—”
He blinks our mate away before I get to hear the rest of the sentence, and my chest tightens.
The instant she’s out of sight, the dullahan rounds on Caed, whose face instantly tenses.
“I had nothing to do with this,” the Fomorian protests. “When would I have the time? You’ve been having me watched since Siabetha.”
The dullahan looks away, unable to take his words as anything other than the truth.
“It has to be Eero.” Drystan puts the box back.
“I got this.” Lore grins, popping into existence standing on one hand, grabbing the box, and then blinking across the room to the door. He opens it and yells, “Wraith!”
The barghest barrels around the corner a second later, and Lore holds the box out.
“Find!”
The giant canine sniffs carefully at the box, then at the air before taking off down the sunlit hall.
“Go, puppy, go!” Lore grins, bouncing and tumbling after him like an acrobat.
