Page 22 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

“What does Nesrin have to do with this?” I asked.

Snow’s attention snapped to me like a whip. “Nesrin is his daughter?” All of a sudden, she burst out laughing. She laughed and laughed till her body began shaking with remnants of her amusement. “Oh, I am going to have so much fun.”

Stregor attempted to stand, chains digging in his skin and holding all of his limbs down. “Do not touch my child!”

Snow kicked to her feet. “I will not touch her, but I will make sure she never touches anyone ever again.” Picking another butter knife up, she strode toward him.

Tension filled the room and Stregor turned to look at me full of beseech. I was not a man of mercy, and he knew that. And even if I was, it was not my mercy to give.

She gripped his hand and then struck down on his wrist with the round blade. This was not a storm I could stop from raining. She had waited long for this and she deserved her solace.

“Bloody Cynth,” my brother cringed at the sound.

Screams, the crunch of bone and flesh made few of the councillors vomit onto the table. Blood splatters had flown over the furniture and wall, pooling on the table and dribbling down to the floor. Fisting his hair, she pulled his head back. “Do you know how it feels to have two of your hands cut? Hm?” She pulled the blade back and pierced his wrist again. Emotion bled in her previously blank features. “She was so small when I found her, starved, bleeding, terrified. With both her hands cut to the wrist. But no. She does not fear the man who cut her limbs and made her feel half a human, she feared you and that tramp of a daughter of yours. Every night, she screamed of a sister and father who haunted her. Why is that…Stregor?”

Couldn’t be. No. This was not what I thought it was. Nia. What she had told me in Isjord. “You are Nia’s father?”

Snow pulled the knife and dug once again, his words cut by screams. “Her father’s name is Alaric Drava. This man is no father to her.” One last time she pulled back and dug the knife again till the limb separated from the arm.

Grabbing a torch from the wall, she placed the flame on his cut flesh, cauterising the wound and Stregor’s screams grew hoarse. “Wouldn’t want you to die before I have had my fill and you bleed like a little bitch.” Pushing from him, she motioned to her guards. “Get him patched up. Next, I’m going to cut the one he signed my mother’s death with.”

One by one, the room emptied till only her, Mal and I were left. Wiping her hands on the tablecloth, she turned to me with a saccharine smile. “Where were we? Yes, what I want and how you are going to give it to me.”

Tilting my head, I took in all of the change my longing for her had masked. The much thinned frame, the dark shadows under her eyes, the slight sway on her walk as if she was dizzy, her slow-moving pulse, the slight tremble of her hands. “Why haven’t you been eating?”

“The Adriatian sceptre piece,” she said, ignoring me and sitting by a large arched window overlooking the mountain face carrying the city. She closed her eyes at the quiet breeze brushing her. “You are going to get it for me.”

I already knew what she wanted from me. And worse, I already knew that not in a million lifetimes would I ever refuse her. “You look like you haven’t gotten any sleep at all.”

She just stared and stared ahead, and for the first time I felt like I didn’t know what went inside her head. “My Crafter will work to get Highwall’s veil back. I don’t want any of your sort out of their cage and my father out of my sugar pot.”

“Something has happened.” Many things had happened, but there was something else bothering her. Something more.

Finally, she turned to me, that emptiness in her eyes almost made me flinch. “You have a week. If you can't find it in a week, I will burn the whole of your land to find it myself.”

I stood up. “You do that, my love.”

“I thought you’d know by now,” she said, reaching to a stop just a foot from me. “Just what I am capable of.”

“I do know. But I also know that with your father searching the sceptre and whatever else is bothering you, there is only so much of your time and effort you are willing to spend over Adriata. One thing I know for sure is that you are not petty before logical. Normally the pettiness comes after.”

A knock sounded at the door and a smirk rose on Snow’s lips. “Right on time. The things you make me do, darling.” The venom dripping from that word I used to long to hear was deadly.

“Kilian, Malik.” Driada’s voice made Mal and I freeze on the spot.

Snow walked to me until our chests were barely touching. “It came to me after, but there is one vow I forgot during our wedding.” Her smirk grew to a wide grin. “I will find all you love and care about to ruin before your very eyes.”

From the corner of my eye, I caught Mal’s slow sobered up movements. Snow would hurt Driada, that I knew, but this was about me after all.

“Shame, it was rather romantic.” Leaning down to her ear, I whispered. “We all lose and ruin those we love and care for at some point in our life, my love. You must be desperate to pull out your big girl threats. When you are willing to bargain for my help, let me know. I am a king, not an idiot. Threaten to burn Adriata and I will entertain you till your soldiers are so burnt out they won’t know what direction the wind blows. Threaten to kill my council and I will find a new one, a better one. Hurt Driada and see just how many other sacrifices of the same I’ve made.”

When I pulled back, she wore a satisfied smile. “I don’t believe you for a second. I think you’re rather scared.” She ran a sole finger over the seam of my jacket, stopping just above my heart. She looked up at me so innocently. “I think I like it.”

“Is there something the matter?” Driada said, making her way to Snow’s side as if she hadn’t just been used as a threat against me.

“Ma, stay where you are,” Mal ordered roughly, and all movement seemed to stop in the room.

Circling me, Snow went past Mal, giving him a complacent look before cradling my stepmother’s hands on her own. “Apologies, Driada, I didn’t mean to leave you alone in Taren.”