Page 6 of Season Warriors & Wolves

Silence rang as both our gazes clashed and none gave into the other. His hardened with control and mine with violence. “Finally got to tie that second shackle on me,” I said, lifting a cup to toast. “To your victory.”

He followed suit, lifting the cup, but stopped from drinking when I added, “And your inevitable loss.”

His smile was gruntled when he tipped the wine cup to his mouth. “You will learn to give up, my rose. Sooner than later. I will be here to watch you crumble to your own foolishness. To your own unfound sense of eminence.”

“Perhaps we can learn together. Our first father-daughter activity.” I clapped my hands once and the guards behind him flinched and quickly reached for their weapon, steel hissed against their scabbards but only midway when they caught the way my eyes gleamed with satisfaction. So afraid. So malleable. No Isjordian would have reacted as so. They thought their king a god, trusted his power to override all. The men around him were no Isjordians. “Look at us bonding. At last.”

He hunched over his food again, his knife cutting sharply against porcelain. “You’ve lost, child. Don’t be delusional.”

“Can’t help it. It is hereditary.”

His expression turned cruel, but he didn’t say anything for a long while, chewing pleasurably on his meat. “After your crowning you will be sent to retrieve the Seraphim piece first,” he revealed as if only to sour the taste of the sweet grapes.

Of course he would lose no time. “I need to train.”

He sneered. “Train?”

“You don’t expect me to get your sceptre with my charming banter and gorgeous face, do you now?” Though I probably could, I would rather not—I had other plans on how to spend my charming banter and good looks. “I’ve spent a month without moving, let alone using magic.”

“You will train,” he said after a while, still measuring my intentions—still measuring the fact that I had magic.

“With someone of my calibre, preferably.” Demir, give me Demir so I can learn how to gut him properly. So I can learn to slay him and send him right back to his creator in tiny, little pieces of lizard.

“Demir will see to it.”

My. Was I mind bending now?

The doors opened and a very pregnant Melanthe stepped in, head high and glowing. She slowed her step and carefully rounded the table to her seat, her leery eyes gleaming for the first time with what looked like pure, unadulterated satisfaction. Indeed, father and she were not only made of the same cloth, they were cut from it, too. Like that, an odd realisation struck me. It had all come in a full circle, and much to her plan, hadn’t it?

“Melanthe,” I said, slicing an apple. “If you are here, who is scaring away the crows from our grains?” I would rip her apart. Bit by bit, till I would see her soul flaying off from the rotting bones that held it.

For a moment, her eyes faltered, and she glanced shortly at my father. She kissed his cheek and sat across from me, folding a napkin over her swollen stomach and cutting through her meal. Quietly.

Fascinatingly disgusting. Guts, bile and vomit had never made me gag but this somewhat did. “Ignoring me now?” I asked, leaning back on my seat, trying to calm the heartburn that was threatening to spill sickness all over my dinner. “How boring of you.”

“Trying to keep your spirits high and maybe we can get over this farce as quickly as possible,” she said, her mouth curling in a smirk.

I sipped my drink to wash a death threat from my tongue. She would not have the satisfaction of seeing my anger, only its repercussions. “Is that what you told yourself when you made up a false lover to chase my father’s attention all while deceiving your own sister to get back her support after she almost left you covenless?”

Father glanced at Melanthe who had just narrowed her eyes on me. “I see my niece has gone around spreading lies.”

“She had someone to learn from. How very you, Mel dearest. You couldn’t stand not being the centre of his world, could you? But how pathetic to think that any woman of his has ever been the centre of his world enough that jealousy would stir him into caring about you. Tell me,” I said, leaning back. “Did you expect my father to kill you for it? It seems rather extreme. But the things we do for love, right?”

If I could no longer stir the galley, I’d bring harsh waters to it.

“I wouldn't worry about me, Snowlin,” she said softly, despite all the visible anger on her stiffened body. “You’ve got plenty else to worry about.”

“It would surprise you that for now, I worry most about you.” My eyes dropped to her stomach, and she immediately dropped a hand over it. “Being in your condition is not easy. We would want nothing bad happening to my little sister.” I took a sip to drown the words I wanted to vomit at her. “Would we now?”

“Would be a shame if I sowed your mouth shut,” she said, leaning forward on the table, her fingers glowing red with magic that gave the air a rotten stench variegated with mint. “Won’t need that to get the sceptre, would you now?”

Such fragile ego. I picked an apple from the table and took a little bite before throwing it directly at her head. Her and father’s eyes went huge when the fruit hit the witch right where her brains should be.

“How brave,” I said, stretching back on my chair, “to sit there threatening me and not three tons of cement apart from me.” Without losing her gaze, I reached and got the butter knife, twirling the dull thing around my fingers. “Sow my mouth shut. My eyes, too. Cut my limbs. Carve my skin. But at the end of it all, you will be dead. Real dead. I will watch life fade from those eyes. I’m not as merciful as your god.” Taking a deep breath, I lowered the knife down, fighting temptation, and drew a smile for my father. “Pass me the salt, please.” I took the container and sprinkled it all over us and the table. “I know it won’t ward off witches, but I’m hoping it will work on bitches,” I said, flicking some toward a snarling Melanthe.

She dusted the sprinkles off her clothes. “You will let her talk to me like that?”

Father sighed and leaned back, throwing his napkin on the table all mad at his interrupted meal. “What does it cost to lower your head and just eat like a normal fucking person, child?”