Page 121 of Incoronate
We’d been practicing for the better part of two hours when Rhen knocked on the door and told us we were expected in the mead hall. Apparently, that was our invitation to dinner.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t sure I was hungry anymore.
Not because of the practicing, though my head was definitely throbbing in a way that suggested my Nephilim magic and I still had some negotiating to do, but because the word supper in this particular settlement, after everything I’d seen and heard today, was doing nothing good for my appetite. I’d spent the walk across the compound trying to mentally prepare myself for whatever was about to be put in front of me and had arrived at the Hold feeling deeply, fundamentally unprepared.
The space was far fuller than it had been that afternoon. Every bench was occupied, bodies packed shoulder to shoulder beneath the low ceiling while the fire at the far end burned high and hot. Heat and noise pressed through the room until the air felt thick and cloying. Beneath it all ran a steady undercurrent of sound—low voices murmuring over one another, crude utensils scraping against plates, the restless hum of a place stretched thin by too many people and not nearly enough to go around.
It was immediately apparent that most of the room had opinions about our presence here, and none of them appeared to be favorable. Eyes slid toward us and lingered a beat too long. Jaws set just a little too tight. Conversations dipped and changed as we passed, voices lowering in that way that made it obvious they were talking about us.
And I got it. I really did. Three strangers showing up and taking up space and resources in a place that had neither to spare wasn’t exactly cause for celebration. Still, being on the receiving end of that much collective resentment while already running on zero sleep and no food was not doing anything good for my mood or my appetite.
Rhen walked us to Cael’s end of the table and I slid in between Trace and Dominic as I tried to get my bearings before my face gave anything away. Trace must have sensed the change in my breathing or the tension creeping up my spine because his hand promptly dropped to my thigh beneath the table, the pressure gentle and reassuring.
I was grateful for the contact, for approximately three seconds, until I lifted my eyes and finally noticed the humans sitting at the table.
My stomach instantly dropped.
It was easy to tell them apart from the Revenants. They were the ones with plates in front of them. And by plates, I meant flat slabs of dark stone bearing food I was only calling food because I needed it to be food. I counted at least six of them from where I was sitting, scattered along the length of the table, each one with a Revenant seated close beside them. Close in a way that wasn’t casual. Two of those Revenants were already feeding, right there in the open, their mouths at the necks of the humans beside them like it was the most unremarkable thing in the world. The humans, for their part, looked approximately the opposite of distressed about it. Frankly, they looked as though they were about two seconds away from having an orgasm right at the table.
I cringed inwardly, hoping I didn’t look anything like that when Dominic and Trace drank from me.
God, I reallyreallyhoped not.
The Revenant feeding closest to me lifted his black gaze to mine as though he’d felt me staring. His eyes were black and unhurried and entirely unapologetic. I looked away quickly and directed my eyes firmly at the table in front of me.
‘Calm yourself, angel,’ said Dominic to my mind, his voice low and honeyed. ‘Unless you’d like to turn the entire room into a frenzy.’
The implication landed immediately. If he could hear my racing heart, then every Revenant in this room could too. Which only made it race faster.
Shit!
Trace’s hand squeezed my knee beneath the table, and I felt his focus narrow on me without him even having to look. A breath later, his calm moved through the bond, careful and warm, wrapping around the jagged edges of my panic until they dulled enough for me to breathe again. Within seconds, my pulse began to slow, my shoulders dropped a fraction, and the fear receded into something I could actually manage.
I exhaled quietly through my nose.
Okay. Better. Much better.
The woman who had brought my water that afternoon appeared at my shoulder without warning and set a plate down in front of me and then stalked away before I could even open my mouth to thank her.
I looked down at what she’d left and did my best to school my features. Up close, it was no more identifiable than it had looked from across the room. Something pale and dense sat on one side, vaguely reminiscent of a mash if I squinted and gave it the benefit of the doubt. And beside it, a piece of meat that I had no reference point for whatsoever. Dark. Oddly textured. Not anything I had eaten before, or anything I could match to an animal I’d ever seen.
I picked up the crude utensil beside the plate and then just held it, unable to coax myself into actually using it.
“And for you, Heath? Edgar?” said Cael, his dark eyes moving from Dominic to Trace and then back again. “Glass, or from the vein?”
He didn’t wait for an answer before glancing to Rhen, who crossed to a side door and pushed it open, jerking his head once at whoever was on the other side.
Three women walked into the hall.
They were dressed in clothing that had clearly been cut and resewn until there was barely enough of it left to qualify as clothing at all, worn with the indifference of people who had long since stopped making choices about what they put on their bodies. Their necks told the rest of the story. Bite marks layered over bite marks, old and new, healed into pale ridges and fresh enough to still be dark at the edges, a topography of use that made something bitter and cold move through my veins.
They lived here. That much was obvious. But not the way the others did. Not as equals. Not in the same way the Revenants did. It was more like they were kept. Fed just enough to stay standing. Kept Close enough to the table to be useful and convenient, as though they were nothing more than walking blood bags.
My face twisted with everything I was feeling. Horror. Revulsion. Anger. All of it written plainly across my expression for everyone to see.
Cael was the first one to notice. His attention snapped to me, a small groove appearing between his brows. “Problem?” he asked, the word coming out somewhere between a question and a warning.
My mouth opened to answer him as Trace and Dominic went rigid beside me at the exact same moment, theirtension bleeding through the bond in two separate but equally unmistakable frequencies.
