Page 97 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers
Talon’s eyes are tight, but flicker to mine.
I choose to take it as a good sign, and push. “My sister was dying,” I confess quietly. “Sword wound. I don’t know where she got it, but her partner—a poison dealer—thought there was something on the blade. Keeva couldn’t heal her.”
Talon’s expression grows guarded at the mention of her name, all but confirming a suspicion that’s been growing at the back of my mind since Fang almost shut the door in Keeva’s face.
Since I saw the High King for the first time and suspected the signs.
Not just madness, but something more. Something darkerand more insidious. Something that would connect my sister and Keeva and that mage Fang’s fury at her with the Whisperers’ deciding to act, to kill the High King now. A High King who’s always been brutal, but now seems to have snapped entirely.
I can’t prove it—yet—but I just know.
The High King is being poisoned—by poison from Keeva’s stall. That’s why the Whisperers were so furious with her. That’s why they forced me into the Assay now. That’s why they want him dead quickly.
A tyrant on the throne is bad enough, but a volatile, paranoid, unpredictable tyrant whose mind is broken by poison?
That’s a danger no one can allow.
I know it’s my fault.Keeva’s words to Fang when the mage tried to shut the door in our faces. I hear them again, circling in my head, even weeks later.
And secrets might be a shield, but they’re starting to feel like a cage.
“Wolf made me a deal.” I offer the information to Talon, rubbing my aching hands. “Finn’s life—and the magic that might save her—in exchange for mine. I made him swear he wouldn’t kill me.”
Talon’s brow twitches in a quick furrow. There’s a flicker of… is that confusion, or intrigue, in their eyes? I can’t tell, but it makes my chest tighten. “Wolf doesn’t break his promises. If that’s what he said, you can trust him. He doesn’t tolerate betrayal, in himself or”—their eyes darken—“from others. He knows better than any of us how high the stakes are.”
Deathly high. Not just for me but for Finn, too, if I fail.
And even though they’ve never really let me in, I have to ask. “Why are you in this?”
I don’t expect a real answer. Talon doesn’t owe me anything.
But they run a finger along the leather sheath around their wrist, and the flat hilts tucked there. Their brown eyes churn. “I’m here for my little sister. Ciara.”
My heart aches as I ask, “What happened to her?”
“She was an apprentice when the High King razed the temples. The mages took them starting at eleven to sweep the floors and light the incense and learn about magic. Ciara…” Their voice sounds like it’s been torn through broken glass. “She was the first one who really knew… me. Who grew up knowing me as the name I chose for myself, once I knew who I really was.” Their voice roughens. “Who Iam.”
Talon’s eyes find mine, long-buried pain there. “Ever since she was little, she dreamed of seeing caoranachs. She loved the mage tales, the histories of the Old Ones and their battles and the stories that ancient magic might linger in mage bones. It cost our family everything to buy her apprenticeship, but she was so damn happy.”
A fissure cracks along the edges of my heart.
“After the gardai razed the temple, I looked for her. But… the bodies were all charred, and none of them were…” Talon coughs, rubbing the scarred palm of one hand over their face.
My chest twists.Those burns…
“None of them were small enough to be a child her age. Wolf and Fang, they tracked her from a scrap of her childhood blanket. She’s bound into service at Dunluce.”
“Oona’s family estate.” My blood chills.
Oona’s family used Cymrean mercenaries to put down rebellion during the uprising. They sided with the royals instead of therebels. Dunluce is one of the most dangerous places on the isle for someone with ties to the temples, tomagic.
Other than Castle Mount, that is.
Old Ones, our world changed so damn fast. We were too young to do anything then, when the way things were collapsed all around us, tearing our families to tatters.
A sliver of courage licks through my veins, up the curve of my spine.
We’re not too young anymore.
