Fate and Destiny (The Fated Series, #2)

Chapter 60 - Branka - Mend the Bond

"Yes! I win!"

"No, you don't!" Kathika argues, leaning over Clarice's bed to snatch up Mak's discarded pile of cards and inspect them.

"Damn, she does," Tsil pouts, throwing her own small hand onto the bed with the rest of the scattered cards. Kathika follows, glaring heavily at Mak who's smiling wickedly.

The others are playing another game on the other now open bed, Nilsa, Inna, and Vanya having left abruptly, but not out of mystery. I couldn't hear Rohana's summoning, but I knew well enough that it was she who called them. All three of them tensed before they misted, and they never tense nor question it when the elementals call for them. They're not back, but they've only been gone for a few minutes, so I don't put too much thought into it.

The bell rings loudly, repeating its loud note nine times before silencing again.

"Welp, you know what that means," Mak chimes, still happy from her victory. "Time for you, Mater, to go to sleep."

"But-"

"She's right, Clarice," I insist, putting one hand on hers. "You'll want the rest if you wish to walk the castle grounds in two days."

Her lips purse, Víđarr standing from where he watched the game go on in the small pouch her crossed legs made. She watches him stretch, then finds his gaze which doesn't shift. When she looks prone to arguing with him, he makes a high puppy whine and starts throwing all of the cards off of the bed by using his front legs and moving them in a digging motion.

"Hey!" Mak scrambles to pick up the flying cards before she loses a few of them.

"I guess I don't really have a choice, now do I?"

Víđarr only picks up the last card in his mouth and drops it onto the ground before walking back over to Clarice's side. Mak mumbles a few curses in Thralian in response but doesn't do more than put the cards back into her box of chaos. The others start packing it up too, all gathering around Clarice to say their goodnights. I'll be here, of course, laying in that other bed and falling into a half-sleep. One wrong feeling, one creek of a floorboard or scurry of a mouse, and I'm sitting up with a knife already in my hands.

Clarice starts to lie down when the door opens, it's croaking hinges that I loosened so they would make the annoying noise makes us all turn. My eyes instantly downcast themselves at the sight of Rohana's dark hair and always tanned skin. I end up staring at Víđarr, watching his body language and focusing on it to distract myself from tracking Rohana out of the corner of my eye. It does little good, and I end up watching her anyway.

"You're Rohana," Clarice states, likely easily making the conclusion considering she's been asking after my missing sister.

"I am."

Don't look. Don't look. Don't look.

But it's too hard, and I end up staring at her, though her own eyes seem glued to Clarice. The Queen, herself, is glancing between the two of us, Víđarr now chewing softly on her hand. Something tells me the act is only a distraction for how he's likely relaying information to her. She knows things we don't tell her, things only a wolf with hundreds of pairs of eyes all about the castle and ears in every corner would know. He's a gossip, and it's rather annoying to me that he won't just let her live without the thoughts entering her mind, though maybe it's she who requests them. Maybe she needs to know...

I shake my head slightly, clearing up the fog threatening to cloak my mind.

"I'm not fully caught up in who I am," Clarice continues, now only studying Rohana. "But I'm told that if I order you - any of you ten - to do something, you have no choice but to do it."