A Court of Whispers and Song

Chapter 34

Any residual languid warmth froze over her blood like the first frost the moment Gwyn heard her snide voice.

Hands clenching into fists, she swiveled around to face the temple entrance.

Merrill stood before her in all her beautiful cruelty, occupying the aisle, barring her path. No longer in priestess robes but a dirtied silvery shift, glimmering like moonlight against her light brown flesh. A sword fixed in her clutch. And the edges of that damnable cloak she had worn the night the Gwyn spied her with her co-conspirator blowing as if the brisk November breeze streamed in from an open window. But there were none.

Gwyn's fingers twitched, itching to swipe the dagger at her thigh. But she waited. Patience was the core of the shadowsinger's discipline. Observe. Detect. Let your opponent make the initial move whenever you can—the first mistake. Then strike.

Merrill's knuckles gripped the pommel of her sword. A weapon with more reach than Gwyn's shorter blade. Gwyn donned a veil of indifference, schooling her features. Though deep in her mind, she was loosening her mental shield, reaching out for the High Lord of Night. Surely a powerful daemati such as himself could receive...

"You won't be able to call him. She made certain of that, Gwyneth. "

Gwyneth.

There were only so many people Gwyn tolerated calling her by her given name, and it was a ruefully short list. Catrin and Azriel. Merrill did it out of sheer spite, expressing it as most would use obscenities, as if she were consciously seeking to rile the young Valkyrie. And it was working.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Gwyn replied, her tone dry. Scanning the soaring space, Gwyn was grateful they were alone—the younglings had not yet arrived for their choir practice. May the Mother bless them and keep them safe. They'd endured enough.

A crisp wind lifted the end of Merrill's cloak, stirring the loose copper from Gwyn's twisted, sweaty braid.

Only then did she glare at Merrill, eyeing her adversary for weakness. Good gods. Those eyes ... There was something wrong with Merrill's eyes. The once brutal ice-blue irises that could freeze you on the spot were clouded like churned silt in stormy waves.

"What, no eye rolls today, behind my back or front? No snotty retort?" Merrill's sinister chuckle evoked a snake in the grass. Careful. Serpents could strike without warning. Be on guard. Think of your mission in her office.

"Where are the books, Merrill?"

She tapped her chin with the tip of her blade. "Books...Books...There have been so very many, Gwyn. Refresh my memory."

"The ones from your office. The Book of Breathings and The Walking Dead. "

Strands as pale as fresh snow floated behind the elder priestess on a strange phantom wind. "I see the shadowsinger's whore has reaped from his lessons. Tell me, Gwyneth? How many of his lessons were flat on your back?"

Whore—that nasty word again. One that her friend the High Lord himself had imparted to Gwyn dared to be applied to even him in the past when he'd been Under the Mountain.

Merrill's eyes fogged over, nearly opaque. "How many times did you spread your legs for Az? Lain with the Spymaster of the Night Court, the Angel of Death?" Those eyes changed color, overcast, turning into a bright day. A vibrant azure like a twilight sky once again. The elder priestess swayed from side to side.

Gwyn held everything in, all the inner violence and fury at her words, the implications brimming beneath a crafted visage. Especially after she shared with Azriel last night, and what she felt this dawn. Gwyn was nobody's whore. And Azriel was no Angel of Death.