CAGED (#3, of Crows and Thorns)

Chapter 125

I left my heart behind in the rookery and strode across the short patch of lawn toward my aunt and my future.

I'd been here before.

Five years ago, after I'd signed the Alverac, I'd fucking lost it. As soon as my family had left the Wychthorns, my brothers had taken me straight to the fighting pit beneath Ascendria, because, in their words—I needed to get my shit under control.

I'd been down in the fighting pit, spitting blood and scuffing up dust and sand, duking it out with Zielenski, my brothers watching, wary and concerned. I'd had so much rage and despair bottled up in me that night. Ferne had picked me for the Alverac to bind Nelle's soul to my own. I'd own Nelle like a thing. Like a trinket. Like a mindless possession. It would be me ordering her to stand on an auction block at the Witches Ball, all the while knowing what was going to happen to her after she was bid upon and won by one of those odious Witches.

It had been too much and I'd collapsed under the weight of my family's expectations. And so, in the middle of the brawl with Zielenski, I'd stopped, roaring at my brothers that I wouldn't go through with it. Nelle was a kid. Just an innocent kid caught up in our machinations in reply to her family's betrayal of our mother. At merely fourteen years old, with a stroke of a quill, Nelle's fate had been decided by my family, and from that point on she'd been living on borrowed time.

My boots scuffed through the thick blades of grass as I drew closer to my aunt. The cadre surrounded me as met her on the stretch of lawn, raising my hands briefly in surrender, as I came to a slow halt.

Aunt Valarie stared at me shrewdly, taking in my eyes. Reflected on the surface of her own, I saw that my irises were no longer shining gray, but black. She stepped closer, the sharp lines of her features limned by moonlight. She spoke so quietly no one else would be able to hear us. "You protected her."

I lied right to her face. "She used our connection against—"

"Don't you dare lie to me," she hissed back, cutting me off, her hands balling into fists by her sides. " I was there when you arrived. I saw what you did. You shielded her."

I let my rage out. Gladly. The cool night air thickened with my threat, with my building fury. Tendrils of wind stirred, lifting skeletal leaves from the lawn to skitter across the blades of grass. "You dared touch what is mine. To mark her flesh with the whip!" I expelled those rageful, twisted feelings, the words rolling from my chest with a growl. "She belongs to me!"

Nostrils flaring, fierce lines of anger grooved my aunt's mouth as we willfully clashed against one another. Yet, I could taste her indecision on my tongue. She wasn't completely sure of what she'd witnessed earlier. My fierce response and her self-doubt caused the fury running through her veins to abate. A moment later she relaxed and the creases tightening her features smoothed away.

Taking a step closer, she held up her hand and her senses unraveled like a nest of adders to slither and coil all around me, creeping over my exposed skin, biting and testing me. "You've come into your own as a Tamer." Her hand fell away slowly and she softened in bewilderment. "How?"