CAGED (#3, of Crows and Thorns)

Chapter 7

I shut the door behind me. My aunt had taken a place beside my father's sleek mahogany desk, while my father stood behind it—the rolling office chair pushed aside—and Byron faced off directly across from him. Both of their profiles were on display from where they stood. Byron's entire body shook with barely-controlled rage. He was red-faced and breathing hard, while my father remained stoic.

Byron half-turned to face me. His bloodshot eyes tracked me as I strode deeper into the room. And while he took me in, I was doing the same with him. Our leader, the Head of Great House Wychthorn, who was always impeccably groomed was a rumpled mess. His complexion was papery thin and drawn with more wrinkles since I'd seen him last. Beneath his eyes were dark purple smudges, and his hair was a disarray of salt and pepper tufts. I noted his crumpled tuxedo and the cognac stains on the tux shirt—he obviously hadn't changed since Nelle's presumed death yesterday morning.

He looked exhausted and unhinged.

Perfect.

Byron's gaze assessed me and my father—our dirty faces, the soot and ash, the dried blood splattered up my father's neck. "What happened here?" he demanded as I approached.

I didn't need to feel Byron's unadulterated hatred for me—crackling through the air, blustering all over my skin, or even taste it—a metallic tang with a fiery heat that stung my tongue. It was written all over his body. It blazed through eyes beneath thick eyebrows—the clenched jaw, the fists at his side shaking with a burning need to strike me.

When Byron arrived at our estate, it hadn't been long since the fight with Nelle and her wyrm. The stench of fire would have still lingered in the air as our warband quickly dealt to the battle site. He'd perhaps caught sight of our staff hurrying through our home for more medical supplies, or to assist with tending the wounded.

"A training exercise that went wrong," my father replied, dragging Byron's attention away from me. He answered in a flat-bored tone as if he didn't care that Byron's daughter had to fight for freedom, that her wyrm had slaughtered members of our extended family—soldiers and friends. But he did. My father wasn't cold and unfeeling. I often wondered if he felt too much—if it was too much for him to bear, having my mother stolen, tortured—and he'd had to shore up a wall to keep himself from shattering under the weight. But there were cracks rendered in the wall, and plenty moments of warmth when he knew he had to pick up the mantle in her absence.

Byron's left eye twitched.

He knew my father was lying. Knew what had happened tonight revolved around his daughter. He wanted to know if she was all right. Was desperate to ask—What is she?

Byron's fierce gaze slashed to mine and there was such a riot of emotion within those blue eyes—anguish and hate and hopelessness. I halted and bowed before him as tradition dictated. When I rose, he snarled. "I want to speak with my daughter."