I stare at her straight on. “Like I-despise-him fine. What happened to Breck?”
The first part seems to please her because she instantly smiles and swaggers over to me. For a second she looks as if she’ll brush a hand across my hair, then pulls back and wrinkles her nose, taking in my outfit. “I’m glad to hear it. I trust you’ll keep it that way. It’d be a shame to . . . cause anyone grief.” She walks over to where Breck was cleaning the floor and taps her foot, drawing my gaze to the stained wood.
Wait . . .
My lungs fold.
Even from this distance I can see it’s blood. Dried into two tiny separate pools.
I snap my head up. “What did you do to her?”
She lifts her hand and studies her sharp, green-painted fingernails. “It’s so reassuring to know I have your continued gratitude and commitment to my rules.” The foot tapping ceases. “I trust your skills have almost reached their full potential?”
I clench my teeth. She beat Breck without any idea whether I’d followed her rules or not. And now she wants to talk about my skills?
Of course she does.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Good, because I have a job for you and Colin. A way to . . . alter the disappointing course of this war, if you will. We’ve a small window of opportunity three days from now that I believe to be our chance to save Faelen. I spoke with Eogan before you left, and he agreed. In the meantime, Lady Isobel is visiting the next five days, and you’re to stay out of sight. Except, of course, for tomorrow evening’s party. Understood?”
I stare at the bloodstained floor through my anger and slowly force a nod.
She’s careful to avoid brushing up against me on her way to the door. “Oh, and before you dress for bed, wash the filth off yourself.”
As soon as she’s gone, I walk over to stand beside the blood. A servant being beaten is nothing I’m unaccustomed to, but Breck . . . The smell of the soap stings my nose along with my own sweat. It turns my gut. This was because of me?
My hands ball into fists even as my legs grow shaky and my vision narrows in anger, disgust. I slide to the stained floor before my knees give way. It’s always because of me.
Colin. The little boy’s village. The wolf. And now, Breck.
Five. Ten. Fifteen minutes I sit as the fury inside builds, inflicting pictures of the latest life I’ve destroyed—even if only a wolf. And of the lives I’m on the brink of destroying.
That I’m being conditioned to destroy.
I hate this, hate all of it.
The sky outside begins rumbling the same way my fingers are quaking, and suddenly that twisted thing inside me is aching, churning. I tug one of the knives Eogan made from its sheath and look around for my mugplant jar even as Eogan’s gaze drifts through my head.
I shake it off. How dare he invade my private space. Especially when part of this is his fault.
I press the blade against my skin to add a mark, a branch just beneath the bluebird. But that face, his gaze, won’t stop. And for whatever reason, I can’t shut it out. It comes again, lingering a moment before slipping a path all the way through me. And then abruptly there’s Adora’s face smirking down at Breck.
I stop.
Adora. I raise my shaking chin and glare at the bloodstain on the floor. I clench my jaw. From somewhere the determination emerges that, whether because of me or not, this insanity of Adora’s has to stop. And no mark of guilt is going to do that.
I lower the knife even as everything in me screams to continue—needs to continue.
But I won’t.
I don’t.
My hands are shuddering as I resheath my knife, just before I hurtle a roar of thunder to shake the entire house.
CHAPTER 22
SO AM I TO HAVE THE PLEASURE OF DEALING with your attitude all day?” Eogan watches me dismount from my mare. “Or are you just ignoring me to make a point?”
His tone is overly polite. Same as it’s been ever since we left the High Court’s lengthy shadow this morning to travel east toward a lake I’d never heard of. Two hours of riding with a wall of tension between us, and there’s still nothing I care to say.
“It’s more convenient for both of us, don’t you think?” I mutter, struggling to release Haven from her bridle.
I pat her rear before turning to follow Eogan up a trail covered in traipsy trees leaching honey into the air. Above us, the cerulean sky hovers like an ocean, and I wonder if he’s taking me to look at more warboats. Or wolves.
“You mind at least informing me of why you’re ignoring me?”
My fingers flit to my mouth even as I glare at the back of his head and try not to notice how nicely his broad shoulders taper down to his waist. Or how stupidly gorgeous the rest of him is. I drop my hand and press up the path. “You had no right to do what you did on that mountain.”
“Are we talking about the wolves or the kiss?”