Cvareh did nothing to help Finnyr up as he tried to pull himself off the floor. Their brother locked eyes with Petra—one eye, the other was still a slow-healing, bloody socket—as if somehow he still thought he could fight her. The majority of his face had been scraped away down to the bone.
“I have powerful people who will stand for me, Petra,” Finnyr uttered darkly.
“Who? Yveun’Dono?” Petra scoffed. “Let him challenge me. I invite him! Let us settle this like Dragons rather than the coward he is, poisoning my men and women his only means of securing an advantage.”
“Do not cast me aside,” their brother cautioned. “I will be your undoing.”
“You undo nothing but my honor with your existence.”
“You never valued what I could offer this House!”
She snorted. “There was nothing to value.”
“House Xin does not need you or any information you can give us.” Cvareh interjected himself into the shouting match before it got out of hand again. Both sets of eyes were on him, but he looked only at Petra. “She will produce it.”
“Cvareh…” Petra gave a cautionary look to Finnyr. That was already saying too much in front of their brother. Not when they had just effectively disowned him and marked him for death. An animal in a corner could still be dangerous, even one as small as Finnyr. Especially when that corner was backed by Yveun’Dono. “You mean…”
“Yes.” There was no doubt they spoke of the same thing.
“Then the night was not a total waste.” His sister clapped her hands together as though she cheered for the arrival of the Lord of Death himself. “Cvareh, remove him from my sight. Keep him, tucked away where I can’t see him until the Court begins. Yveun wanted him to stay in the manor? Very well, he will stay, long enough for me to kill him.”
Cvareh stood over his elder brother. Finnyr glared up at him with the same coldness he’d always shown after Petra had named Cvareh Ryu over him. Cvareh wished it could have been different. He wished he need not look upon his brother with contempt. But he knew nothing else.
This was the conclusion they had all been marching toward from the beginning. This was the breaking point of the three Xin siblings. Their House only had room for two.
Finnyr stood without his help, limping away. Blood trailed behind him as he walked and Cvareh stayed at his side all the way out of the room, then closed the doors tightly behind them with a heavy sigh.
He looked at his elder brother with a weight in his chest, a vacuum left behind by the joy Arianna had placed there earlier. Petra wanted to see Finnyr locked away and then led to slaughter. It was a shameful death.
“So where will I be kept before my slaughter?” Finnyr rasped through his yet-healing wounds, blood dribbling from his chin. “Will I even have time to wash before Court? Or line my skin with the blessings of the gods?”
Cvareh swallowed hard, feeling oddly brave and very stupid. Petra would no doubt want Finnyr locked away in the sparsest, deepest room in the manor. “You will.”
He led Finnyr down the halls and away from his sister to the guest rooms usually reserved for noteworthy occupants. Finnyr was his brother, and a Xin; he would present himself well before court. Even if today was the day he would die, he would die a proper death befitting a child of the House.
Finnyr, to his credit, made no effort to struggle or escape. Even if he could overpower Cvareh, Petra wouldn’t hesitate to reduce him once more to a golden smear if Finnyr turned now. His brother kept his head bowed and his mouth shut, defeated.
“I’ll return in a few hours, right before the Court begins.” Cvareh assumed responsibility for the task. Even if Petra hadn’t designed it to fall to him, it should be one of them, and she wasn’t going to be in the right mindset to escort Finnyr anywhere.
“Little Cvareh, so good to his big sister,” Finnyr spoke with his back turned, making a show of dedicating more effort to looking around the room than his pointed comments. “Take a good look at me, Cvareh. This is the fate that awaits you. She’ll cast you aside the moment you’re no longer of use. She’ll destroy everything Xin for her ambition, if that’s what she must. The end Petra had designed for herself will stand before all her ideals, forever. It stands before me. It will stand before you. If you don’t stop her, she will lead everything you love to ruin and you will be left with nothing more than the feeling of Yveun’s claws ripping out your beating heart.”
Cvareh clenched his fists tightly and still his claws tried to escape. Blood pooled in his hands from his own palms, but he didn’t open them. If he did, he would strike Finnyr down where he stood.
“Everything Petra does is for Xin.” Cvareh shook his head sadly, reaching to close the door. “It’s you who destroyed everything, Finnyr.”
Cvareh shut the door and summoned a servant from down the hall to fetch the key. He waited, guarding the room, until it could be sufficiently locked. Even then, he stalled, listening, holding his breath, waiting.
There were no outbursts of anger. No sobs. No screams of anguish. Finnyr was quiet, going about his business as though his impending expiration didn’t bother him in the slightest.
Cvareh gave a long sigh and stepped away. This was normal for Finnyr, being a prisoner among luxury, disposable nobility. And he was going to die as he lived—as nothing more than a captive.
39. Arianna
The list of her supplies was almost finished.
It was an extensive process to calculate out the amount of various elements she would need to get a satisfactory initial production on the boxes. For the first time in maybe her entire life, she wished she could talk to Sophie. The woman would know how many boxes were a reasonable number to produce. She was far better at planning tactically for things like that than Ari was.
But that was currently impossible, and Arianna needed to give something to the Dragons before she left. She wanted a sort of contract in hand, a written understanding of expectations. The comfort it’d give her would be literally paper thin, but it was something.
She operated under the thought that an initial run of a hundred boxes would be enough to begin to shift the tides in House Xin’s favor. Then they’d move into second-stage production, where all the tooling would be perfected and the workers on the line would know the full assembly process with ease. They could make more, faster.
She hoped it would be enough.
The waft of a scent hit her nose, distracting her. Arianna paused her pen on the page. It was the smell of Dragon blood, a sharper, fresher aroma than just trace magic. It wasn’t extremely close, but it was near enough.
She stared at her hands. She had decided to look to the future, not the past. She was going to craft a new world for Loom, for Florence. Arianna pressed her eyes closed. She was going to let herself hope and dream again for a future that she might design herself to be a part of.