The Dragons of Nova (Loom Saga #2)(86)

“The man was killed without any kind of wound. His chest, head, all intact,” Finnyr clarified.

It made too much sense.

“How have you neglected to tell me this?” Petra raged.

“I did not think it important.” Finnyr tried to move away but Petra’s hand tightened into a fist, yanking him into place with force.

“You did not think it important for me to know that the Ryu of Rok is a shadow-master, a potion-mongering coward?” Their noses nearly touched as she verbally assaulted him. “That she is far more despicable than even her mate?”

“I did not connect the facts! I did not see what was there! Nameless die all the time.”

“That is because you are an idiot.” Petra slammed Finnyr against the wall. “A useless idiot.”

“Petra—”

She gouged out his throat with a hand, blood pouring, bubbling as his words escaped through the open holes as gasping wheezes. Flesh strung from between her fingers like taffy, stretching until it snapped.

“You are useless.” Petra let the one wound heal, pinning him down with her knees on his arms and sitting on his chest. She leaned forward, dragging a claw around his eye, watching the liquid ooze out alongside the blood, as she whispered in his ear, “Useless.”

She scolded herself as much as him. They had both failed House Xin. He had failed them with his incompetence. She had failed them for depending on it. His punishment would be her claws. Her punishment would be the shame of flaying her brother in a back room, hidden from the world.

“Useless.”

She reared back and struck him.

“Useless. Useless. Useless!”

She would slice him, once for every Dragon that had died this night, and then another hundred times for every Oji of House Xin he had shamed. His magic began to falter in its ability to keep up healing between her relentless blows. It reduced his flesh into little more than liquefied meat. He tried to struggle against her but Petra pressed herself upon him until she began to hear bones snap. If he died tonight, he would not die with a face any would recognize. She would see that she never had to look upon the shame of Xin ever again.

Her claws stopped, mid swing. Petra tugged, blinking from her blood-frenzied trance. A hand was wrapped around her wrist.

“Sister, enough!”





38. Cvareh


The woman pulled him in so many directions at one time that Cvareh was surprised his limbs were still attached. He had sensed her hesitation, her wish to withdraw, but she hadn’t rejected him outright and he didn’t know yet how to fully process the matter. Arianna was a woman who always knew what she wanted, what she fought for. A lack of opposition could mean support, or agreement.

Cvareh scowled to himself at the logic, dangerous in more than one way.

Perhaps she merely had yet to find the way she wished to outright reject him. It was confusing and laborious to try to reason through her mannerisms. But it was something he did gladly. The better he understood her, or tried, the better he could give her whatever it was she needed, be it revenge, or gold, or someone to whom she could finally confess the weighty secrets that she carried alone in her heart.

It would be his lot that the first woman he would design to take for his mate, his life-mate if she ever agreed to it, would be the first Perfect Chimera—and impossibly head-strong. Cvareh grinned faintly to himself. All the reasons he should find her tiresome made her all the more endearing. She had accomplished an inspirational amount in her short life. If Arianna could be all she was, then he could be a man she deemed worthy of her love.

She didn’t say she loved him.

She didn’t outright reject him.

Their magics and minds had been so close for the past day that he wouldn’t be surprised if she began to smell of him and he of her. Even if she said otherwise, he knew more of her than she gave him credit for, and what he knew and felt gave him hope. Cvareh paused, looking down the long stretch that would eventually lead back to her room.

The mere thought of her being near brought a smile to his mouth, a smile that quickly fell when he remembered her desire to leave Nova. The pain of being separated from her was like lightning in his mind, hurt its rallying thunderclap. But love would be the rain, soothing both.

There was a solution here, he merely had to find it.

“Cvareh’Ryu!”

Cain was the last person he wanted to see, especially after the increasing closeness he and Arianna had shared. “Cain, you have yet to recover my good favor,” Cvareh cautioned.

“We have far more pressing concerns,” Cain’s tone was grave.

Cvareh put all else aside. If it was enough to unsettle Cain, it was something serious indeed. “What has happened?”

“The wine on Ruana has been poisoned.”

Cvareh didn’t even have the capability to process the words Cain was saying. It made no sense. “Why would the wine be poisoned?”

“Think of who such a thing would benefit.” Cain scowled with murderous intent.

“Rok bastards.” Cvareh rolled another several curses off his tongue.

“All wine is to be discarded into the God’s Line. I am to spread the word.”

“Go with haste.” Cvareh would not keep him a moment longer. “Where is my sister?”

“Her sitting parlor.”