Fire and Bone (Otherborn #1)(76)

“I thought you didn’t want her.” I watch her fiddle with the medallion on her new torque. “Was I wrong?”

She shakes her head. “No. It all just sucks.”

I have to agree.

“I need to get the hell out of here,” she says, her voice trembling.

It’s past time. After a few tense seconds of weaving our way out of the crowd, I ask, “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“No,” she whispers as we walk across the grass to the main building.

“The pixie will be fine, Sage. She was just a spy, anyway—”

“What? No, it’s not that.” She pauses. “The girl was a spy? I should’ve guessed.”

“What is it, then?” I ask.

Several seconds pass before she says, so quietly I almost miss it, “It’s like I know him.”

“Who?”

“Kieran.” Fear is clear in her voice.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I felt like I had no free will around him until he put on this necklace. He looks at me with those eyes, and crazy thoughts wash over me, like memories. What’s wrong with me? Why haven’t I just kicked him in the crotch like I would any other prick who pushed me like that?”

Those eyes? Could he be strong enough to glamour her? I can’t imagine—demis don’t get tricked by mirages. But then, Sage is still young in her powers. “What sort of memories are you having?”

She shakes her head violently. “I can’t say it; it’s just too crazy. And wrong.”

I put a hand to her arm, stopping her forward momentum. “You can’t let him wear you down, Sage. That’s what he does—he gets in your head and torments you. You have to say it. What do you see?”

She looks up at me, her expression tortured. Her breath quivers as she whispers, “We’re, you know . . . having sex.”

The impact of her words fills the space between us. I have no idea what to say. How could she have a memory of having sex with Kieran? Unless he really has managed to glamour her somehow, giving her false images in her head that she’s confusing with memories. It’s obvious neither of the torques are working properly on her, that something about her energy is different or . . . gods, could it be malformed, like Kieran said in the alley the other night? But she seemed to be finding balance in the greenhouse this afternoon.

“See?” she chokes out, mistaking my silence for disgust. “It’s horrible. The guy’s a monster, and some sick part of me wants to have sex with him, or thinks I’ve had sex with him, or something. I’ve never even had sex before.”

Someone behind us clears their throat, and we turn.

Finbar, Duncan, and Astrid are standing in a small alcove around a table with Kieran, Mara, and several druids. The House of Cernunnos and the House of Morrígan are probably doing the usual business of contracts and deals that would occur at any tribunal, making arrangements for their holdings or firming up territory lines. I hadn’t even remembered the alcove was there. Bloody fucking brilliant. I wonder how much they heard.

My brothers look on with twin frowns. Astrid is blushing, turned away a little, as if she doesn’t want to snoop. Or doesn’t want to see my face.

Kieran smirks, and I get the urge to cut his throat. It’s becoming a familiar feeling.

“Is everything all right with our newblood, hunter?” Princess Mara asks in her silky voice.

But I barely hear her because the scent of death fills my nostrils. My gaze moves lower.

Horror fills me as I realize what I’m smelling. Her pet shade is hunched over what looks like one of the human waitstaff, just under the table. The flesh is torn too much to see if it’s a male or female victim. Blood is pooled on the tiles and smeared on the wall behind them, the evidence of the shade’s massacred meal everywhere.

Sage makes a choking sound and brings her hand to her mouth.

Mara is studying Sage with her sharp silver-blue eyes, still casually holding the red silk leash. “You should send the girl to us,” she says to me. “My brother would be pleased to teach her, tame her, as the King of Ravens tamed her sister.” A slow smile crawls up her face.

I take Sage by the arm and lead her away.





TWENTY-NINE

SAGE

I’m more than a little relieved when we pull up in front of the Cottages. Neither of us said a word the whole way home. The silence was heavy with horror and unspoken questions.

I just saw my first official dead body. And the worst part is, I’m numb now.

Maybe I’m in shock.

When I realized what I was seeing under that table—the moment my mind registered the human hand, the clothes, the torn flesh—my heart stopped and everything slowed. My mind couldn’t understand what I was seeing, the pieces . . . bile filled my mouth and I wanted to cry, to scream.

But then Faelan pulled me away, and icy awareness hit me; nothing would happen because of it. No investigation, no arrests. Nothing. No one would ever know what became of that person.

The body was probably one of many in that place. And Kieran was standing right beside it as if it was a piece of dropped meat.

On the street, you get used to injustice. The shadows are full of bastards who get away with all kinds of sickening things. If a person is murdered in cold blood, though, you could tell yourself that someone might at least try to punish the people responsible. But in this world, human life is expendable, a means to an end. Food. This kind of viciousness is normal to these people. And now I’m one of them.