in the downpour, thinned near to worthlessness. But before it lost cohesion entirely, bleeding out into the puddle of Hush’s pretty ruin, the blood managed to form itself into simple shapes.
Four letters that formed a single word.
A name.
NAEV.
BOOK 3
A HOUSE OF WOLVES
CHAPTER 20
SUNDER
Cold.
That was the first sensation Mia felt. Chill seeping into her bones. Stone at her back. Cold and hard and damp.
She lifted her hand, tried to move.
Pain.
In her head. Her back. Her leg. Her fingers touched her brow and a groan escaped her lips, the light above too bright to open her eyes against.
“LIE STILL,” came a voice. “YOU MAY HAVE A CONCUSSION.”
Mia opened her eyes, pain be damned, saw a boy she might once have loved looming over her. Thunder rolled, stirring the ache in her skull. She winced as the lightning danced, flicker-flash, dragging her eyes closed again. The impression of the strike remained behind on her eyelids, snatches of memory shifting in the fading glow.
Shadows.
Blades.
Blood.
“Hush,” she gasped, sitting up.
She felt Tric’s hands on her shoulders, surprisingly warm, heard his soft murmurs bidding her lay still, but she shoved it all aside—the gentle touch, the oceans-deep voice, the glass-brittle pain—surging up to her feet and breathing deep and willing her eyes to focus. Her mind to remember.
The tower. They were still in the tower. Sid, ’Singer, Butcher, and, Goddess … Ash and Jonnen, all lay arranged around the cooking pit. For an awful, bottomless moment she thought they might be dead, that all of them were gone, that there was nothing and no one left. The thought was simply too terrible to manage, too dark to look at. But then she saw the gentle rise and fall of their chests, felt a shiver as Eclipse melted into the shadow at her feet and took away her fear.
“… ALL IS WELL, MIA…”
“No,” she whispered.
Her eyes found the bodies, fallen and still.
“No, it’s not.”
Tric had set them aside with those strong black hands of his. Apart from the others, but still under cover from the rain. The stone around them was dark with blood. Their throats cut to the bone.
“Bryn,” Mia whispered, her voice cracking. “’W-Waker.”
“IT WAS QUICK,” came a voice. “THEY FELT LITTLE PAIN.”
“O, Goddess,” she breathed, sinking to her knees beside them.
Mia reached out with one shaking hand, tears burning her eyes. She touched Bryn’s cheek, smoothed back ’Waker’s locks. She remembered the look of joy on the big man’s face as he spoke of his life in the theater, the melodies of his songs making her turns in the collegium that much easier to bear. She remembered Bryn’s words about enduring the unendurable on the sands. How in every breath, hope abides.
Except Bryn wasn’t breathing anymore.
“… i am sorry, mia…”
Her eyes widened at his whisper, pupils dilating with rage. She looked up at the shape of him, coalescing on the wall in front of her. The shape of a cat. The shape he’d stolen when she was a little girl, mimicking the beloved pet Justicus Remus had murdered in front of her. The shape of something familiar. Something comforting. Something to blind her to the awful truth that he had no shape at all.
The anger felt so good.
If she was angry, she didn’t need to think.
If she was angry, she could simply act.
Hurt.
Hate.
“You bastard,” she whispered.
“… i am sorry…”
“You fucker!” she shouted. “I told you this would happen! I told you I didn’t want them here, and now look! Look what you fucking did!”
“… the blade that killed them was not mine…”
“They wouldn’t have been here if not for you!” she roared, rage burning brighter and hotter until it was all she was. “You selfish little shit! They’re here because of you! They’re dead because of you!”
“… mia, they chose to be here…”
“You bastard, of course they did! They’d no sooner shirk a debt than they’d stop breathing! And you knew that, and still you had to open your fucking mouth!” She climbed to her feet, shouting over the thunder. “You always see clearer, don’t you? You always know best!”
“… and if they had not been here? what then? the moment’s warning you had was enough to turn the battle’s tide. without it, you may all be dead…”
“You don’t know that!” she raged. “You don’t know anything!”
“… i know they were here because they loved you, mia. just as i do…”
“Love?” she spat. “You don’t fucking love me, you don’t know what love is!”
The not-cat shook his head, sorrow slipping into the velvet of his