perfume that Mala had always worn across her neck in the air.
But then I smelled kuveri when Vienne shifted on the furs and I sucked in a lungful greedily, needing it to ground me before my mind took me to other places, places I didn’t want to go.
I refocused my attention on her, opening my eyes to pin her in place. She was watching me carefully, with a similar expression to the one she wore when she used whatever power it was that she possessed over me. But I didn’t feel the telltale tingling, that strange buzzing sensation that thrummed the air between us.
“You are asking me if I killed your father?” I rasped. I needed this anger. I needed this anger as a distraction before my mind fragmented. Already, I could hear the rushing in my ears, already I was looking towards the shadows behind her.
My little Vivi didn’t say anything. She merely stared up at me—when had I stood from the bed?—and I wondered if she needed this distraction as well.
I huffed out a breath. Sex never relaxed me. Not fully. The aftermath always made me feel restless and I was half-tempted to throw Vienne back onto the furs for another round, if only to expend some of the energy building inside me. But I would hurt her if I did. I didn’t think I could be gentle this time, not with her accusation making my temple throb and irritation at her making my blood heat.
I wondered what had brought this little standoff about.
Because you called her Vivi, I remembered.
“You see, leikavi?” I said, narrowing my eyes on her. “Names do have power. They have power to make you feel things you might not want to.”
She blinked, surprise evident in her gaze. Then…guilt?
“Nik,” I growled, the taste of her still coating my tongue. “I have never killed a vekkiri in my life. Nor have I ordered any of my darukkar to.”
“You…you haven’t?” she whispered. Her startled expression made me feel like I was being scraped away on the inside.
“If you think me such a monster, Vivi, if you think it was me that killed your father,” I snarled at her, “then why did you beg me to fuck you? What does that make you?”
She gasped, unable to contain the hurt and shock in her expression. She opened her mouth but no sound came out.
I didn’t wait. Instead, just like last night, I jerked my discarded trews up my legs and shoved into my boots, my tail waving wildly in irritation behind me. My temple throbbed harder.
That was when I saw it. A shifting in the light in the corner of my voliki.
Nik, nik, nik, I thought but I felt helpless and unable to look away, wanting to see her.
Despair pierced me, my grief rising up like it did every single time I saw her. My sister’s shadowed figure stood next to the empty chests that were meant for a deviri, an offering to my Morakkari, my future wife. Gifts that I should’ve been accumulating and collecting for her over these long years as Vorakkar. But since I never intended to take a queen, I hadn’t bothered and the chests sat empty and discarded, a constant reminder that if I couldn’t protect my own family, I had no right to take a wife for my own…or make a family of my own.
“Davik,” came Vienne’s voice, but it sounded like she was far away.
My gaze connected with my sister’s shadowed eyes, my own. Their red color was faded, however. She was smiling at me but it was sad.
“You know better,” my sister, Devina, said, her voice nothing but a whisper threading through my ears.
You know better. She’d always told me that, after I lashed out, or did something our mother didn’t like. She’d always been the calm one of us, level-headed and pragmatic, whereas I embodied turmoil and trouble.
Then it happened just like it always did. Black blood began to bloom underneath the light dress she wore, spreading over her abdomen. Bile rose in my throat, my heartbeat thundering in my ears.
“Pyroth,” I breathed, pleading. Stop. But I didn’t know if it was meant for the blood spreading rapidly or for myself. “Hanniva.”
“Davik!” came my name. My sister’s mouth had sounded it out silently but the voice had been Vienne’s.
I felt hands on my face, over my scar. Vienne was in front of me, trying to get my attention.
Bellowing, I jerked out from beneath her hands, tearing my gaze away