Captive of Wolves (Bound to the Fae #1) - Eva Chase Page 0,16
to Sylas, the shine in his eyes flaring with fury so suddenly I flinch.
“Is she still hurt?” he demands, the muscles in his shoulders coiling.
“Her foot,” Sylas says. “It’s an old injury Aerik’s people dealt, healed badly. And I expect she’s simply become unused to walking, given the size of the cage they had her in.”
“Mangy beasts,” August mutters with a hint of a snarl.
Sylas claps a hand to his companion’s shoulder. “They don’t have her anymore. Settle yourself down, and let’s have that breakfast.”
Still muttering under his breath, August stomps off into the room. It appears that everyone takes Sylas’s orders. He said this was his keep. And that August was part of his—
“What’s a cadre?” I ask as we continue down the hall.
Sylas peers down at me from his great height as if bemused that anyone could be unaware. “All lords have a cadre—it’s our inner circle, our closest advisors and comrades in arms. For now, mine will be the only folk you have for company. Better not to involve the rest of the pack when the matter involves some… discretion.”
Because the more people who know I’m here, the more chance it’ll get back to this Aerik—the one with the sunflower-yellow hair who commanded my other captors, I assume? But I’m more struck by another part of his wording. Pack.
My legs lock. My hand tightens on the silky fabric of Sylas’s sleeve, wanting to both grip harder for balance and to shove myself away. I knew they weren’t really men, but I didn’t know for sure they were that much like the others.
My whisper comes out with an additional quaver. “You’re wolves too.”
Sylas has stopped next to me. I thought of him as a grizzly before, but his predatory, brawny self-assurance could fit one of those massive wolfish monsters just as well. Whose claws slashed through his one eye?
His other, dark eye holds my gaze. “We’re fae. All of the Seelie can shift from man into wolf as it suits us.” He touches his chest. “The animal belongs to us; it does not consume us. How much of a beast any of us becomes is a matter of personal choice.”
I’m guessing he’d put himself above my captors on that scale. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing beastly about him at all. Just standing here with his attention focused on me makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise.
If he’s a predator, there’s no world where I wouldn’t come across as prey.
An acidic voice that’s quickly becoming familiar reaches us from farther down the hall. “Except when it isn’t.”
Kellan is leaning against a doorframe, his silver gaze as cold as before. He isn’t quite as beefy as the others, but his lean frame still exudes plenty of power—and animosity. It doesn’t strike me as a good sign that he must be part of Sylas’s “inner circle” too.
I’ve lost too much of the thread of the conversation to know what he’s referring to, but Sylas’s expression darkens. “Are you here to eat or to complain?” he asks.
The other man shrugs, swiping a hand over his sleek hair, which is a shade of orange so pale you’d think most of the color had been wrung out of it. He stalks into the room he was standing by, and, joy of all joys, we follow him.
The keep’s dining room stretches long enough to hold a table for twenty under two chandeliers that look like coiled branches sprouting from the ceiling. They’re not lit now, their jeweled leaves twinkling in the glow from the broad windows opposite us. Someone has already set out silverware, plates, and goblets for five around one end of the table.
Sylas takes the head of the table so automatically I can tell that’s where he always sits. When he gestures for me to sit kitty-corner to him, Kellan’s lips curl in disdain.
“We’re to be faced with the dung-body through the whole meal? Not what I want to rest my gaze on if I’m going to keep my appetite. There are plenty of other seats, all of them grander than she should expect.”
August barrels into the room then holding a platter on each hand and two more balanced on his bulging, tattooed arms. “If you’re so concerned about the view, maybe you should head to the other end and spare her having to look at your ugly mug.” He sets down the platters with a series of clinks.
Kellan bares his teeth. “I think you forget your position here, whelp.”