Wolves at the Door - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,21

it, but a curse prevents me from telling you anything.”

“Who cursed you?” Billie demanded. “If I tortured you, could I make you talk?”

“No,” he said. “And I hope you won’t try. It’s very unpleasant to be tortured when you’re already dead.”

“It’s okay, Billie, we’ll figure it out by ourselves,” I said.

“I do think I can inform you that Deveraux kept diaries,” Byron said. “And that if you happen upon them, they are worth the time to read.”

“Ohhh. Cool. See? No need to torture anyone.”

“I wouldn’t’ve really tortured him,” Billie said. “I just wanted to see what he’d say.”

“Glad that’s cleared up,” Jasper said, giving me a little smile, flashing pearly white extra-sharp canines. I hadn’t been on the receiving end of his private smile before, and I liked seeing the humor in his eyes.

Although, I’m not sure this was all that funny. “I still want an answer,” I said. “What happens if we destroy Etherium?”

“Well…the council and all the old witch families won’t have power,” Billie said.

“Yeah, but they’ll be pissed,” I said. “At us.”

“I mean, wouldn’t they have to go to Sinistral to get magic? And then they’d be in enemy territory.” She tossed her hair. “Don’t look at me like that, Helena Nicolescu! I don’t care what happens to any of them. Anyway, all your menfolk here are Sinistrals and doesn’t it annoy you that they’re considered to be evil or the dregs of society by your own family?”

“Yes, it definitely does,” I said.

“So why protect all that?”

“I don’t know, maybe I am being crazy here, but aren’t we talking about plunging the world into chaos and turning all Ethereals against us?”

Byron cleared his throat.

“Are you saying that wouldn’t happen, Byron?”

“I don’t think it would,” he said.

“Gosh, I’d love to know what’s in your head.” I pounded my fists into my lap. We were sitting in what had been the dining room, a motley assortment of small tables and mismatched chairs dragged together into a war room, because for whatever reason, the dining room table was gone. I guessed the servants inherited the good furniture or something.

“I would love for you to know it,” Byron said, turning on just enough charm that I started thinking of other parts of him I would also like to know.

“This does sound dangerous,” Jasper said. “But we definitely have no love for the council.”

“Okay…but Sinistral also has a council and it’s not much better,” I said.

“But Ethereals have all the control,” Billie said. “They kick people out of their world at a whim. Sinistrals don’t—and can’t—kick wizards out of the realm and bar them from doing magic. I would rather be free in a dark world than afraid in an ‘orderly’ world.”

A little voice inside me thought, Well, sure, the peasants would think that.

Ick. I couldn’t help it.

But I did see her point—

“I would rather die, in fact, than just keep accepting that I’m nothing and nobody,” Billie added.

Oh, crap. It seemed like I had teamed up with a passionate revolutionary now.

Byron looked at me with reassurance in his eyes.

God, I wished I knew.

“You’re not wrong,” Jasper said, a little bit of a snarl curling his lip and bringing out his inner wolf. “Helena’s cousin would have killed me, or at best, left me to die.”

“Yes. That piece of shit said we were useless,” Jake said. “And we all know they’ve been attacking wolf shifters, vampires and demons and trying to ‘turn’ them to ordinary humans. Like we have a disease they need to cure. Something has to give.”

“I thought Etherium was a world of balance and order,” Graham said.

“It—it should be,” I said.

“This sounds pretty messed up,” he said. “Like something is off.”

“It’s true,” Byron said. “Let’s see if I can say this… All of us know that magic is slowly dying. It will probably take many generations. Maybe it will never truly die entirely. But our territory is shrinking. All of us. Even though us magical folk are not human, we still need humans, the same way humans need trees or birds. Everything is interconnected and…” His voice was getting thinner, like he was running out of oxygen. He drew in a sharp breath—strange for a ghost, but I didn’t really know how ghosts worked, to be honest—and frowned. “I can’t say more. But you get the idea.”

“I get it. Ethereal wizards can still fuck up.” I sighed. “I agree. But if we destroy the whole world…”

“Will Pandora’s Box destroy the world?” Graham asked. “Or just the structure?”

We all exchanged