“Now, who wants to go outside and throw me across the quad?” asked Mercy.
The tension had broken and everyone laughed.
“By the ley,” Cathrynne croaked in darkness, raising an icy hand to her forehead, the place where the will resided. After a moment, she touched her heart, too.
Time passed. She drifted in and out, seeking escape in the deeper places of her mind. Charmed memories of a happy and loving home. She had lived with her older sister Lara, her mother Hysto, and her grandmother Nestania. Three generations of women in a grand house with servants and a formal garden.
Hysto liked to throw lavish parties, and Cathrynne had a closet full of frothy silk dresses. Her mother enjoyed showing her off, the golden-haired orphan she had adopted after her parents died in a car accident. The guests would remark on Cathrynne’s beauty and Hysto would smile with pride, though the moment no one was looking Lara would pinch her hard and hiss into her ear a single word that Cathrynne didn’t understand: “Changeling.”
Lara wasn’t always mean. Sometimes she was an indulgent older sister who let Cathrynne creep into her bed if she had a nightmare. They would spoon in the darkness and Lara would pet her hair and sing to her, old peasant lullabies she’d learned from Nestania.
Other than parties and social occasions, only two men visited the house on a regular basis. Alexandr Arco, who was Lara’s father, and Alluin Westwind, the angel who had befriended their family. He came once a week, always bearing gifts for both Lara and Cathrynne.
Looking back, she recognized the lingering glances between Alluin and her mother, but at the time, she was an innocent child and never suspected a thing. They were discreet, always meeting at the house when the servants had the day off.
Nestania must have known about it. She must have. The affair had gone on for eleven years before the White Foxes caught wind of it.
Before Markus Viktorovich and Berti Baako caught wind of it.
Cathrynne knew who they were now, the witches who had dragged her from her home. She knew their names. It wasn’t something you were ever told as a cypher. Most arrived as babies and never had a clue who did it to them.
But Cathrynne remembered everything. She’d broken through the block Markus had placed in her mind. And if she ever got of out here alive, she would make them suffer?—
Rapid footsteps. The door swung open.
She scrambled back, raising an arm against the light. Before she could speak, a force yanked her into the corridor and hung her upside down. Cathrynne was eye level with Berti’s face. Her jaw was swollen and discolored. A spectacular bruise spread across her cheek.
“Give me the sweven,” Berti growled.
“No.”
She was slowly lowered until she was staring at Berti’s knees. The first blow caught her in the ribs. She gasped, trying to draw breath, but another kick followed, then another. She couldn’t protect herself. Couldn’t dodge. Could only endure as fists and feet rained down.
Just when she thought she’d pass out, the magic holding her aloft vanished. She crashed to the dirt floor, landing on her left shoulder. Fresh pain blazed through her. She curled into a ball.
Berti grabbed a fistful of hair and wrenched Cathrynne’s head back. Her breath was hot and sour. “Give me the sweven.”
“No.” The word was barely audible.
Berti let her head fall against the dirt. “Then we’ll be back,” she said. “Next time, it’ll be worse. And the time after that, and the time after that, until you break into a million pieces.”
Kane and Ash threw her into the cell. The door slammed. The bar dropped into place. Darkness again. The iron tang of blood filled her mouth.
“No,” she whispered, though the word sounded closer to a sob.
Chapter 24
Gavriel
He woke to bright sunlight without warmth. Distant voices rose and fell in song. Their intricate harmonies washed over him, along with a gust of arctic wind.
He sat up, disoriented and weak. His last memory was of delirium and a cool hand on his brow.
Cathrynne.
A tendril of fear wormed through his belly, though he didn’t know why. He was at the angelic stronghold of Mount Meru, in his own solar, an airy chamber with ancient mahogany furnishings and colorful tapestries of plants and animals. The doors to the balcony stood open. Beyond stretched the snow-clad Sundar Kush and, in the far distance where the gentle curve of the earth began, a glimmer of the Boreal Ocean.
The sky here was unlike anywhere else in the world: darkest indigo above, fading to cerulean and then pale blue at the horizon. Clouds drifted below the mountain peaks; such was the elevation of Mount Meru.
