Nick blinked heavily. “My brother is the new monarch.” And then Nick knew with certainty that was exactly Valor’s plan. He’d said as much, hadn’t he? Valor was certain all he had to do was get Desre and any merfolk together and she wouldn’t survive the encounter. “You need to go. You can’t be here when they arrive. Stay with me. They can’t find me, or they couldn’t, maybe now they can?” Pain radiated behind his eyes. “I can’t think clearly.”
“How could you take one from a monarch’s court?” Rin demanded, horrified.
“It isn’t her fault,” Nick rushed out. “I was dressed like a student. I had these symbols on my arms like one.”
“Shut up!” Rin snapped. She bodily grabbed Desre and spun her around. The hand on Nick’s face fell away, but the one on his arm slid through blood, catching at his wrist. Her grip was tighter than the shackles. “What are we supposed to do? A monarch? Amonarchis coming for us? He will take one look at this and claim it as spoils.” Rin gestured to the well. “We have tomove it. All of it.Now.” She marched down the steps, trembling. “We’ll bring it into the mountain, as far from the river as we can. I need jugs, jars, servants! Someone come here now before I skin you alive!” Her voice rose to a panicked screech.
Nobody answered her.
“Calm yourself, Rin.” Desre’s voice was far from calm, undercut by fear.
“Enough. I do not answer to you.” Rin spun on her heels and glowered at Desre. “For all you call these kits animals, you’re worse than them yourself. Did you forget where you came from? Because I didn’t. I remember the first day I saw you crawling out of that well. I remember the rancid stench of you. The filth. The grime. You would have died in that hole, desperate and starving, if not for me. Don’t talk to me as if you have noble blood; no amount of posturing will ever erase the reek ofnymph.”
Desre’s cold rage infected Nick, hooking claws deep into his bone marrow. He touched the edge of a vast cavern of emptiness, the source of her coldness. Nick ached to fill it for her. Could he brighten this darkness? With Kit? Perhaps Laurence? His little brother had been born with the ability to repel unhappiness, a superpower that got Nick through every rough patch from toddler to teenager to man.
An ache behind his eyes squeezed so tight his vision shadowed at the edges.
“Seize her,” Desre ordered.
Nick turned towards Rin, but Desre didn’t release his arm. Instead, the guards at his side let him go and advanced down the aisle in quick, sure steps. They didn’t hesitate. They didn’t care about the ‘council’; they yielded to Desre, and her power only.
“Desre?” Greya looked up from the glass of blessed well water he cradled in alarm. “Rin? Don’t fight, darlings. We only have each other, remember? Please. It’s so unbecoming.Personally, I love the smell of nymph, and I think you were quite fetching even when you lived in the well—though truth be told, it was so many years ago, I can’t recall what you looked like back then. But I do remember our Lord felt quite bad for, erm, was quitetakenwith you!”
Desre’s anger, Nick’s anger, grew and grew, the feeling unspooling fast as the realisation that a salvageable situation was slipping beyond reach. Nick struggled to figure out what to do with the emotions shrouding his mind. He glared at Greya. “Shut up,” Nick warned. “Or you’ll be the one losing his tongue.”
“I really do hate this one!” Greya edged away from Nick, wary.
Desre pressed both her hands to Nick’s cheeks, cradling his face, drawing him from his knees to his feet. Behind him, he heard grappling, Rin screeching. Greya set his glass on the nearest pew and rushed down the aisle, calling out ineffectual warnings at the kits to stop being so rough. Desre focused on Nick. Nick focused on Desre. He could feel that she held not even the smallest speck of affection for him; there was contempt, hate even, though twined with that was something victorious that she had mastered him. Nick didn’t mind. He would make up for his past behaviour towards her.
“Kiss me,” she said.
Nick wanted to object; he was filthy. But he knew she would hate him questioning her order. He leaned in, pressing a soft kiss to her lips, letting his eyes slip shut. Was this the ‘nymph’ smell Greya meant? Acidic, rancid water.
Rin and Greya let out matching screeches, cut off abruptly into gurgles. Benches clattered, growls rumbled from throats, tails cut through the air. Nick would have ignored it all to lay a thousand kisses upon Desre, but she pulled away, turning towards the commotion.
The two guards were being dragged from the hall, each wrangled by three kits apiece. Rin and Greya were writhing on the ground, hands on their throats. Blood spurted from between their fingers, their ancient lives leaking out of them in pulses. Whatever had lengthened their lives didn’t save them now. In seconds, they went still, centuries of existence snuffed out in a moment. Kit stood between them, his sword clasped in a fist, blade wet with blood. He wore a fine, embroidered shirt, leather trousers, and an expression like an avenger.
Dread sliced through the fog shrouding Nick’s thoughts. “Kit,” he choked out. “Why are you here?Leave.”
Desre’s influence slammed back into him. Nick flinched at its touch, then relaxed, everything in him subdued. Calmed. Nick turned from Kit—idly noting his tension, his lashing tail, the fury in his eyes—and instead looked to Desre for instruction.
Her gaze slid over the bodies on the ground before lifting to Kit. She smiled, but Nick felt her unease. How long had it been since Kit had openly defied her? Not since Kit was a child, he guessed. Not since he’d grown up fierce and strong, carefully moulded into a weapon. Except the weapon she’d honed was baring its sharpened teeth ather.
“You escaped your uncle quickly this time,” she noted.
“He came for me,” Nick warned. “Not to return to your service.”
“For you?”
“We’re together,” Nick explained. “A couple. He’s scent-marked me.”
Desre stared at Kit. “I thought you were shy, my dear?” she asked, something deadly in her tone. “But you have been with this man?” There was more anger in her than when Rin had cursednymph.
Kit said nothing.
“We’ve been together,” Nick told her. “I haven’t found him to be particularly shy.”
“Kit,” Ios called. “Please. We can’t do anything against her.”
