Cvareh wasn’t ready for all the emotions and demands wrapped up in his friend’s gaze. He could barely handle his own emotions; how would he handle another’s? What did Cain think he could do?
Petra had trained him to be her right hand, to function as she needed. He was a vessel for his sister and without her . . .
“Are you really going to let them get away with this?” Cain demanded. It was a verbal slap across the face, a violent tug out of the ocean of his grief and onto the beach of reality. It was what he needed. But what he wanted was to sink into those forever depths that had the same chilling embrace of Lord Xin. “If Petra is dead, then—”
“Enough, Cain.” Cvareh grabbed for the other man’s wrist the moment he saw the tension ripple down Cain’s bicep. If the man unsheathed his claws now, a duel would be inevitable. Even if Cain won, it would just throw the situation with Rok into further chaos.
All eyes had turned to the altercation between the two men. The brother, and the would-be lover of the woman who had led them fearlessly toward a vision so many generations had never even dared to whisper, let alone desire. Cvareh didn’t know what to do with their attention.
Petra would have known what to do.
He cleared his throat and spoke words he never thought he’d say. “When will Finnyr’Oji—” his brother’s name tasted of bile “—be arriving?”
The Rider’s mouth curled back in a triumphant smile. House Xin had always been the lowest in Dragon society, but this was a new feeling.
“He will be sent within the day.” The Rider stepped leisurely down from the pedestal. “I hear the duel was fearsome. He’s taking time to recover.”
Cvareh remembered Finnyr’s last altercation with Petra. That had been fearsome. He had seen it with his own eyes: his sister atop his brother, knees digging into chest, blood from his shredded face up to her elbows.
“Recover under a Rok roof,” Cain mumbled, not quietly enough.
“Well, he does feel quite at home there,” the Rider goaded easily. “After all, he’s lived under the generous care of the Dono himself for years. I couldn’t imagine actually wanting to return to these bleak halls.”
“I chall—”
“Cain’Da, silence!” The echoes of Cvareh’s voice seemed to resonate from half the open mouths in the room. Even his friend was stunned to silence. “The Rider had quite the trip here, and will have another long journey home. I suggest we let him leave with haste.”
It was phrased to Cain as a suggestion, but it was a poorly veiled demand.
The Rider flashed his canines to Cvareh first, then Cain, and then every Xin assembled at the manor on his way out.
“You shouldn’t have let him walk out alive.” Cain’s bloodlust was insatiable. Cvareh expected it would be for some time.
“Dueling him would serve little purpose.”
“Petra would not have let him leave after such disrespect.” Cain found the spot and pushed hard.
“Petra is not here!”
Silence, again.
The two men squared off, huffing short breaths that could just as easily become tears as they could become screams of anger. Cain’s magic ballooned to three times his size. Cvareh’s claws itched for extension.
But Cvareh took a breath and stepped away.
“Petra is not here,” he repeated, softer. “Fighting that Rider will not bring her back and neither will fighting me.”
“So we are to tolerate disrespect now?” Cain motioned as though he was somehow speaking for the whole of House Xin. “We are to let them walk on us?”
“We are to survive.” It’s what she would’ve wanted. Cvareh didn’t have to speak the thought to know the entire room was in agreement.
All eyes were on him. They looked to him for answers he didn’t have, for plans he had yet to formulate. He didn’t even know what Petra had intended, all the moving parts that only she had kept track of.
“This is what Yveun wants.” Cvareh didn’t know if it was pain or loathing that made him drop the Dono’s title in that moment. But he prayed it wouldn’t become a habit, and that the Rider was far enough away not to hear. “He wants us weakened, divided. He is doing to us what he did to Loom.”
“Loom?” Cain was at him again. “You bring up Loom now? Are you Cvareh Xin, or have you given up your name like a Fen? What next? Will you paint your skin gray?”
“I said silence, Cain.” Cvareh’s voice had gone quiet. He didn’t want to fight Cain, but the majority of the House didn’t know where he had spent the past months. They didn’t know who Ari Xin really was. “And yes, I bring up Loom . . . because they are the one chance we have to fight our way out from under Yveun’s thumb.”
Cain eased away.
Without the immediate threat, Cvareh could properly appreciate the confused looks on the faces of the other members of the House. Was now the right time to tell them? When would Petra have said it?
“I will explain, in time.” The fewer people who knew right now, the better. Powers were shifting, and the world was changing around him. “For now, I need your faith.”
“You have it.” A man Cvareh did not recognize spoke up from the crowd. Agreement was slowly voiced from all around him.
Cain continued to glare.
“Then we shall prepare for the arrival of my brother.” He couldn’t bring himself to say “Finnyr’Oji,” not just yet. “See that his quarters are cleaned and properly appointed.”
Cvareh waited for someone to move, to execute his order, but all bodies in the room remained eerily still, all eyes trained on him, expectant. Finally, a woman spoke.
“Prepare his chambers?”
“Yes.” He didn’t see how he’d been unclear on the matter.
“But Cvareh’Ryu . . . Will you not challenge him? Will you not fight to be our Oji?”
Cvareh would have given anything to not have to answer that question.
Coletta
The Rok Estate housed the most wonderful dining room in the entire world. It had a table made entirely of iron that stretched long enough for forty people to sit underneath a ceiling of frescos, lit by a thousand candles. It was a room of pure magic and power that would make even the finest Dragon blush at its decadence.
That was not the room where she and Yveun dined.
Instead, they sat at a basic wooden table, barely large enough to seat four comfortably. The windows were simple rectangles, the mullions made of pine. There were no adornments here, no paintings or carefully sculpted statues. Carved into the only entrance and exit was the symbol of House Rok. It took up the top half of the doorway: three triangles supporting a crown.
Coletta looked down as the servants delivered their food from the kitchens. Her flowers would take over during the second half of dinner, when discussion actually began. For now, she’d let the average man and woman see her as the weak Ryu they all expected her to be.
When the servants retreated, Yveun raised his glass first to his lips, then toward her. “You picked as stunning a vintage as ever, my Ryu.”
“This is a new one I wanted to try.” Coletta watched how the crimson liquid coated the inside of the glass, trickling down in tiny lines. “It’s grown here on Lysip.”