When Nelle Wychthorn was forced to sign herself away in marriage, she should have read the contract's fine print. Because she signs not with ink, but with blood. And that changes everything.
Season 1 'Of Crows and Thorns'
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Fiery Nelle, the isolat...
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Finally, Kenton turned his hard eyes on me. "Just what is she?" There was a glint of accusation in his gaze. A reprimand for not discovering it by now.
"She doesn't know." I didn't taste her lies when she'd spoken to me about it. And without witnessing firsthand what she was capable of, I was still in the dark.
My little bird was a knowledge gatherer. I knew that about her, but my irritation at being stuck in her company blinded me to that fact. On a few of those days we'd been forced together, she'd kept me holed up in her family's library. She had her own personal table and reading lamps and a high-backed leather chair. The table was always stacked with piles of books she'd dug out and read during the period between my visits. She'd perch on the edge of her chair, a furrow between her brows as she read. And whenever she had difficulty deciphering the old language, the tip of her tongue would touch her upper lip, and the pen loosely held in between her fingers, tap, tap, tapping on the folded leaves, slowed down.
While I sat there or stalked the quiet room, seething, she'd been researching our world, doing it right in my face and I'd been such a dumbass that it hadn't clicked.
Fuck, I was an idiot.
A spoiled princess—I liked to throw that in her face every opportunity I could.
She was just a girl who didn't know what she was, and perhaps didn't even understand it herself. But did that stop her or get her down? Fuck, no. No wailing or self-pity from Nelle. She just quietly got to work in the only way she was allowed to, sifting through the ancient tombs of the library, rifling through the Wychthorn history to find out anything about herself; by trying to find the location of some monstrous beast that might help her unpick the threads binding her secret.
Those pictures on her wall, now shredded into tiny scraps, were the lairs of monsters and otherworldly creatures she'd discovered, pinpointing their territory. The Uzrek was the closest creature she could ask about her dark power.
And how long had she been up to this monster hunting? Years, judging by the layer of pictures lining the walls in her quarters.
I'd misjudged her; we all had. Thinking her a spoiled princess—cloistered on the estate, pampered and coddled and clueless.
All this time, Wychthorn had been researching and planning and biding her time, waiting for an opportunity to find herself free and alone in the city of Ascendria.
And I'd provided that moment for her.
Just the cleverness of it all, her fearlessness, and the fact she'd duped me so easily when we'd ridden the subway... Her sharp mind was a godsdamned aphrodisiac and my body tightened with lust.
"Any ideas?" Kenton asked.
I blinked, adjusting my position slightly, and willed my stiffening cock to back the fuck down. My hair ruffled as I slowly shook my head. "I haven't figured it out yet." Whatever Nelle was, her power was close to a Horned God's might. And by the apprehensive look etched on Kenton's face, he'd realized it too. "Fuck, I don't know if we'll be able to contain her on the estate."
