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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Fat wax dripped from candles flickering in the dark recesses behind the dais. Each glowing candle represented a God that had fallen, or, like Zrenyth, fell into the Great Slumber during the time of mist before our history was separated and hidden from the mortal masses of this world.
The Horned Gods didn't require litanies or chanting or even for us to worship them. We prayed to the old gods who had given us and the Horned Gods' life. We were their warlords, and more importantly, their thieves. We were bred to guard them, fight for them, keep them hidden from the mortals, and provide them with anything they wanted.
Right now, they didn't want to know what I wanted, what burned through my veins with bloodlust.
I wanted to fucking end them. Every last one.
I could barely breathe. A bluster of riotous emotions raged deep inside. A storm of guilt and fury in equal measure. My frantic heartbeat matched Nelle's. My fists trembled not with fear, but from the scant control I possessed to keep my need leashed.
When Urstlo had sensed her—Nelle's terror had consumed me, flayed me from the inside. As the Horned God approached, that thing that bound Nelle and I together, dug its claws into my mind and sang to me—an ancient and wild and wicked strain—Save her, save her, save her...
And violence erupted. Great gusts of savagery seared my throat and tasted like cinders on my tongue.
But it wasn't me who stepped out to protect Nelle, it was my brave, foolhardy, and stubborn sister. I'd have drawn my dagger from my jacket and plunged it into Urstlo's shadowy head if it had even touched a single strand of Nelle's moonlit hair—instead, my sister rose and stepped forward.
And I'd been cleaved in two with two opposing desires. To strike back at Lyressa or to save Nelle from Urstlo. To look upon my sister's sunrise eyes in that Frankenstein creature, when everything inside me was a whirlwind of conflict, screaming for revenge, screaming to save Nelle, nearly broke me, and very nearly severed that connection I had to my little bird.
I'd rarely seen Lyressa since she'd plucked my sister's eyes like grapes from her sockets.
Ferne had been a child, barely older than a baby. Her agonizing screams, the memory of them, fresh as newly-cut grass, had exploded in my mind the moment my gaze landed on that insidious Horned God.
I couldn't believe what Ferne had done—diverted Urstlo's attention from my little bird by confronting Lyressa. I wouldn't have done it the clever way she had. I'd have slid my blade beneath the dried sinew and slit, unpicking the Frankenstein limbs like stitching needing to be reworked, and reveled in that creature tumbling to ancient stone in flailing bodily pieces.
I drew in a deep breath through my nose, blew it out, and with it my rage and guilt for my sister, my fear for Nelle. Purposefully clearing my mind, I gathered my near-shattered control. I had to be calm. Careful. Controlled.
