Two girls. Two secrets.
Only one can survive.
Years before Nelle Wychthorn plans her escape, Tabitha Catt may unearth something in a Horned God's lair that is the key to freedom.
Desperate to save her beloved aunt from a dark curse, Tabitha is out t...
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My father gave my dirty appearance a swift assessing glance before his gaze slid over to my sister. "Both of you are filthy. What did Sirro ask you to do for him?"
Sirro might be a Horned God, but my father ruled this House, and our loyalty lay with him. The wine glass was cool beneath my fingers as I curled them around the crystal, lifting it to take a generous sip before I answered. "He sent us off to investigate something in the Hemmlok Forest."
I tried my best to ignore the tension that wrapped around my mother at the name of the forest where her son had died.
"A hole in the g-ground," my sister elaborated, a shudder running across her shoulder as her quick glance met mine. Both of us remembered that dark void that split apart the rock where I'd climbed down, down, down. "There w-wasn't anything inside of it."
Only bones. A hole filled with tiny, shattered animal bones.
Jeroen wiped his mouth with his dinner napkin, then asked, "Was there supposed to be?"
I nodded, popping a slice of orange into my mouth. Sweetness burst across my tongue. "Some kind of lingering afterlife. Sirro called it the Kinslayer."
My father's gruff voice repeated the name. "Kinslayer?" His silver eyebrows nudged together as he tilted his head to the side, thoughtful. A moment later his gaze sharpened on me and he shook his head as if to say he had no idea what it was.
I shrugged. "That's all I know."
He leaned close, curious. "What did he want with this Kinslayer?"
As much as I should have shared the next bit, how Sirro had been worried about the fact that the Kinslayer was freed, that the Horned God would place the Houses between it and his kind, I just didn't want to. Fuck the old man.
"I'm to meet with Sirro on his return from his business out of state. I guess he may explain more." I took another sip of wine, relishing the full-bodied liquor spilling down my throat and warming my stomach. "Or maybe not."
My father grunted, drumming his fingertips on the table. "Kinslayer... Such an interesting name."
I hadn't thought of it that way. I hadn't mulled that name over properly or given it the consideration it deserved. The earth surrounding the outcropping of rock in the Hemmlok Forest had been burned and scarred and turned to brittle dust. A fearsome battle had taken place there and resulted in the lingering afterlife, if it had even started out that way, being trapped inside the crevasse.
Something itched the back of my mind. Sirro had said a few things earlier at the Deniauds'.
Holes in the ground filled with lingering afterlife; and trees that only survive on melancholy and blood...
But what else had he said?
What was it?
Sirro had gazed upon the sinister Hemmlok Forest and mused aloud: I have seen and encountered many strange things... There are lesser creatures that barter; and Horned Gods who hunt one another...
