Page 28 of The Master and the Marionette

My jaw drops. I turn back to Dessin. He blinks at me with the same question in his eyes.

“What do the RottWeilen have to do with them?” he asks.

“The RottWeilen were guardians to that colony. When they were slaughtered by your people, the Crimson Kres disappeared. But we think they are spies among your people. A rumor that they’re pulling the puppet strings without being detected.”

“What—” I set my fork down, swallowing my shock. “What do you think they’re doing? And why?”

Runa leans in to whisper. “No one knows. But we can guess it has something to do with the prophecy. All seven of us have our own pieces to this puzzle.”

For once, Dessin is wholly withdrawn. Unsure. Even a little confused.

I keep my eyes on him, a tickled smile blooming over my cheeks.

“What.” Not a question. A demand. He doesn’t even look at me to know I’m amused at his expense. My chest pressurizes with laughter.

“Am I funny to you, Skylenna?” His words are laced with edgy irritability.

I laugh harder.

“Secrets aren’t so fun when you’re on the outside, are they?” I’m grinning now.

He rolls his neck, his stare of steel and ice flicks to me. He is not entertained by my laughter. “Yuck it up, beautiful. You’re on the outside of their secrets too.”

“Careful, little girl,” Runa warns, cleaning her plate. “You wouldn’t want to see the other people that live in that mind of his.”

Her comment is casual, yet a pang of annoyance hits my gut. How is it she knows more about his mind than I do? I want to be the only one that knows his mind in and out. I want to be the only one that knows his secrets.

Dessin seems rubbed the wrong way too. His daring eyes narrow at her, belittling her entire being with one look. “How the fuck would you know anything about that?”

Her white eyebrows rise. She realizes where she went wrong.

“Speak,” he demands with that darkened voice he uses when he’s about to attack.

“We,”—she gulps down the last of her food—“know almost everything about the two of you. You’re in our mythology.”

“Mythology?”

But I’m not listening. That rotten jealousy that I buried early has come back full force. I’m seething beside him. My hands grip the edge of the wooden table. I’m a doll made of stone in his lap. I get it. They know things. But hearing Runa speak about Dessin to me as though she’s an old friend, someone who knows him so much better.

It pisses me off.

“I really can’t talk about it,” Runa says stiffly.

“I don’t like my identity being public knowledge.” Dessin’s hands tighten around my hips.

“Well, it is, and there isn’t anything you can do about it,” Runa says.

“No? You don’t think so?”

And I can practically hear the earth rumbling with his wrath. Dessin loves proving a point, and he’ll stop at nothing to find whatever holds this information about him. Even if he has to burn down everything in these caves to do it.

“You won’t because we’re leaving. Now.” I push off his lap, storming out of the tavern. But I made a thoughtless mistake. My hood flies off my head, falling down my back and unveiling my face for all to see.

A man with white hair braided down to the base of his neck snatches my arm midstride.

“I knew something didn’t belong,” he muses, eyes a mix of charcoal and ash. He’s middle-aged, lean frame, with a tunic open at the chest. “Hello, lost one.”

I try to yank my arm from his grip, but he’s cold metal. A grasp of pure testosterone and dark elven blood. Great. I had to be the one to blow our cover.

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