Page 48 of Feathers and Thorns

As the shock of her words hit him, his grip on her wrist loosened enough for her to pull them from his grasp and shove him away.

“Get the fuck out,” she reiterated, fuming.

“It was a mercy kill,” he blurted out.

“I don’t believe you!” she cried.

“Then don’t, but it is the truth.”

She wanted so badly to scream at him, to hit him in his stupidly attractive face until her fists came back bloody. As she looked at him, however, she felt nothing more than pity, which made her heart ache.

Her blood cooled, and she dared to ask, “What happened?”

Rook explained that her father had pre-emptively come to see him prior to hiding the Oculus. Tarak had been looking for Adriel when he stumbled upon the manor. He had begged Rook to show Soren mercy if he failed his mission. He had given him the ring to prove that Soren could trust him, which had coincidentally done the exact opposite.

“Corvus arranged the attack,” he continued. “Apparently, one of the kestrels had overhead my exchange with your father and reported back to him. He sent the whole unkindness after him. He didn’t stand a chance.”

Soren’s throat collapsed in on itself at the last sentence.

“I’m sorry. If the details are too much, I can stop,” he offered.

She shook her head. She wanted to hear everything. She needed to.

“I found him not far from Vreburn, his pulse so weak that most would have assumed him already dead. Unfortunately, he had not been that lucky. He must have laid there for hours, his life slowly leaking out of him from the infected wounds the kestrels had inflicted.”

Soren wiped the tears that had trailed down her cheeks, and Rook wanted so badly to embrace her but resisted.

“His eyes were swollen, but he managed to say a few words as I approached. He said to protect you, that you spent your whole life in a cage of your own making. He loved you very much. He asked me to end it for him. I refused at first, but he used the last of his strength to place his hunting knife in my hand.”

Soren pressed her eyes together, knowing what was coming next.

“I refused the knife, not wanting to create a murder investigation, and offered him an alternative. I carry a small vial of hellebore root on me at all times. It’s tasteless, dissolves instantly, and kills the host the second it enters the bloodstream. It’s painless and untraceable. My father forced me to keep it on hand in case he needed me to assassinate anyone. Few people know of its existence, and I want you to know he went quickly.”

As he had spoken, Soren had slowly made her way across the room and sat in silence on the bed. It was so much information to take in at one time, and the tears fell freely as her mind went into a tailspin. Dad is dead. Rook killed him. No, Corvus gave the order. But he poisoned him. He was showing him mercy.

Noticing the signs of an impending panic attack, he moved toward her slowly.

She surprised him by asking, “If all this is true, then how is it you did not know my name?”

“He never spoke your true name to me. He only used various terms of endearment.”

“Is that why you call me little bird?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied, daring to wipe the tears from her cheeks. “Because he wanted you to fly.”

Enara detangled her limbs from Baztien’s and stretched her tired muscles. Last night had been something else. Soren would have blamed it on the mysterious silver liquid, but Enara would have had her way with Baz regardless of the aphrodisiac. Her only regret was that they hadn’t made it until midnight to witness the surprise that Saoirse had kept saying they had to see.

She couldn’t help herself. After a few hours of being pressed against Baz’s hard muscles, her need to take him to bed had overpowered all rational thought. They had barely shut the door behind them before Enara was throwing off her mask, untying the knot from his waist, and taking him into her mouth. The white fabric of his outfit still lay in a heap by the door.

She reminisced about how his hips had shuddered and bucked as she’d swallowed the length of him. His hands tangled in her hair as she appreciated every inch of his olive skin.

It had only been a few moments before he’d been begging her to stop through clenched teeth.

“If you keep going, I won’t have time to return the favor.”

Her smile was hungry as she stood to lift his mask off his face and kissed him. “Well, we can’t have that, can we?” she whispered in a sultry voice against his lips.

“My turn,” he growled as he lifted her up in one fell swoop and dropped her in front of the blazing fireplace. They had forgotten to light their oil lantern before the party, and he wanted to see her.

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