Page 79 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

I hum in the back of my throat, continuing to stroke Aranea. Doing so seems to calm something inside me in a way I never knew I needed. This creature, so fragile and yet so fierce, finds me … likable. The honor I feel should be preposterous. I don’t need the affections of something I could easily kill, and yet, the fact that Aranea is sitting here, in my lap, allowing me to caress her fuzzy spine and twitching with pleasure, eases an ache in my chest.

“Start talking,” I say quietly, continuing to repeat my motions over and over again. “Tell us everything from how you came to be here, why you’ve remained undocumented and hidden for so long—I assume you are undocumented?” Without stopping my strokes of the spider’s back, I lift my gaze to Kiera, who nods her answer. “Then tell us how that’s possible and why.”

“Are you going to turn me in to the Gods?” she demands.

“It depends on your reasons,” Ruen answers.

Kiera shakes her head, unsatisfied with his response. “Then I can’t tell you everything. I need your word that you’ll keep this secret and I won’t say a damn word until we’ve performed a blood contract solidifying your silence.”

All three of us stiffen automatically. Aranea bumps against me when I stop the petting to lift my gaze back to the woman staring at the three of us with violence and something else in her gaze. A muscle jumps in Ruen’s jaw. Kalix yawns, unconcerned. He’s already bypassed the news since he was the first to know and doesn’t seem all that interested in the reasons behind her deception.

“And just how do you know about blood contracts?” Ruen’s question is as dark as his expression.

Kiera turns her head and doesn’t flinch away from him as many before her have when prompted with his anger. It’s so rare when he shows it like this. Aranea prods me with a tapping leg, clear annoyance in her insistence. I start stroking her once more, using the spider’s furry body and the repetitive motions to lull my own mind back into the present without the coil of riotous emotions filling me.

“I’ll tell you when the four of us have made one in order to keep these secrets,” Kiera replies.

And before Ruen even says a word, I already know that we’ll do it. I don’t appreciate the lies or the falsities, but I can understand the obvious protective instincts she feels towards those she considers her own. Her brother—as Ruen had said—knows of her identity, and I know beyond a shadow of doubt that were the Gods to find out a mortal had kept her existence hidden, his death would not be quick or painless.

The Gods are cruelest to those they feel slighted by, and deceiving them into believing a Mortal God with the power to call thousands of spiders at her will was little more than a human Terra is certainly a trickery that would prick at their damned pride. Kiera would die and so, too, would her human family. Whoever they are.

“I’ll do it,” I say quietly. All eyes land on me. Kalix in boredom. Ruen in shock. And Kiera in … Gods, I pray that is not hope in her expression. The anger I still feel towards her might be dampened at this moment, but it is still there.

A curse slips from Ruen’s lips, but then, after a long moment, he nods. “Fine,” he bites out the word, glaring at Kiera. “We will do it, but once we sign the blood contract—you tell us everything, and I do mean everything. I want your name, your fucking name, I want your identity, who your God parent is. Everything.” He repeats the last word with emphasis as if that will force more meaning into it.

Kiera nods, her head bobbing with the movement. Kalix pops up from his seat with a grin replacing his look of dullness. “Be right back,” he announces before disappearing up the stairs.

Moments later, he returns with a stone bowl, a blade, and a small satchel of herbs. Of course, he would be ready for something like this. As the first one to know of her truths, no doubt, he’d been expecting this turn of events. I tamp down the urge to growl at him and punch him in his smug face as he sets the stone bowl onto the table between us, dropping the blade and satchel next to it.

“Let’s get this party started, then, shall we?” he says, clapping his hands gleefully.

Chapter 40

Kiera

Blood wells up from the slice I make through the center of my palm. Pain radiates outward. Pain I’m used to. Pain I can handle. The consequences of these actions, however, are another matter entirely.

Not for the first time I ask myself if I’m making the right choice. Am I giving in too easily? It feels like I am, but what choice is left? I am a piece of driftwood set afloat in the vast ocean, pulled along by the currents beneath. Did I ever even have a choice to begin with or was this inevitable?

Did all the torture Ophelia put me through mean nothing? Was it all in vain?

Someone would have found out about my existence eventually. I should be grateful that it’s the three of them. The Darkhavens, at least, are willing to make this blood contract to keep my secrets.

The blood that leaks from my hand fills up the crevices of my palm as I curl my fingers inward. I turn my fist to let the blood drip into the stone bowl, coating the inside before I pass the blade to Ruen and he does the same. Then Kalix. Then finally, Theos.

My gaze lands on the third Darkhaven brother and more specifically, Aranea, who has been casually propped up in his lap since I offered for him to hold her. I hadn’t expected him to be so willing, but when she’d prompted me to ask, the curiosity and interest in her mind supplying the desire of hers more than words, I’d asked. To my utter surprise, he’d accepted and now, she seems more than content to remain on his thigh, waiting for him to finish contributing his blood to the contract we’re all about to make.

By the time Theos is finished adding his blood to the stone bowl, I open my palm to a completely healed cut, nothing but the vestiges of my own wound left. Ruen’s eyes fall upon my hand with a deadened expression that he just as quickly turns away as I wipe the blood clean on my dark trousers. Kalix leans forward to tear open the satchel of herbs he’d brought with him. I don’t even bother to ask where he’d found roots from the Hinterlands or brimstone shards that he upturns and dumps into the blood.

The blood contract that had been made between Ophelia and me nearly ten years ago now is tied to the brimstone in my neck, and as if in response to this new power it feels, I can practically sense the stone’s shard throbbing in response. I grit my teeth against the fresh wave of prickling pain.

All four of us lean closer, scooting to the edges of our seats as the blood in the bowl begins to bubble. The herbs catch fire and melt into the red sticky liquid, but the brimstone doesn’t. It heats, glowing red as if it’s been put into a kiln. My skin grows slick with sweat and I swallow roughly, tamping down the desire to vomit.

Kalix groans, cracking his neck to one side. He lifts his gaze to mine and grins wickedly as if the pain is pleasurable to him while both of his brothers catch their breaths and refuse to make a sound. Prick. I glare at Kalix as if to let him know exactly what I think of him. His smile merely widens.

More heat radiates from the bowl, the shards shake, trembling with some unseen force. I don’t know when blood contracts were created—no one but the Gods can say for certain—but I do know that they were once used long ago when the Gods first came to our world to control the first generation of mortals and keep them from rebelling against their new overlords. The amount of blood and power it would have taken to force a blood contract upon an entire society of people astounds me even now.

“Now,” Ruen grits out the word as he leans forward and dips his finger into the blood. Kalix goes next, then Theos, and then me. The second the mixture of blood and burned herbs touches my fingertip, fire blazes a path up my arm, shooting lightning through my veins. Though the blood sits on the outside of my body, it is still a piece of me, connected by the Divinity it holds.

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