Page 65 of A House of Fangs & Deceit

Unfortunately, I couldn’t do the same for the letter to Roth because it required having prior access to the person’s blood in order to spell the paper.

I had stacks of spelled paper for Carmilla, Rynn, Cali, and others for just this reason. This meant I had to keep any specifics out of the letter in case it was intercepted. Plus, I wanted to meet Roth in person before I told them everything. If Rynn thought they were trustworthy, then I was inclined to believe the same. Still… one could never be too careful.

Once I was satisfied with the letter, I folded it up andsecured it in an envelope addressed to Roth. My eyes drifted towards Kieran’s office and the empty desk. He’d be leaving today for House Corvinus, and I already missed him.

Ugh. I was so pathetic.

I meant what I said about not leaping into another relationship and that I wanted to keep things casual between us, but I also acknowledged that the idea of anyone else touching Kieran had my bloodlust rising. It wasn’t fair or rational, but no matter how much I told myself that, I didn’t feel any different.

Maybe a few days apart would allow me to get my feelings under control. One could only hope.

With all three envelopes in hand, I headed up to the aviary. The strikers eyed me silently as I entered the tower, their forked tongues sliding out from a small groove in their blunt beaks, tasting the air, and their vertical pupils were thin slits against the sunlight that filtered in.

As a child, I’d been terrified of the strange creatures who hadn't been able to make up their mind whether they were reptiles or birds and instead settled on both.

I’d thought they were tiny monsters, which to be fair they absolutely were, but now I thought they werecutetiny monsters.

“Who’s the most deadly creature in all the realms?” I cooed at one that had sky-blue and vibrant red scales down its throat marking it as male.

He stretched out his long neck and bumped his head against my hand. The scales were warm from basking in the sun, and he tilted his triangular head to give me better access to his throat.

I grinned. “You’re the most vicious and prettiest one! Yes, you are!”

Another two hopped down from their perch and vied forattention. Once I had given everyone scratches, I moved further into the tower to where the current on-duty strikers were. We rotated to give them breaks and also made sure we had some for breeding stock.

While they almost always made it to their destination safely, their life expectancy was only five to seven years.

A brilliant green striker eyed me as I approached, and I pulled a harness made of a soft rope off the wall before carefully strapping it on, making sure that it didn’t rub against the wing joints.

Once I was confident that it was fitted well, I slipped the letter into a pouch on the back. The striker hopped obediently onto my arm when I held it out, its long talons flexing against my skin but not breaking it. I carried it outside, scratching the underside of its chin while I did so.

Once we were out of the tower, I thrust my arm outward, and the striker took flight, spreading its leathery wings wide as it caught an updraft and sailed away.

After it faded from sight, I went back inside towards the striker that had been trained for the route to and from Drudonia and repeated the same process. After all the messages were on their way, I spent some time cooing over the baby strikers before heading downstairs. Then I stopped by my room and saw that Kieran was gone, likely to pack for his trip.

Refusing to allow myself to dwell on my feelings around that, I decided to track down Vail and his rangers to see if they had learned anything useful about the body we’d brought back with us.

Several small groups of rangers were training in the courtyard as I skirted around the edges, heading for the small building next to the barracks where extra training supplies were kept.

As I approached, Adrienne grinned at me from where shewas guarding the door. No bits of gore decorated her hair today, but she still looked absolutely stunning in her brown leathers. I tossed her one of the spare apples I’d grabbed from the kitchen on the way here.

“Are they inside?” I asked when she bit into the fruit.

Her eyes lit up as the juices ran down her chin.

While we’d been traveling together, I paid attention to all the habits of the rangers. Adrienne absolutely loved fruit.

She’d grown up in the northwestern part of our realm where fresh fruit was scarce and lamented over the stew we’d had at the first outpost that she could go through her entire life without ever tasting another root vegetable.

The fruit-loving ranger nodded and opened the door for me. I smiled in thanks and stepped inside.

The first part of the building was a small room with various weapons neatly stored in racks or hanging on the walls. I headed further in, following the voices that came from the next room.

Vail’s head snapped up as I entered a much larger room that was mostly empty save for the three tall tables that were spaced evenly down the center of the room. The first one held the body of the boy I’d found.

Vail, Nyx, and someone else I didn’t recognize were crowded around it, all of whom watched as I approached.

“What are you doing here?” Vail asked as he stared at me coldly.

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