The Becoming Trilogy Box Set (Books 1-3) (58 page)

‘Come back,’ her voice was
hushed, ‘Please come back.’

Silence.

‘I’m not Ravyn,’ Ash said.
‘She was my mother.’

No answer, but she swore she
heard him move.

‘Please, did you know her?’

Scrabbling in the dark
followed and then his face was pressed back to the bars. Bloodshot eyes grasped
at her features, and widened.

‘The child. Yes, yes. So like
her. And the father too.’ He rose to his feet, pacing circles away from her,
grabbing at fistfuls of greasy dark hair and mumbling incoherently.

Ash jerked against her
restraints, as though she could physically follow him and the implication of
his words.

‘Oh my God. You knew my
parents?’ Words escaped around the twist of tears in her throat. ‘You must tell
me what you know. Please.’ Ash was grasping at the crazy straws he gave. Maybe
it was the isolation, maybe it was the fear, but she was inclined to believe
his madness.

‘Too late. The Ravyn flew
away. Knutr killed them all, but the light was gone.’

Ash struggled to read between
the insanity. That name, Knutr, stirred up the recollection of a conversation.
Mac had told her about the félag who went insane after losing his brother. He’d
been locked away for his own, and everyone else’s, safety.

‘You’re Knutr, right?’ She
ventured. Third person referencing aside, she was pretty sure he was talking
about himself.

He didn’t answer her, just
continued to ramble. ‘The Princess’ lights went out. Too late. Dead. No light.’
Knutr crouched down and reached into his shirt. Ash had to blink to make sure
she wasn’t imagining what he pulled out. An ancient string of Disney Princess
fairy-lights dangled from his fist, held carefully and spread out for her to
see. She reached out, risking the tightening of the collar to touch the tips of
her fingers to the plastic. They couldn’t be the actual ones. Oh God, they were
the actual ones. She recognised the scratches that came from packing them into
every vacation. Her mother had made sure to never leave home without them. They’d
lit up the beach house that night. When she found her voice amongst the
memories, Ash hated how weak it was.

‘Where did you get those?’

He looked up at her through
the bird’s nest tangle of his hair, but shook his head, chapped lips thinning.

‘You were there the night my
mother died.’ Growling, she flung the accusation at him.

Knutr flinched and went back
to muttering. She could almost hear the full stops in his broken thoughts. He
was riddling her the truth, she just had to make sense of it. ‘Wolves at the
door, Crys cross. Double crossed.’ Back and forth, back and forth, he paced.
‘Knutr was too late. Lights out. Child gone.’ Large hands tightened on the
string of lights. ‘Wolves paid in blood.’

Chewing the inside of her
cheek, Ash combed through his words.

‘Crys?’ she said.

The man stopped for the
briefest of moments before resuming his maddening pacing, but it was all she
needed to know she was on the right thread.

‘Mac said Crys was your
brother, your félag?’

Another pause was the only
acknowledgement that she was right.

The man was fragile, but she
had to ask. She had to. ‘Please, can you tell me what happened?’

Knutr collapsed faster than
she could react. It was the second time she’d watched a man crumble. Where
Connal had fallen to his knees, Knutr curled up into a fetal position and the
cell-space was filled with his body-shaking sobs.

‘Dead too. All dead. Crys
went to beg the witch for help. And off with his head.’ Knutr made a shaky
slicing motion across his throat that chilled Ash’s veins. ‘Couldn’t keep the
Ravyn hidden forever. Birds die in cages. Wolves sniffed her out. Yes. Gobbled
her up. Fly away, my soul. Die today, my brother.’

The man was deranged and
heart-broken, spilling the truth in streams of nonsense.

‘Was Crys my father?’ She
waited a beat, another thought striking and making her eyes wide. Brothers
shared their women. ‘Are
you
my father?’

Knutr turned to look at her.
Dragging himself over to the bars, he crouched, weaving in front of her with
teary, bloodshot eyes. ‘Which of the two are you?’

The two?
He was confusing her with her mother again? ‘I’m
Ravyn’s daughter. My name is Ashling, Ashling DeMorgan.’

Tired eyes lit up and a
blissed smile spread over his lips. ‘Yes. I see him in your eyes. And her.’
Knutr caressed the air in front of her. ‘How we loved the Ravyn, and led her to
her death.’

Ash slumped, her whole body
caving in on a stuttering exhale. The truth she sought was somewhere just out
of reach, lost in the ravings of this crazy man, who just might be her uncle.

When she looked up from the
quiet tears falling to her shackles, Knutr was clutching at the fairy lights.
He was twitchy and animated, eyes darting around the cell, hunting invisible
foes. ‘Birds die in cages, little Ravyn,’ he said. ‘Must spread its wings and
flee before they kill it too.’ Long arms flapped at his sides and she almost
smiled. In the gloom, he looked like a grimy flamingo.

‘Trust me. First chance I
get, I’m out of this putrid hellhole.’

Ash tugged at the restraints,
twisted and pulled and choked while he watched on. She hollered Mac’s name
until her throat was hoarse. She knew she was making herself frantic, but she
didn’t want to die in a cage, like her mother. She would not. ‘Mac! Let me out,
you sonofabitch!’

The male sing-songed at her.
‘Little bird’s heart all a flutter. Be calm, don’t break your wings. Knutr can
release you.’

Ash jangled the chain
connecting her to the wall. ‘I can’t reach the bars to get close to you.’ She
wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to either. Buddying up with a psychopath at a
distance was fine. Up close … well.

‘No need, little one. The
metal bends to Knutr’s will.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘Though the hinges are a
little rusty.’

Like a grand conjurer, he
motioned with his hands. She laughed, until the bolts holding her shackles
started to groan and wriggle free, the nuts turning and shimmying to fall in a
soft jingle on the cold cell floor. Ash wrenched the metal from her neck,
shedding the collar with a disgusted growl, finally breathing easily again. She
massaged the chafed flesh of her throat and made her way to the door of her
cell. ‘Way to go Magneto,’ she grinned. ‘That’s some party trick.’

Knutr took a dramatic bow,
preening. ‘I’ve had a long time to hone my talents.’ If there was an edge of
bitterness to his words, Ash tried to soothe it with a gentle smile.

‘Can you open the door locks
too?’ Her brows raised in a hopeful wiggle, but fell at the shake of his head.

‘Solid brass. No magnetism.
Bastards upgraded the cells after my first escape.’ He offered her an
apologetic shrug.

She could feel the weight of
his gaze when she turned away to probe the lock with the slim barrel of a bolt.
‘Then how in Hell am I supposed to get out of here?’

‘Employ some talents of your
own?’

Exasperation growled from her
lips as her forehead met metal. ‘I don’t have any damn talents, aside from
doing a pretty good rendition of Phantom of the Opera in the shower.’ Her
amateur lock-picking skills weren’t going to cut it this time.

‘Use your feminine
attraction,’ he countered.

Uh, no.
‘The last thing I want is more animal magnetism.
That’s what got me into this mess in the first place,’ she growled. A strong
dose of wolf repellant would be more in her line. Ash was beyond frustration.
She could lean on the door all she wanted and it wouldn’t move. Her back slid
down the smooth metal as she spun to face the darkness, her eyes seeking Knutr
in the gloom. Back to mumbling, he knelt in the centre and no matter her
prompts, her subtle questions, he’d apparently tired of their conversation and
spoke to the voices in his head instead. Left alone with her own thoughts and
absently touching the twin crescent grooves in her palm, Ash planned her
interrogation for his next bout of lucidity.

‘H
ow fares the boy?’ MacTire stormed up to the door of
Tyr’s quarters, where Brandr and Rún were holding up the walls with a matched
set of crossed arms and grim and grimmer expressions.

‘It’s been touch and go these
past hours, my Lord.’ Brandr’s mouth was bracketed by tension.

‘Is the healer with him?’
MacTire demanded.

Rún shook his head in answer.
‘The doctor's been MIA since the incident at the shore. The
t
hegn
say he hasn’t reported in topside
either. I was going to send a search party to the hills ...’

MacTire growled in the
warrior’s face, showing him the whites of his eyes. ‘Maybe you missed the show,
but those flying piranhas decimated us out there. If you think I’m going to
waste even more lives sniffing out some insignificant, A.W.O.L. runt, you’ve
got your priorities screwed on backwards, Rún. Find another damn healer.’ His
fist gripped the door handle, practically wrenching it off its hinges.

The sight of Tyr laid out on
the bed stopped the King dead. Blond curls plastered to his head, a cold sweat
slicked the grey pallor of the boy’s skin. Blue lips trembled and his eyes
flickered beneath closed lids. His wounds were freshly dressed, broken bones
splinted with a care equal to what any medic could provide. Fite emerged from
the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel, his silver head ducking to clear the
low-hanging lintel. Dark circles framed the torment in his eyes. ‘Is it taken
care of?’ he asked.

‘It’s done,’ MacTire replied.
‘The she-wolf is restrained in the cells and the raveners have scattered to the
winds. We have twelve men unaccounted for, plus a number of the
thegn
.
There were no bodies to recover. Will the boy live?’ he asked, his voice thick
with concern.

‘I believe so,’ Fite’s eyes
shone with conviction, ‘but
she
cannot be allowed to.’

‘I have spoken on this, Fite.
The female is no longer a threat.’

‘For as long as it draws
breath, the creature is a threat, my Lord.’

‘And again, you challenge my
authority. I choose to overlook it only because you hurt for your félag’s son,
but never doubt, I can and will take you down in Contest if you do it again.’

‘Can you take all of us?’ It
was Brandr who spoke as the entire
s
kuldalid
moved into the room, crowding the already tight
space.

‘What is this? A fucking
mutiny?’ MacTire looked each of his men hard in the eyes.

‘We’d prefer you saw it as an
intervention.’

‘It doesn’t have to be this
way, my Lord.’ Their voices circled him.

‘Damn fucking straight it
doesn’t! I am your King.’

‘Then lead us on the right
path,’ Fite implored.

‘Have I not? The female is
our future.’

‘You are blind, my Lord. The
bonds you share with her have stolen your objectivity. She is our destruction.’
Rún’s measured words struck a chord amongst the combative body language.
MacTire looked at the red-haired male as if to say ‘
et tu, Brute’.

Sensing a chink in the King’s
defenses, Fite went for the jugular. ‘That thing is poison to our bloodlines.
Look what it did to our brother, to Brandr’s
thrall
. You saw her. She
had wings. The birds flocked around her head like she was Snow
-
fucking
-
White.
She summoned them to feast on us like carrion. Would you cleave what remains of
our ancient lines to a monster such as she? I demand retribution, as is my
right, under the laws of the Old Masters.’

‘You shall not have it!’
MacTire bore down on Fite, fangs bared.

Brandr clapped a hand on the
King’s shoulder. ‘We are your
s
kuldalid
, your brothers and your family. We would die for you,
MacTire. But we will die before we let you fall into the Morrígan’s trap.’