The Rise of Fortune and Fury (Chronicles of the Stone Veil 5)

“No, I want to be there,” Zora says adamantly. “I want to see Kymaris taken down.”

I grin. “Now that is totally my twin talking. I’ve always had a bit of vengeance inside of me. Wanting to see someone get their due when they’ve wronged me.”

“That bitch is the reason I was taken,” Zora snarls, and her eyes flash with fury. She’s breathing hard as if her emotions have winded her. “She’s the reason I was raised in Hell when I could have had this. She has to be defeated.”

“She will be,” I promise gently.

Zora gazes out over the bay, taking in breaths to get herself calm. Her hands are shaking, and she grips them together hard.

“Zora,” I say softly to get her attention. She doesn’t look my way, but her body jerks slightly from my tone. “How bad was it there? The truth.”

Because for all that I’ve learned about the worse-than-third-world conditions and funky animals to eat, it hasn’t really told me anything about why Zora is the way she is.

Slowly, Zora swings my way, and I can see the doubt warring in her eyes. Should she give me the absolute truth? Zora hates being thought of as a victim because any time I make faces of sympathy when she tells me things, it makes her bristle, and she’ll immediately denounce her life as being a hardship.

But I know I’m missing so much of the story.

I have a feeling, if she tells it all to me, that I’ll probably end up wishing I’d never known.

Zora brings her feet back up on the chaise and lays back, closing her eyes. I study the odd but beautiful bright white of her eyelashes as they lay against her skin. It’s a clear sign she doesn’t want to talk, but then… she starts talking.

“My earliest memory is after I’d learned to walk. The Dark Fae couple I stayed with hated me trying to get into everything. If I tried to climb on a chest, they’d knock me off it. If I tried to leave my pallet on the floor and climb on their bed, they’d push me off. After a while, I learned to just stay on the floor. For meals, they would toss scraps down to me.”

Okay, it’s going to be way worse than I expected. But if she’s brave enough to tell it, I’m brave enough to listen. I mimic her actions and lay back on the chaise, face to the sun, and I close my eyes as I listen.

“I learned to talk by listening to them because they never engaged me in conversation. I didn’t really understand who Amell was when he came to visit, but when he did, they treated me differently. The female would pull me on her lap, and I’d struggle to get away because touch was so off-putting to me by that time. Amell eventually started talking to me, correcting my speech if it was bad. He’d ask me questions about my life with them, and I told him the truth. It was at that point when things changed for the better. I didn’t have a pallet on the floor anymore, but rather an actual bed, and I sat at the table for meals. I assume Amell threatened them, but that was about as good as it got. I was a lowly human to them, and, as I told you before, that’s all they ever called me until Amell gave me a name. It was the first time I had some identity.”

It’s no wonder she’s so averse to affection and why the concept of love is confusing. Her formative years had been totally fucked up.

“As I got older, Amell came more often. He’d bring me books, teach me languages, math, and history. He brought me around Otaxis so the other Dark Fae would get used to having a human in their midst, and he put the word out that I was never to be harmed. He gave me small jobs to complete and paid me tokens so I could buy things just for myself, because the couple I lived with gave me nothing but the clothes on my back. Amell eventually took me flying, and it was the first time in my life I had ever laughed. I remember how odd the sound was, but it felt good to me.”

Tears spring to my eyes, but I blink them back, forcing a steady voice. “You were lucky to have him.”

“Was I?” she asks, but I don’t dare roll my head to see her. I’m afraid she might clam up. “Amell is the one who put me in the care of those awful fae, knowing I was mistreated. Amell took me once a month to the palace where they’d perform the ceremony to pump magic into me. He shackled me behind Kymaris’ static body and stared at me with a locked jaw while Pyke pressed a staff to my spine and forced fae magic into me without my consent. Amell stood by and watched as I cried from the pain of it, and then when the dark priests came in to take the magic I’d just received and turn it dark, he stood by while I screamed in agony because that hurt far worse.”