“What do you intend to do?” Wolf cowers behind the couch, watching Cyrus approach.
“You will tell me what information you have shared with the border guards!” Cyrus lifts the couch as easily as if it was formed from cottony clouds. “I will know every time you lie. You will pay for every fib you attempt.” Cyrus grabs his brother by his hair, hauling him up to standing.
Wolf, seeing an opportunity for surprise, launches himself at Cyrus. They fall to the floor in a grappling frenzy. “You will die before you get the chance to rat on me!” Wolf snarls as he wraps his arms around Cyrus’s neck.
“What good could you have done?” Cyrus wheezes, seizing an opportunity to slip through Wolf’s grasp as his hands grow slack. “How could you ever have believed that betraying your country was right?”
“I did what was necessary.” Wolf’s haunted words sound empty as he slumps down the wall until he collapses on the floor. “When I became the pack leader, I was young and stupid. I did not realize how much people depended on me to keep things in order. It was a matter of months before what little money we had was gone. The pack was in trouble. People were going mad with hunger, and we were losing key trades on Market Days. When grumbles of new leadership began to rumble through the ranks, I panicked. We’d always traveled near the Devil’s Spine to trade, and I’d gotten to know some of the border guards from Déchets. So, one night I snuck away from the pack and found a willing ear.”
“You traded Cassé secrets for money.” Cyrus finishes his brother’s explanation with a sneer. “I knew you had to be dirty dealing, but I could never figure out who it was with. I never thought you’d stoop to treachery.”
“You’ll do anything to keep your people alive.” Wolf’s hand covers his eyes with his shame.
“But it wasn’t just money, was it?” Cyrus accuses, his unnerving, black eyes carefully scrutinizing Wolf for any signs of deception.
Before Wolf has the chance to respond, a thundering crash ripples through the living room. Cyrus’s body falls limply to the floor. The clatter of a skillet echoes loudly as it hits the ground next, and a wide-eyed Jackal observes his leader’s hiding place. “What the hell happened down here?”
“My brother knows too much, Jackal,” Wolf replies, relief washing over him as he skirts around Cyrus’s body. “When we travel to the House of Piranhas, he has to be controlled at all times. Drug him until he’s unconscious. Bind him with irons. Set two guards outside, and tell them that only you and I are allowed inside.”
“Excuse me for saying it, but all this for one man that you already despise? Why not kill him outright?” Jackal counters, hoisting Cyrus’s body over his shoulder as he considers where to incarcerate him. “Is your hatred of him that strong that you must continue to torture him?”
“Just do what I command,” Wolf growls, raising a threatening hand toward Jackal. “Keep him alive but sedated. I’ll decide if and when he dies, not you.”
***
“He made it!” Suryc howls with delight as he lowers toward the rocky ground. “He’s still captured, but at least he’s alive.”
“How do you know?” Wren wonders, eyeing the steadily approaching terrain under his feet. They’ve been flying for ages, and Wren’s arms are beginning to go numb in Suryc’s clutches. “Careful! Oh gods, I don’t want to die!” Wren begs as he hoists his feet over a scraggly tree limb that reaches up as if to jerk him back to earth. “Please!”
“Such a baby!” Suryc clicks his tongue in annoyance before plopping Wren into a nearby creek. The bushes surrounding Suryc’s dark form shiver with his laughter as Wren sputters out of the water. “Not very adventurous, are you?”
“I prefer the shadows,” Wren replies as he flicks droplets of water at Suryc, his boots squelching with every step up the bank. “Where are you taking me? And what happened to Cyrus? We should be getting back to him, don’t you think?”
“They are two sides of the same coin,” Suryc muses cryptically, drawing strange symbols in the dirt with his huge, sharp claws. “Iris and Siri—creatures of the purest white and lovers of truth. Iris’s desire for veracity is so strong that she’s a Gwen. She will be a powerful truth reader once she’s fully trained. Then there’s Cyrus and myself—creatures of the darkest black, haters of deception. It’s only fitting that Cyrus should become an Asíle. Poetic, really. The Gwen and the Asíle, the truth reader and the deception seeker.”
“I don’t understand any of that,” Wren confesses, carefully turning his head from side to side to observe his strange surroundings. “And where are we, exactly? Nothing about this place looks familiar to me.”
“It seems that there is much you have missed by living your life in the shadows,” Suryc announces, briefly explaining recent events to Wren. As he finishes his tale, Wren sinks to his knees under the weight of all he’s learned. “Now, Cyrus has become an Asíle—a Cadogan who can always tell when someone is speaking lies. False words leak out of the deceiver’s mouth like an oily stain in the air. They’re visible to him—tangible and infuriating.”
“I see. So, what do we do now?” Wren questions as he wrings out his shirt to prevent his body from catching a chill. “Why have you brought me so far away from the House of Vultures?”
“Cyrus said that the pack travels to the House of Piranhas. After this detour, we will follow them, and be careful to stay out of sight. We need to get close, just in case my Cadogan needs us before Iris finds him.”
“Let me dry out before we fly again,” Wren quips as he paces up to the Ddraig. “The last thing I need is pneumonia.”
“You know, you’re awfully calm about all
