A Court of Whispers and Song

Chapter 64

Drops of effort dotted the Valkyrie's forehead and coated her shaking arms. Two minutes into an attempted five-minute plank. An attempt on Cassian's time. How a male, an Illyrian warrior, many, many centuries older, and far more built than herself, could only master something as brief as five minutes was beyond her.

But five minutes in theory and five minutes in the actual position? An entirely different story—particularly after a night of no sleep. And quite the unwise choice of trying such a feat after a full set of pushups and situps.

How had she come up with this terrible idea? Gwyn had needed the distraction. Needed her mind to focus on anything other than the chaos and confusion spinning in her head. She'd spent her night tossing and turning, finding herself staring up at the coffered ceiling as if it held the answers. Revealed any way to untangle truths from lies. Determine if what was done in the past was out of love or fear or shame. Or something else altogether.

"Shit," she swore shakily between pants.

Her straining abdominals burned like hellfire, crying out for her to stop. To give up. Surrender.

Yet Gwyn remained, elbows planted and aching against the bare wood of the floor. Squeezing her core as if there was a string attached through her body pulled tautly.

Two minutes and twenty seconds into it, her body trembled. Five seconds later, Gwyn's body gave out, collapsing flat on her face.

She remained there, sweat-soaked skin sticking to the floor. Unable to do anything aside from breathing. Tired. She was so very tired. But that was to be expected when Gwyn had spent the better portion of last night reading the lineage books she still had tucked away on the Vanserras and the Danaans. And read until her eyes nearly bled.

Her eyes and throat burned as she rolled herself onto her back, the front of her drenched tunic and leggings unpeeling from the wood surface beneath. Tossing an arm over her eyes, she bit back the bubbling sob. She would not cry. She would not cry.

No. Would not give Eris that satisfaction. She would be the female. Nay, the warrior, who had ordered him out of her room in the wee hours of the morning.

Before sobering, the eldest son of Beron Vanserra spoke of bleak things in a tone and posture were as if they were simply facts. Mere truths of his life and nothing more.

Offered nothing more than a steady stream of words, albeit slurred in the beginning, his intoxication a fact Gwyn had used to her advantage. And throughout, the male had shown no reaction.

Not even when he'd spoken of the horrors of growing up in their house.

"Once, I thought I'd made it out roughly unscathed with a few well-placed punches and kicks, but..."

He'd answered all the random questions which filtered in, but Gwyn knew she was on borrowed time. She had to get to the point, to the answers she sought. On how Mala made it to the Forest House in the first place.

"Dumped at the back doorstep by the kitchens, found by a servant loyal to my mother. No more than a few months old. Wrapped up and shivering, with a note attached. Being only half-nymph, the babe could not live underwater continuously. She would have been nothing more than carrion left upon the shore..."

Then there was one moment. Had she blinked, Gwyn would have missed it. The briefest flicker of emotion had been when he'd spoken of his mother—with Mala.

"In secret, the servant delivered the child to my mother, who sent for me. When I walked into my mother's chambers and read the note? I was already devising ways to get her out of our lives"