The Changeling

26

him?" His tone was dead deep with a forced calm.

"You're hurting me!" She spat it at him.

"And suddenly you care when someone hurts you?" He tugged her closer so he could snarl right in her face, "Or is it only me you find so repugnant?" His eyes trailed all along her.

He sucked in fast, incensed breaths through his nose. His jaw clenched too tight, looking like he was being scourged. "You reek of him."

The statement eviscerated her. Cetlali's body lit up with agony and terror, starting at the very skin beneath his grip. Her muscles started shaking to the point she was sure she'd fall apart. Destruction thrummed through her veins. She felt poisoned, toxic, full to the brim of every viscous, disgusting thing that ever graced this earth.

"Let go!" Cetlali screeched without restraint.

"Let go! Let go! Let go!" She repeated over and over, her voice deteriorating into wet sobs and becoming unintelligible. An arrow whizzed by

and thunked into the wall, inches from Lovou's head. He looked up to where the bolt came from with a confused and just as furious scowl.

Masha stood in the archway to Cetlali's hall, leading to her chambers. Her short hair was in disarray from sleep, eyes red rimmed and puffy from her tears seemed rabid with focus. But her gaze was sharp, glaring at him with another arrow already notched in one of Cetlali's bows.

"Let her go," Masha spat the words through clenched teeth.

"Put that bow down before I break both your hands," Lovou snarled right back, but let Cetlali go in the same instant.

She yanked away from him as he did and she ended up stumbling and sobbing her way over.

Masha didn't hesitate to step in front of her, pulling the arrow taut.

"Bigger enemies have tried to kill me, little girl, none have managed it yet," Lovou rasped, full of a drunken, quavering fury.

Masha grinned with an indubitable menace.

"Bigger perhaps, but not better." She leveled her exemplary aim at his face and her tone was wicked and sure. "Definitely not at this distance."

Lovou's lip curled in a snarl and he wanted nothing more than to smash every single thing in the room. His frenzied glare fell on Cetlali, curled up on the floor behind Masha, elbows jabbed into her knees. She rocked and sobbed into her sleeves. She was attempting to silence the crackling blubbers as she shook and gave halted attempts to hit her forehead with the inside of her wrists.

His face went slack, blank with agony as he watched Cetlali rock and hit and rock, unable to stop her tears. He realized he played a part in making her that way. Memories screamed through him, watching her fall to pieces, always knowing why, but unable to do a thing about it.

His voice was tight as he tried to speak, "I'm

—," he looked up at Masha, but it was no use.

"Leaving," Masha snarled, her voice wavering with an emotive rage. "You'll get news to my father that I'm staying with her tonight and nothing else. You'll get Loraeta and Merlo to guard her door and you'll tell them to keep everyone out. Even Ezren, even you." Her top lip curled with revulsion. "Especially you."

Tears threatened to spill from her young, enraged eyes. Her bow arm quavered. It would have been the perfect time for Lovou to attack and to show her what sort of short sighted vapid child she was. The next words she spoke struck him more grievously than any arrow she could have loosed. "You did nothing..." Her voice didn't waver once that time, as if she gilded it with rage.