BOUND (#1, of Crows and Thorns)

Chapter 75

I needed to find that gods-forsaken parchment and find out just what I had signed.

***

In utter panic, my heart beating wildly against my ribs, I burst into my father's office. The door slammed against the wall as I skidded to a messy halt in the middle of the room.

My father ruled from this room, a room that looked like any other executive office with its rolling office chairs, leather couch and coffee table, and a glass desk with a computer and caddies filled with paper clips and expensive fountain pens.

Similar, yet set apart by the obvious wealth and history that came with our world. An eighteenth-century Persian rug sat beneath his glass desk; a Mamluk steel sword, Chimu headdress, and Mongolian ceremonial dagger hung on the wall in between Flemish tapestries, Moroccan copper plates, and landscape oil paintings. Sitting beside one another, on the baroque bookshelf holding first editions, were his inkwell and quills and the ornate silver urn that held the finely-ground dust of our ancestors' bones.

Where would the Alverac be? Filed away in a cabinet? It seemed ridiculous and callous that the parchment which held my life would be slipped into a swinging folder with a tab, and stashed amongst other business information. But that's where I headed first, to yank open the Italian cupboard doors to the filing cabinet hidden behind them, before pulling all the folders out and tossing them onto the floor after I'd searched through them. Next, I hit my father's desk, rifling amongst the drawers, trying to find the ancient parchment.

I couldn't find it.

Where the hells is it?!

Fury and hysteria collided, sending me soaring into a blinding panic. A desperate need to shatter and ruin things overcame me. Grabbing the first thing that came to hand—a Greek bronze paperweight from his desk—I threw it across the room at a painting, as a terrified wail was wrenched from my throat. The paperweight ripped through the canvas, cracking the wall behind, and fell to the wooden floor with a jarring thud.

I hurled everything I laid my hands on. Indian water jugs and jade statues gouged the walls. Venetian glass and Chinese porcelain exploded in the wake of my fear. Gild-edged books and rare artifacts were swept off shelves by my hand and furious gusts of dark magic.

A pair of footsteps. My mother's voice rasped, "Nelle?"

I swung around, panting fearful breaths, a Ming urn clasped in my white-knuckled grip. "The Alverac...where the fuck is it?!"

My father, in his custom-cut tuxedo, studied the room, now thoroughly wrecked. He ran a hand through his graying hair that suddenly seemed more salt than pepper, the skin on his hand more leathery with age spots. There was anxiety straining around his mouth as his shoulders slumped and his hand fell from his head to fall limply against his thigh. From where I stood vibrating with anger and panic, I could smell the cognac on his breath and see it shining in his eyes.

It was my mother who stepped toward me, her heels crunching through shards of glass and porcelain, and clay. "Master Sirro—"

"Told me enough. Told me what I should have known all along. The Alverac..."

At the mention of the Alverac my parents shared a look of despair and guilt and sorrow.

I couldn't bear to see the sorrow carving deep lines into their faces as if they were grieving for me before I'd actually died.

Oh my gods...what is in that contract?

They'd known all along of the Alverac's true nature and kept it hidden from me.