37. Petra

Her people, her family, were dying in the streets.

By the time word arrived to Petra of the mysterious circumstances under which they were suffering, it was far too late to even attempt to save the majority of them. The organs from a slave squished under her feet as she paced the room. Killing the messenger solved nothing, but the scent of blood made her mind sharp and her senses keen. Killing directed her rage at someone worthless, so it didn’t escape through her at the people she needed to depend on.

The doors at the far end of the hall opened. Claws out, fangs bared, Petra wheeled in place to look at who had traversed into her space at such a time. There were only about five people she wouldn’t kill on sight, and lucky for Cain, he was one of them.

“Cain, tell me news. Tell me something worthwhile.” She felt utterly useless, and it was a feeling Petra both loathed and feared. She was the Xin’Oji, the young warrior, the champion of blue. She knew how to fight her way out of any corner.

“Petra’Oji.” Cain’s bare chest heaved as he fought to catch his breath. “I just arrived from overseeing healers from Napole to Easwin. They began to try to help the living, but their medicines are failing, so they looked to the dead. They suspect poison.”

“Poison?” Petra repeated out of pure shock. A shameful death, poison was only reserved for killing animals without marring their pelt or flesh, or for the ill whose hearts could not be safely consumed seeking relief. Petra tried to think of even one poison, but could not name any. “It was not a rash of sour elk? Or an unhealthy growth upon the yeast?”

Cain shook his head grimly. “When they opened the cores of the fallen, half their innards had been completely dissolved.”

“Are any surviving?” Petra walked over to one of the tall windows in the hall that faced east. All that was before her were the spires of her manor.

“Only those with strong magic in their stomachs.”

Petra hung her head. Her claws dug so far into the stone that they nearly snapped. This was an enemy in the shadows. It was not one she could hunt down. It was not someone she could summon into the pits and make an example of several times over.

She had dealt with a coward. She had dealt with someone who was willing to sacrifice all their ideals for the ends they wanted to achieve. Petra snarled despite herself; the irony was not lost on her. Whoever had done this knew it was a very dark way to twist the Xin motto.

“Cain, I have an important task for you.” Petra thought through her next move as carefully as she could manage. But blood clouded her mind and engulfed her nose. She wanted to roar the song of vengeance.

“Oji.” Cain brought his heels together, standing taller.

“Find Finnyr, and bring him to me.” Petra straightened, looking at Cain’s reflection in the blackness of the windowpane. “I only need him alive and able to speak, Cain. His condition otherwise matters not.”

“Do you think Finnyr’Kin has anything to do with this?”

Petra was smart enough to tell the difference between true insubordination and inquiry; this was by far the latter. Cain’s face was overcome with horror at the very thought. It was heartening, but Petra did not have time for it.

“No…” Petra tapped her fingers along the windowsill. “Finnyr is a Xin, even if he lives under a Rok roof. Furthermore, even if he wanted to betray us, this is beyond him. At worst, he’s a worthless little slime, not cunning or devious.

“However, the man whose roof he sleeps under is both.” Petra growled the Dono’s name. “Yveun has much to gain from Xin fighters mysteriously dying in the night, especially after our showing today.”

“I will find Finnyr’Kin.”

“See you do so with discretion,” Petra cautioned. “We must act carefully until we know what picture is being painted.” Accusing a Dragon of engaging in dishonest battles was a high offense if it proved to be unfounded. Even if Finnyr confirmed it was Yveun, Petra still wasn’t certain she would be able to outright accuse the Dono of treason.

Dawn had barely kissed the sky when Petra knew Cain had returned. She smelled the man’s magic and the sharp tang of her brother’s. She had done nothing but pace the room for hours and bark orders at any who entered.

The doors opened and Cain shoved Finnyr through them. Her brother tripped, nearly falling on his face. He was like a skittish field mouse trying to squeak a mountain lion into submission.

“I am a Kin of this House. I will not tolerate this treatment!”

Cain looked to her. It was a delicious feeling—another person deferring to her above Finnyr, the first born, the fallen child of Xin. Petra’s claws felt ten times sharper.

“We shall see what you are soon enough,” Petra said silkily.

Finnyr turned slowly to look at her. All boldness he had tried to throw around with Cain washed away beneath the shower of her judgment. She poured her suspicions silently atop him and watched as they eroded his resolve.

“Petra, what is the meaning of this?” Finnyr demanded.

“Cain, I wish to be alone with my brother.” Petra didn’t want an audience for what she was about to do to Finnyr. She didn’t want anyone in the manor to know what she could do with her claws. The speculation over what prompted each delightful scream would be a far stronger message to warn others against disappointing her.

“As you wish, Oji.” He closed the doors behind him. Petra’s ears twitched as she listened for footsteps. There were none, meaning Cain had assumed responsibility as guard.

They would not be disturbed.

“Petra, there—”

“Petra’Oji,” she corrected venomously. “You will refer to me by my title, Finnyr.”

“There are things I must tell you.”

“Oh, I imagine so.” She began to advance on him. “Our House, your family, are dying, Finnyr…”

“You can’t possibly think I had anything to do with it.” Finnyr retreated, shuffle step after shuffle step.

“No, I know better. You’re far too inept for that,” she chastised. “You’re weak. You think small. You require a guiding hand.” Claws shot from her fingers at every flaw she named. “You likely aren’t even aware of what happened.”

“No, I am aware.”

“Oh?” She wanted to hear him say it. She wanted him to be so worked up and afraid that he would do anything to prove himself to her. And, in doing so, he would show her his true colors.

“I hadn’t come home because I was searching for answers on my end, just like you commanded.” Finnyr stood straighter, like a performer in the spotlight. “I overheard a conversation that I think will be of use to you.”

He couldn’t overhear anything when she needed him to, but suddenly managed without a problem when it was far too late. His inconsistency was beginning to rub Petra wrong. “For your sake, you’d best hope it is.”

“It was in the wine,” Finnyr said hastily. “The poison was in the wine.”

Petra stopped just within arms reach. She stared at her brother for a long moment before raising her hand in a quick motion, bringing its back across his face. Her claws dug long, golden lines in his cheek.

Finnyr reeled. “What, why?”

“Tell me true. Where was the poison put?”

“I told you—”

She grabbed the chain that sat around his neck, the collar the Dono made all his beasts wear, and yanked him by it. Petra placed a hand on his shoulder, tensing her fingers and dragging her claws down his bicep. Finnyr howled in pain.

“Tell me how my people were poisoned!”

“I am telling you!” he snarled. “It was in the wine.”

Petra slapped him again, this time with her palm. She ripped a chunk from his ear in the process. “Where did they put it?”

“In the wine!” Finnyr hissed in pain. “Petra, the poison was in the wine.”

“Where?” She hit him again.

“The wine!”

“Where was it?” Petra threw him backward. Finnyr stumbled, giving her an easy opening to straddle his feet and hold him against the wall by his neck. Rivulets of gold pooled in his collarbones as her claws dug into the soft muscle of his throat.

“The wine!” Finnyr was nearly at the point of tears. The shameful, pathetic man came undone under her fingers, the truth pouring from him like the blood from his neck. Petra could confidently ascertain that he was not trying to deceive her in any fashion.

She dropped him into a heap on the floor in disgust.

In a display of how low she regarded him, she stalked away, her back to him. Let him lunge, Petra seethed mentally. If he dared attack her when her back was turned, she really would kill him. Right now, his death was merely a high probability.

“Cain.” Petra pulled open the door. The man was at attention. Cain was not perfect, but Petra was truly grateful to have him in that moment. “Go and have the word spread that all wine on the isle of Ruana is to be cast into the God’s Line. Every last bottle, cask, and vat.”

“As you command, Oji.” Cain made haste away.

Petra slammed the door shut and turned with a sigh. It wasn’t even sport to tear her brother into pieces. He had already healed, but he remained on the floor in a puddle of pale blue flesh. She should be done with it and send him to the refinery to function as Ruana’s personal reagent farm.

She squatted before him, assessing her broken prey. Petra reached out a hand and he flinched. She slowly began to stroke his hair, as if she were soothing a skittish animal.

“Now, Finnyr, tell me whose poison it was, and don’t lie to me.”

“Coletta’Ryu’s.” Finnyr swallowed, trying to wash away his weakness. It didn’t work. “It was Coletta’Ryu’s poison.”

“What?” Petra tried to make sense of this. The Rok’Ryu? Coletta was nothing, worthless, weak and small.

And that would be just the sort of person who would resort to such devious and underhanded means. The person who could not stand in the pit. The person who would attach herself to one of the fiercest Dragon fighters while still offering something of her own to match the bloodthirstiness of her mate.

“I know it was her,” Finnyr insisted. “She is known for staying in her gardens, but allows no one else in there. Most assume it’s for her privacy, to hide her frailty. But I began to suspect something else when a servant went in and wound up dead.”

Petra glanced at the servant she had killed hours ago, the body now cold. She could entirely understand killing someone for being in the wrong space at the wrong time. Especially when that someone was worthless.

“The man was killed without any kind of wound. His chest, head, all intact,” Finnyr clarified.

It made too much sense.

“How have you neglected to tell me this?” Petra raged.

“I did not think it important.” Finnyr tried to move away but Petra’s hand tightened into a fist, yanking him into place with force.

“You did not think it important for me to know that the Ryu of Rok is a shadow-master, a potion-mongering coward?” Their noses nearly touched as she verbally assaulted him. “That she is far more despicable than even her mate?”

“I did not connect the facts! I did not see what was there! Nameless die all the time.”

“That is because you are an idiot.” Petra slammed Finnyr against the wall. “A useless idiot.”

“Petra—”

She gouged out his throat with a hand, blood pouring, bubbling as his words escaped through the open holes as gasping wheezes. Flesh strung from between her fingers like taffy, stretching until it snapped.

“You are useless.” Petra let the one wound heal, pinning him down with her knees on his arms and sitting on his chest. She leaned forward, dragging a claw around his eye, watching the liquid ooze out alongside the blood, as she whispered in his ear, “Useless.”

She scolded herself as much as him. They had both failed House Xin. He had failed them with his incompetence. She had failed them for depending on it. His punishment would be her claws. Her punishment would be the shame of flaying her brother in a back room, hidden from the world.

“Useless.”

She reared back and struck him.

“Useless. Useless. Useless!”

She would slice him, once for every Dragon that had died this night, and then another hundred times for every Oji of House Xin he had shamed. His magic began to falter in its ability to keep up healing between her relentless blows. It reduced his flesh into little more than liquefied meat. He tried to struggle against her but Petra pressed herself upon him until she began to hear bones snap. If he died tonight, he would not die with a face any would recognize. She would see that she never had to look upon the shame of Xin ever again.

Her claws stopped, mid swing. Petra tugged, blinking from her blood-frenzied trance. A hand was wrapped around her wrist.

“Sister, enough!”