đŚALTHEA
She patted more powder on my face in an attempt to hide the greyness of my skin. Then she smudged paste over the blossoming bruise on my collarbone before correcting it with more powder.
The powder coated my lungs and I coughed harshly, my throat burning from his grip last night.
Painful soreness pulsed through my core.
Instinctively, I clasped my legs tighter together.
If Yana noticed, she didn't show it. But then again, she was the one covering the bruises for the hundredth time. Vargans weren't allowed to comment on the things they saw. It would mean a journey to the silver mines for them.
Yana would be dead in six months. At most.
She continued her usual ministrations without breaking stride or focus. Her silver markings shimmered when they caught the rays of morning. I concentrated on the swirls adorning her olive skin, trying to escape reality for just a moment. I let my mind wander away from last night, from the farewell dinner for Draven.
"They are pretty," I whispered, so low only she could hear. As if I hadn't seen them every day since childhood.
"Thank you, mistress," she replied, taking the pale strands of my hair for styling. Her face remained carefully neutral.
If anyone else had been around, I would have been reported to Draven. It would earn me another night of torment.
The silver markings that every Vargan bore were the reason they were impervious to silver while the rest of us were not. It had been the work of the Witch Luna of Silverfang. She had etched the stain upon their skin. She had made the impossible possible.
She had made werewolves unaffected by silver.
Which meant the marks, as intriguing as they were, would never be called pretty. It was heresy.
I wondered what she would think now, knowing that her people were forced into silver mines because their skin did not corrode at the touch of silver.
What would she think of the Silvermoth stealing her people to the Moon-knows-where?
"Mistress," Yana's voice peeled back the haze that I had used to shroud my mind.
"It has been two months since you bled," she stated, still working my hair into the severe elegant knots atop my head that Draven liked.
My heart sprang into a sprint. Yana's pale green eyes assessed me through the mirror. "You think..."
"You are with child. I can sense the child within," she told me, unblinking.
My skin prickled with horror, trying to keep myself from spiraling into psychosis from her pronouncement. If it were any other person I would doubt, but Yana knew my body more than I knew it myself.
She had predicted my ailments since I was a child. She knew weeks before I started bleeding when I would start. She knew when I had my first time with Draven.
The Vargans had a keen sense of smell. They could catch the scent of bloodlines.
This timeâas I broke into a cold sweatâwas no different.
I was pregnant with Draven's child.
"What are you two talking about?"
My head snapped up as I took in the intruder through her reflection in the mirror. Her brow arched in question but her eyes narrowed to slits.
I schooled my features to neutrality. "The dinner," I replied smoothly.
Yana bowed her head, burrowing herself back into the work she had been assigned to do, not meeting Circe's eyes.
"Hmm," she hummed, unconvinced. She sauntered into the room, her eyes never once straying from mine through the mirror. She gestured for Yana to move, taking her place behind me, her red lips curling into a smile. "Hound, you did impeccable work." She traced a finger over my collarbone. "You can barely see the bruises."
I stifled the rise of bile in my throat.
"Thank you, Luna," Yana replied, still not meeting her eyes.
"You possess a mastery at concealment." She traced a finger over my bruised throat, the purple reduced to fading hues under the makeup.
I swallowed despite myself, her eyes glinting like jewels.
"It makes me wonder what else you could conceal." The threat was clear.
Yana paled, bending lower. "I have no secrets, Luna."
Circe's eye twitched and that was all the warning we got before she spun, claws elongating, swiping in a sideways arc.
I shot up faster than I had ever dared to show, my arm snapping forward to intercept the attack on Yana.
Instead, just inches from Yana's face, Circe's claws sank into my open palm.
Her eyes flared wide, shifting to meet mine. "When did you learn to move like that?"
I caught myself, laughing through the grimace. "You caught me. I only wanted to announce it as a surprise during the dinner. What better way to tell them all the good news?" I forced the words past the painful lump in my throat, my grin stretched painfully wide. "I am pregnant."
Something in her gaze simmered, hot. But the familiar venomous smile split her lips. "You should have told me. I know how to keep a secret." She leaned closer. "The mistress is pregnant before the Luna." The undertone was unmistakable.
But my smile did not falter as she retracted her claws from my bleeding palm and wiped her hand on Yana's bone-white face, streaking her cheek with my blood.
"You will announce it at dinner?" she asked, more like a dare.
"Yes," I replied. "That was the plan. UnlessâŚ" I let the word linger in the air, sweltering with tension between us. "You have any objections."
Her lip curled back, just slightly. "Why would I?" She put her hand over my belly and I bit back a scream. "It is Draven's first child." Her hand tightened over it. "It is mine as much as yours."
If I had dared to eat before this fiasco, she would have been drenched in vomit. My skin crawled with disgust. "Of course, Luna."
She rubbed circles into it. "Sister," she corrected.
"Of course, sister." I accepted, miraculously not gritting my teeth.
She rubbed circles into my stomach, fixated, and I pretended I did not see the manic gleam in her eyes.
This would not end well for me. It never did.