When Nelle Wychthorn was forced to sign herself away in marriage, she should have read the contract's fine print. Because she signs not with ink, but with blood. And that changes everything.
Season 1 'Of Crows and Thorns'
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Fiery Nelle, the isolat...
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Don't look.
Don't look.
Don't fucking look—
Ah, godsdammit!
That fucking awareness of her coated my skin with a prickle of goosebumps; constantly whispering in my ear—Where is she where is she where is she...
From the first moment, Wychthorn and I had encountered one another as children at a gathering of Houses, I felt her tugging at me to shift my trajectory to orbit a new celestial body.
I hadn't understood it then and I sure as fuck didn't understand it now.
As if the same thing that pulled at me pulled at her too, Wychthorn shifted, turning slowly until her gaze collided with mine. Her eyes were the color of sheets of glacial ice that had been there for millions of years. Cold. Unaffected. But beneath the ice was fire and brimstone. All for me.
Her smile melted from her mouth.
I'd earlier noticed that she'd coated her mouth in pale pink lip gloss.
Was this prettiness for me or someone else?
She despised me.
Definitely for someone else, but who?
A cold feeling settled in my gut.
Surely not one of the Pelans.
Even if I hadn't noticed the fucking Pelan brothers' attention slithering all over her slight form, the spike of lust filling the room would have been a dead giveaway. I wanted to annihilate them all.
She was mine.
But there'd been no one here she'd singled out. And those piss-scared brothers were put off by the haughty way she carried herself and by the wraith-wolf snarling at anyone daring to come close. And me. No one would dare cross me.
Wychthorn's gaze locked with mine, turned half-feral.
She unwound her bracelet, leaving a loop at the back of her wrist to swing the end of long length, flicking it upwards to snatch the tail-end in her fingers. She repeated the motion, releasing the length to swing it back and forth like a twitch of a cat's tail. I wasn't sure if she even knew she did it. And always when that temper of hers flared. When she got really fired up, she'd pause, and her fingers would work through every single bead, treating it like a rosary.
Wychthorn's scowl deepened. The hate-glare she gifted me, like if she had her way, I'd implode into a raging inferno of white-hot fire, my bones turning to cinder until there'd be nothing but a handful of ash—
