7 Deadly Instincts (The Sinfire Chronicles Book 1)

Gray thought he would’ve been too tired for any kind of love with Rynn and Ames, but after a full cherry coya, he was wide awake. The drink helped but even better was Rynn’s kisses. She wanted to hear about everything, in great detail, especially the assassination attempt. Also, there was Gray’s new abilities that he’d finally unlocked but only because he had to. It made him a little uncomfortable that he hadn’t been able will the magic to come without his or anyone’s life being in danger.

But all Gray could think about was Pinch. Where was she?

And that’s when Rynn gave him the bad news. “No one knew. She’d vanished last night after the egg cookoff.”

Gray knew there was nothing he could do that night, and so he went back to Ruin Manor with his people. He hoped Pinch was okay. He was also starting to worry about how Tomi would handle the Underdwell. Settie was confident that the Underdwell would play a vital part in the Reckoning. How would the cat girl handle being underground for that long? And in such a strange place…

Back at Ruin Manor, Midj had a feast waiting for them—she fried up dough pockets stuffed with spicy meat and cheese. They were delicious on their own, but Midj had gotten a container or red gravy from Gorgonzola’s Counter and the pockets were even better after being dipped in the gravy.

They put out the spread on the big table they’d moved into the living room where they could enjoy the fire and the big windows showing the cold night outside. Yellow was there, so excited to see Gray again, and he got lots and lots of pets and kisses and hugs.

And treats, of course. Yellow loved treats.

Gray didn’t blame the dog one bit. After hours of not eating anything, it was wonderful to eat and drink and laugh with his friends. Lilian excused herself soon after she sat down. She was exhausted—totally spent. And it was clear that killing Grist had put a weight on her soul.

Gray knew how that felt. Still, it had been in self-defense. She had to see that.

With her gone, though, the weight she brought also left, and they were all soon laughing and eating again.

Even Settie stayed and ate a pocket, getting a bit of sauce on her face. She was drinking wine and seemed care-free for once.

She seemed so at ease with herself and them, Gray chanced a question. “What did Crewel say to you?”

Settie gave him an exasperated look. “And there you go, Grayson Fade, spoiling my good time with a question.” She smiled, though, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “He said he’d give Mrs. Quillswrath Grist’s body, but he wouldn’t give her much time to try and bring him back. He reiterated that the Testing was brutal and pitiless. He also warned me that if you had taken one step more, he would’ve thrown you out of First Field on your ass. He also knew you had given Lilian refreshments. But he was looking the other way. For now.”

“Why?” Gray asked. “Why the leniency when he arrested me for doing shit behind his back?”

Settie shook her head. “I don’t know. But we’ve done it, Gray. We have seven recruits on our squad. And not just any recruits, but the most powerful recruits First Field has ever seen. The best, the brightest, and the most beautiful!”

She was in a crazy mood.

Midj’s mouth dropped open. She was frying up another batch of pockets on the stove, but she nearly fell off the little stool she used for cooking. “Captain! You didn’t just say that, did you?”

“Yes, Midjara. Yes, I did.” Settie had an unexpected crooked grin on her face, stained with sauce. “And I meant you as well. Your pillows are certainly alluring. Should I be saying such thing, no. Have I drank a bit too much manafied wine? Again, yes.”

“That was your first yes, Captain.” Gray pointed at his face. “And you have a little something right there.”

Tomi sat with her eyes closed, and he’d thought she was sleeping, but without opening her eyes, she laughed. “I’m glad you said something, Gray. It was kinda driving me crazy.”

Settie took up a tattered napkin and dabbed at her face. “I am very pleased, my friends. Very pleased. Am I happy that people keep trying to kill you? No. Am I confident that we can win the Reckoning and hence, the entire Testing? Again, yes.”

Tomi snorted laughter. “That one was on purpose. Personally, I find it funny.”

Midj called from the stove. “For the record, I’m still a bit shocked. I’ve not really been called beautiful before, other than by my momsy and papa, but they don’t count. One of my older sisters insisted I was the ugliest goblin to ever live. Yeah, it was mean. But you all know how sisters are.”

Gray glanced around. He saw blank faces on all of the women there. “Who here has a sister?”

No one raised their hands at first—not Rynn, Ames, or Settie. And Gray didn’t have any kind of relatives, and the turnover rate at the Children of Order Temple where he’d grown up had been constant, so he’d not gotten close to anyone. Later, Carter had been a friend but not a brother.

Tomi raised her hand with some trepidation. “If stepsisters count. Then yes. But maybe they shouldn’t. Mine shouldn’t count. They were…let’s just say Blythe Donnaruma treated me better.”

Gray was surprised Tomi was talking about her past. Normally, she kept all of that to herself.

Settie made a face. “Blythe. I find it insufferable that she not only betrayed me, but she joined those fucking fae. I can call them that because Pinch isn’t here. And I can call her Pinch because she’s not here.”

“What is she?” Gray asked.

“In the Dice Market. Or that’s my guess. She likes Avarica’s. Was she there? No. Did I check? Again, yes.” She winked at Tomi.

For some reason the cat girl laughed, but then, with her love of history, she held the captain in such high regard.

“Why would she go someplace else?” Gray asked.

“Why indeed.” Settie sipped more wine. “Now that you are safe, we’ll search her out tomorrow and drag her back here.” She gestured at Gray with her wine glass. “Is your princess going to be all right?”

“Not my princess,” he said. “Just a girl I used to know. I think she’ll be fine.”

Ames sighed. “I see her walking, but she’s covered in flames. That mana mark will cover the entire left side of her face. Her pretty is gone, gone forever, and she’ll have to be pretty in other ways. But only if she wants to. She might not want to. She feeds on it.”

“On what?” Gray asked.

The quelling el’s eyes went far away. “On the despair in her core. You’ve seen it. It’s blood red because her core is a wound inside of her, a wound, putrefying. I’d cry for her if I wasn’t so scared of her. Not of who she is now but of what she could become. Can we talk about something else?”

Tomi snored suddenly, woke up, and then sat there with her eyes closed. “No, Ames, let’s talk about how our newest recruit is decaying right before our eyes. And eat it? I’d rather talk about that than my stepsisters. No.” The cat girl laughed suddenly. “No, let’s talk about how beautiful Midjara Munch is. She’s cute, sure, but what I like is how chesty she is.”

“Tomika Ka!” Midj slammed the pan down. “Will not be talking about my chest. Mother’s oven, you all are crazy. Well, I’m sorry you don’t have sisters, the real kind, or brothers at all. It can be a trial sure, but there’s something about family. You’ll meet the folks when we graduate. They’re coming in, with some of the brothers and sisters, an aunt maybe, probably an uncle, and definitely cousins. Cousins are fun.”

Rynn raised a hand. “I’d like to say something.”

Everyone turned to look at her.

Settie waved her glass at the elf girl. “You don’t need to be called on to talk, Rynnanatha. You can join in.”

Rynn winced. “But I have so much to say. I didn’t want to ramble.”

“Ramble all you want,” Tomi said. “I’ll sleep through all the boring parts. If you just mention Aunt Florence I’ll be out for hours. What would Aunt Florence about our little squad?”

“Well,” Rynn said. But before she started to ramble, she glanced around. “Can I let loose? I mean, it might be a while.”

Gray felt such love for his bonded right then. She was so uncertain of herself, so sweet, that no one would ever guess that she was such a brutal warrior. But for her, that seemed easier sometimes than conversation. Most of the time she was happy to sit quietly until she had something to say, and then, the floodgates would open.

“Go!” Settie said loudly.

“Okay, Captain. Why do they call you captain?” Rynn blushed. “No, we can’t ask questions, and you wouldn’t want to talk about that anyway. But I’m so happy Gray and Ames are back, you have no idea. I’m feeling so happy right now, and I feel strong, but I can’t stop thinking about how dangerous this has become. From the beginning, people wanted to stop us, but they failed. Now they’re getting desperate. I don’t want to stop but we have to be careful. I don’t want to lose anyone, not Pinch and not Lilian and definitely none of you. I’ve felt close to my family but for most of my life, there wasn’t anyone my age. Aunt Florence didn’t have children, and she lived close, but there were no cousins for me. I did have an uncle but he lived far away. The few times I played with my cousins was so fun. But I was alone a lot. But now?”

Rynn paused.

Tomi jumped in. “Don’t tell me the ramble is over. I’m just getting into it.”

Rynn brushed a tear off her cheek. “I’m not done. I told you it was long. It’s just, I feel so close to you all. It’s like I have sisters now. I’m so grateful to the captain for bringing us here.”

“And why does she have a rank?” Tomi asked again. This time, she had her eyes open. “Wait. If we’re sisters, what you and Ames are doing is definitely against the law…I mean…if we lived in a place where we had actual lives that is.

“Not finished yet,” Rynn protested. “And I’m not going to comment on Ames, though I love her and Gray. And I get to love them forever. I just want to say that we have to be careful, but we’re going to win. And I have faith that Lilian will find her way with us, and that Pinch won’t be so…”

“Pinch-y?” Midj suggested.

Tomi tilted her head. “I was going to say bitchy. But it’s about the same.”

Rynn wasn’t about to stop. “As for family, Aunt Florence would say—”

“Oh, here we go.” Tomi let her head fall back and she pretended to snore.

“Aunt Florence would say that family can be forged through time and attention. And that’s what we’ve done over the past few months. We’ve forged a family.”

“I was a captain,” Settie said softly.

Everyone went quiet.

Gray thought he could hear his own heartbeat in the quiet.

Settie poured more of the manafied wine into her glass. “I wasn’t just a captain, no. I was the captain, the captain of the guard in Pride City, working for the Supera family. This was before the Wrath Tower fell. It was mostly symbolic, you have to understand. This was when the city around the Weeping Well was known as Septua, and it was a grand place, beautiful if you must know.”

They were all hanging on her every word.

Settie pointed her glass to the room around them. “Back then this was Sunreach Manor, not Ruin Manor. You wound me, precious Gray, giving my home such a name.”

“I’m sorry.” He was afraid even those three simple words would prevent her from continuing. It was so rare for her to be so open.

She shrugged. “It was a different world back then. A different time. You children haven’t even heard of angel fruit, have you?”

They all blinked. It was clear that no one did—not Tomi, who loved history, and not Ames, whose father had delved into forbidden magic.

“Angel fruit stored mana. Of course, it wasn’t fruit at all, but golden circlets, crowns or halos or what have you. The angel fruit was for when the world lost mana. There were angels in Alastria, but I won’t speak of that. I swore an oath. I’ve said too much.”

She had at that. Gray had always wondered how the dragons of Alastria had mana even though their lands were in the middle of Midmere, in the Null Breaks. It seemed that angels were the secret. He kept quiet.

Settie sipped more wine. “What were we talking about?”

All the women looked at Gray. Even Tomi was keeping quiet.

“You were talking about your time as the captain of the guard.”

“Yes,” Settie said, slurring her voice a little. “There weren’t demons, but we had our criminal element. Cambion orcs raiding houses, elves running shady deals, and each of the families that made up the Septua Tribunal, vying for control and power. Collecting angel fruit. My Alysha—she…she was special to me. My second in command, a grand lieutenant in the guard, my Alysha. My Alysha. My Alysha.”

The only sound was the fire popping even as the flames were dying. Yellow made a little noise in his sleep, curled up at Gray’s feet.

Settie wasn’t in the room with them, not really, not by that faraway look in her eyes. She was away, in the past, thinking about what had to be one of her long-lost loves.

“It was Alysha that said a new family could rise…that if someone, anyone really, won the Rothrock family’s angel fruit, in their vault at the top of the Wrath Tower, well, that much mana? Brog Rothrock wouldn’t…he couldn’t…he wouldn’t have the power. Maybe not kill him, but…his death would make things easier. Another threesome, but no love, no sex, nothing but pain. It was Bellichor—an assassin. A demon. I think he was a demon, a regalia. He killed Alysah. He didn’t kill me. The Rothrocks died and blah, blah, blah.”

She set her wine down.

And her eyes turned hard. She aimed them at Rynn. “Families die. Your fucking Aunt Florence didn’t talk about that—”

Rynn cut her off. “She did. Aunt Florence said that death—”

“Let me finish!” Settie shouted.

“No.” Rynn didn’t back down. “Things die, captain. Families die. Friends die. Pets die. Everyone at this table will die one day. Even you. Even after your long, long life. It makes these few moments we have so precious. That is what my fucking Aunt Florence when she died. As I held her in my arms.”

Gray didn’t know that Aunt Florence was dead. Rynn had not told him that.

“Me? Dead? Good.” Settie’s lips had disappeared in a grimace “And the pain will die with me. If I lost…if I lost any of you…maybe not Lilian or Pinch, for they are troublesome. And like me in some horrible ways that I dare not ponder for too long. No. You five. If I lost any one of you five, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t. I would die too. And you, precious Gray. My most precious Gray.”

And then the tears came.

Of course they did. She was far more drunk than Gray had first thought. It broke his heart to see her that way.

He had a memory of Old Agatha, after too much grog one night, who wept about lost loves and lost children. But then, drunks were just as likely to throw punches as to give hugs.

Settie got up and went to him, and crawled into his lap.

He held her as she wept. But it was only for five seconds, maybe six, when she pushed herself away from him.

She staggered off, her core alive with any number of resonances.

“Questions. Fucking questions. Answering them kills parts of me that I want dead. I must go to bed. Can someone…can someone help me? For the steps seem so very treacherous to me at this point.”

Rynn leapt up, as did Ames, and the pair helped Settie stagger up the staircase.

Tomi let out a breath. “She was there, Gray. We don’t have the whole story, but she was at the Wrath Tower on the Night of Sorrow and Wrath.”

“She wasn’t just there,” Gray whispered. “I think she helped destroy it with Alysha and Bellichor. It didn’t go well.”

Midj sighed. “Maybe talking about my chest wasn’t so bad after all that.”

That made Tomi laugh until she fell on the floor.

And Gray fell with her, laughing himself.

He’d found a family. It wasn’t perfect. But he’d found a family, maybe, probably, definitely, the first one of his life.

He just had to keep it together.

Tomorrow, he would go search for Pamalee Thornpinch. It took him all day, but he finally found her in the most likely of unlikeliest places.

And the head of the Avarica family was with her.