Episode 6:Three Voices
759 Words
Three Voices
I heard sounds coming from them before I saw them at the boots on stone looking all relaxed and stuff. Jayden was already gone, slipped out some other way, leaving me alone in a lamplit study with a door left open.
The first man.. though it was broad through the shoulders, dark hair alongside a scar cutting through one eyebrow that I assume was given to him out of a fight i guess. He looked at me weirdly.
“So this is her,” he said, to the woman behind him, not to me.
“Norbit.” She said out loud but calmly. He moved across the room before I could decide whether backing away would look like weakness or sense. “My pack is dying,” he said. “A generational sickness has taken three of my cousins and it’s coming for my sister next. There are stories about blood like yours. I need to know if they’re true.”
“That’s not an introduction. That’s a diagnosis dear.”
“I don’t have time for introductions .”
A third voice interrupted the conversation from the doorway, and it was hella quiet, which somehow made it land harder.
“You’re wasting time being gentle with her, Norbit.”
Fergo didn’t move past the threshold. Lean was pale-eyed and dressed in formal attire. His eyes found mine and stayed there. It felt like he was assessing me.
“There are elders who believe a shift like the one she produced today isn’t a gift,” he said. “It’s a warning. I was sent to determine which quickly. Before any issues arise.”
“Okay?? What if it’s a warning?” I asked, though I already knew I wouldn’t like the answer.
“Then it’s my responsibility to make sure it doesn’t grow into something worse.”
Norbit’s mouth opened a bit. “She’s not deciding anything tonight, and neither are you.”
Fergo ignored him, moving across the room toward me except he stopped a full pace short, closer than comfortable, close enough to study my face properly.
“Turn toward the light,” he said.
I pushed back my neck and made a funny look that had a mixture of irritation in it. “Excuse me?”
“Humor me.”
I didn’t move. My inner mind told me refusing him was more dangerous than complying, I hated that instinct for being right as often as it was.
I turned my face toward the lamp.
Whatever he saw there stopped him in. “Say that again,” he said, his voice low.
“Say what?”
“Your name is silly. I need all of it.. if you have more than one.”
“I told you. I don’t have one beyond Anna. Nobody’s ever..”
“Bullshit.”
“Voss never gave you a family name?” Fergo’s voice had changed entirely, “In six years. Not once.”
“No.”
He looked at Norbit, some silent exchange passing between them, then back at my face like he was checking it for something. “What,” I said, when neither of them spoke. “What is it?”
Fergo didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice sounded funny. It wasn’t like before when he was threatening
“I came here to determine whether you were a risk worth eliminating,” he said slowly. “I didn’t come here expecting to recognize you.”
The room became quiet.
“Recognize me from what?”
He didn’t answer that either. Instead he stepped back, while putting up a distance between us before looking at the woman by the door with a sense of urgency.
“Get word to the Council,” he said. “Tonight. Tell them the assessment isn’t a formality anymore.”
“I knew this would be a waste of time.” He blurted out.
“Tell me what you saw,” I said, louder than I intended to. “You don’t get to look at me like that and walk away without…”
“I’m not walking away.” Fergo’s eyes met mine, “I’m going to go find out if I’m right. So if I am, girl, every single person in this building tonight has badly underestimated what’s standing in this room.”
He was gone before I could ask anything else, footsteps retreating down the stairs faster than they’d arrived.
This time , neither Norbit nor the
woman by the door moved to stop him.
- Writer
