Page 73 of Wolf of Ashes
He taps his chest as if to remind me he knows what I’m feeling, and the way his lips tug up tell me he knows what a big deal having a ‘home’ would be to me.
But the topic of my thoughts isn’t what he comments on.
“Jonah knows what I am.”
I pull up sharply, glad there wasn’t a human walking close behind me.
Diavolo continues. “I’m sure he recognized the crown.”
I grimace. I thought that might have been the case when Jonah’s focus had lingered on the ring.
I want to poke holes in Diavolo’s theory, mostly because I don’t want it to be true.
“Well, then why didn’t he speak up when Vanguard called you an en-en-en-en…” My forehead puckers. “How many ‘en’s are there?”
“Two,” the keeper says. “En-en-rah. Like there are two ‘na’s in ‘banana.’”
“Right. So why would Jonah go along with that? Unless they were playing…” I sigh as I roll my eyes at myself. “Well, of course, they were playing games with us.”
Diavolo shrugs. “With which I played along.”
Still, I persevere. “But how could he recognize your crown? Most supernaturals don’t know the keepers of magic exist, let alone about the crown you wear. That knowledge has been lost over time.”
Diavolo gives me a suddenly dark glare.
“Yes, yes,” I say. “Iknew. But that’s because my mother told me.”
“Who told her?”
My response is slower this time, because now that I think about, my knowledge is a little sketchy. “She said it was passed from mother to daughter. I assume her mother told her.”
“Who was her mother?”
“I don’t…” My forehead puckers. “Mom called her ‘Mother.’”
“So you don’t know your grandmother’s name.”
I sense Diavolo’s frustration and it only accentuates my own.
“No, I don’t know my grandmother’s name or my mother’s name, and yes, my mother was an expert at evading questions, and no, I wasn’t old enough when she died to have found a way to wrangle the truth out of her. But at least I’m old enough now to know when to demand answers.”
I glare at the keeper and the panthers oblige me by latching on to my mood and growling up at him too. “What is Jonah?”
“A creature that shouldn’t exist.”
“Which is?”
The keeper gives a heavy exhale. The color of his eyes flickers dangerously between brown and blue and even, unsettlingly, a fiery bronze that I haven’t seen before.
It wouldn’t be a good idea for him to transform in front of all these passersby, even if I’m a little curious about what his bronze-eyed form might be.
It’s his reply that makes me miss a step.
“Jonah is a jotunn.”
Mom may never have mentioned an enenra, but she sure as fuck mentioned the jotunns—or ‘jotnar,’ as she referred to their race.
My heart is as cold as ice. “The jotnar existed in the time of the old gods. Some of them walked beside the gods. Others fought against them. They all died in the old wars, along with the old gods. There’s no fucking way one of them is still alive.”
