Page 125 of Disillusioned (A Lay of Ruinous Reign #2)

“Enough,” Garin said softly, the plea rumbling from deep within his chest, and she wondered if he felt what she did, too.

If he’d witnessed her lifetimes unfurling like the petals of spring—the slow, silent churn of summer into autumn—the ghosts of her reluctant reverie dancing with the earthbound ghouls of his.

She tried to yank her hand from him, but Garin held it firm in an iron cradle, his eyes otherworldly garnets glowing in the moonlight. Blood and saliva dripped from his ash-stained mouth as he knelt before her.

He said nothing, pressing his lips to the back of her hand.

Why would he do this? What had brought him here? Why had he gone to Montfort-sur-Meu? Just to reaffirm what the scouts had been reporting to her father?

Henri had witnessed Garin in his wrath. But if he hadn’t, Henri and his men would’ve been three more bodies to the bloodbath.

“I am not myself tonight,” he whispered pleadingly against her skin.

An echo of his words at The Fool's Folly, yet there was no threat behind them.

“I put you in danger, risked your life. I was not thinking. I should have known your disobedience would win out in the end. You are my thrall, after all.”

Lilac wanted to strangle him—would’ve struck him, had she not decided Yanna’s heavy slap had been enough. “My disobedience saved your life.”

“As if yours wouldn’t have been made uncomplicated by mine in the first place.”

Jaw set, Lilac crouched and leveled her tearful, intent gaze with his.

“You have never been more yourself,” she ground out.

“I would’ve followed you into that fire, with or without your spell over me.

Your command won’t always best my will, I can promise you that for as long as I live.

” Ignoring the rage that shadowed his desperation, she swept the hair from his forehead, along with the layer of sweat that mixed with the soot there.

There were no words cutting enough to express the sickening swell of relief and anger at finding him in time.

The only thing Lilac could bring herself to say gripped her throat in an unrelenting vice of terror. “Garin,” she began. “I?—”

“Found some!” Mryrddin thundered from over her shoulder.

She released Garin quickly, wiping at her eyes to see the warlock trudging up the hill—an enormous ball of something dark and glittering hovering above him.

Myrddin cocked his head at the neighboring farms down the hill behind him. “Stole it from the troughs!”

It was water. A giant, spinning sphere of it, larger than the house itself.

Lilac hurriedly hoisted Garin to his feet, tugging him away from the porch. They watched, stunned and open-mouthed, as Myrddin twisted his outstretched hand, then extended it. The ball of water floated ahead and fell upon the house, immersing them in an enormous cloud of smoke and steam.

Garin snaked an arm around Lilac’s waist and held her to him—just before a wall of water slammed into them. They remained upright, but she felt him teeter and dig his heels into the mud.

“Myrddin,” he sputtered. “When I get my hands on you!” He peeled her off, gripping her arms and assessing her body, forcing gentleness into his voice when she could tell he wanted to scream. “Look at me. Are you hurt?”

She shook her head vehemently, not quite able to speak.

She was unscathed, too busy scanning Garin herself.

There was a stream of dark red flowing from his intact pant leg with the last of the drainage.

His shirt was in pieces, whatever was left of it hanging halfway off his torso—a jarring reminder of the rippled leanness his tunics often masked, his skin smooth beneath the ash and stain.

All the burns he’d sustained—she’d seen his leg on fire in the house, though he hadn’t seemed to notice—had already healed over.

The leaking, half-visible wound on his right bicep and the one on his left thigh, however, had not.

Lilac glanced down at her soaked gown, trailing her fingers along her bosom and exhaling in relief. Her gaze dipped to the blood-tainted water. Then, at his fangs glistening temptingly in the moonlight. “Are you?”

He tore his eyes away from her throat, sliding them to Myrddin. “You idiot. What was that for? The house was already gone!”

“We couldn’t leave a fire that size burning at the top of the hill.

I glamored your parents’ property the moment we’d arrived, but it’s not the same as Lorietta’s wards.

Onlookers can still smell smoke billowing from your chimney.

It’s a wonder their guards aren’t storming up here.

” Myrddin dusted his hands and placed them on his hips, surveying the damage.

The entire second floor of the house had fallen in on itself.

All that was left was a grim mess of wet cinder and charred brick of the crumbling chimney.

“I must admit, I do envy those water mages.”

“There’s a creek just there.” Garin cocked his thumb over his shoulder at the strip of grass before the field met the trees. “You didn’t have to drop twenty troughs on it.”

“You didn’t have to run into a burning house.”

Garin’s rebuttal was cut off by a heart-rending screech.

Yanna was crouched over by the haystack near Sable and Jeanare’s heads, chunks of hay flung into the air as her arms flailed. “Gwendal? Gwendal ? ”

Myrddin was already at her side, heaving unsuccessfully against the large bundle. A burst of purple sparks short from his palms on the third go, causing part of the haystack to burst into flames. Myrddin cussed and hurriedly batted them out.

Garin began to stalk across the path.

Matching his stride, Lilac stared at the red dripping from his soaked pant leg as they approached Yanna. Garin didn’t seem the least bit alarmed if he noticed. “What did you do?”

“I tried to help him,” Garin replied stiffly. “One of your men.”

When they approached, Lilac shouldered the hay bale; it was heavy, but nothing that would crush her. Yanna fell upon the man laying in the dirt as Lilac gave a final shove, the hay bale rolling off and bounding to a stop at Jeanare’s side.

Garin immediately went to Gwendal’s head, shifting his hands beneath the guard’s shoulders and hooking them under his armpits. He gingerly tugged him out from the shadow of the other haystacks and nudged Myrddin aside, placing a hand against the guard’s neck.

Gwendal was a broad-shouldered fellow, strikingly handsome from what Lilac could see of his face, though he was barely recognizable with all the blood leaking from his mouth.

It was splattered over his cheeks and drying in his thick black beard.

His helmet had fallen off or had been removed at some point, eyes half open and bleary; she could only tell he was still breathing by the faint click behind his breastplate.

“Give him space,” Garin demanded, and she and Myrddin went to crouch at Gwendal’s head, leaving Yanna to sob at his feet.

Garin’s fingers flew across the guard’s shoulders, first his left, then his right, breathing heavily.

He moved down Gwendal’s arms next, loosening strap after strap, then shifted to his legs, unfastening the remaining belts beside Yanna.

“Remove his gorget and pauldrons. And his gauntlets.”

Lilac’s muscles twitched as she glanced up at him in urgency, hands hovering hesitantly over the metal piece at Gwendal’s throat.

“Do you need a primer in everything?” Yanna sighed, rubbing her nose. “That neck piece, just there.”

“And his shoulders and hands,” Garin instructed. “Trust yourself.” Just like that, Lilac began to remove the plates expertly—even if she’d never done it or seen it done a day in her life. “That’s it now. Well done. ”

Yanna turned her head and leaned away from Garin. “Do you control her?”

“He merely advises me,” said Lilac.

“That is a gross underestimation.” Annoyance colored Garin’s tone. “It is temporary— will be temporary.”

“He guides her,” Myrddin interjected, coughing into his robe. “And the queen just so happens to find his advice extremely persuasive.”

“You aren’t helping,” Garin said between his teeth, plucking Gwendal’s leg plates off.

“I tried to save him.” In the middle of removing the last plate, Garin exhaled sharply.

Yanna gasped in horror—a pool of thick blood spilled out of the cavity of his armor onto the grass.

“He was among those wounded in the skirmish. I heard him calling your name,” he said to Yanna.

“It appears he’s been shot or stabbed in the inner groin.

I’m afraid he won’t make it.” Garin bowed his head and held out his hand to her. “I’m sorry.”

Yanna stared at Gwendal, silent tears catching the moonlight as they clung to her lashes, plopping onto her reddening cheeks. She didn’t take Garin’s apology, nor his palm. “Whatever it takes.”

Garin’s brow knitted. “What?”

“Save him,” Yanna snapped, her softened gaze for her lover turning cold once it landed on Garin, then Lilac and Myrddin. “Whatever. It. Takes.”

“I cannot. Lilac is already my thrall. I won’t risk any more complications with sharing my blood and what its magic might bring.”

“But you can,” Lilac insisted, thinking back to his explanation on the way to find the Midraal Market. It felt like eons, another lifetime ago. “You can only have one thrall at a time.”

“Yes, by the typical workings of Sanguine law. But you know as well as I that nothing about our bond has been typical.”

“Fine. So sire him,” said Yanna.

“It is not that simple.” Garin passed a hand over his face. He glanced over his shoulder, then back at Gwendal. “I sired my first fledgling the night I brought Lilac to the Mine. I’ve barely been there to govern her, much less my own coven. I haven’t been back in weeks.”