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Chapter twenty-three

H e carried me out of the hot spring minutes later. When he separated my arms from around his neck and set me down beside my bag and dry clothing, his reluctance to meet my gaze churned my stomach.

“Why are you wearing that vial around your neck?” In an effort to distract myself from the sharp twinge of his averted eyes, I looked at the emerald liquid swirling with eerie life inside the confines of its small glass container.

Until he turned his back to me and pulled the shirt he’d been wearing over his head.

“I’ve seen it twice now. You’ve been wearing it with your rings since we left this morning. ”

“It’s nothing.” He tucked it beneath his collar.

“Secrets.” I tsked. “You know, they might catch up with you one day.”

He briefly winced but offered no response.

For hours, he said nothing. We rode in excruciating silence, and even though I wore fresh undergarments, my green wool cap was fastened cozily on my head, and he wrapped himself around me, I felt cold.

Our black mare had incredible endurance, but even she had to stop and rest a few times. The steep and jagged edges of the Wymaran mountains were treacherous and took her longer to traverse. When she stopped, we ate the bread, jerky, cheese, and berries we’d packed.

We followed this pattern until dusk, when finally, we reached the outskirts of a tiny village consisting of a single tavern, an inn, and a few homes.

From afar, it reminded me of how the small village outside of Tovick might have looked before the Insidions ransacked it.

Whispers of smoke slithered out of the few chimney stacks, and though the dull, shadowy light of dawn had yet to disappear, candles cast a calm glow in many of the windows.

We dismounted our mare to search for a stable to rest and shelter her from the cold.

There was a thin cluster of evergreen trees around the village—more trees than we’d seen all day in the rocky, mountainous tundra.

The map Finn had given me for my birthday was tucked away in my bag, but I had Nyrida’s landscapes memorized enough to know the return of trees meant we were drawing closer to Brinnea and the sea.

I felt compelled to give our mare gentle strokes of thanks along her sleek black neck before retiring her for the evening. Her nearly onyx eyes seemed to smile back at me.

When I turned to follow Gavin toward the village, I was stopped by something hard. His arm—a steel cage that curled around and pulled me into his side.

“Don’t move.”

Turning my head as little as possible, I followed his eyes and choked in a horrified breath. I saw the ugliest creature I had ever seen.

Just north of the village, at the edge of the tree line, stood an ebony beast with iridescent scales, razor-sharp teeth—a hundred of them, at least—and four feet with blades for claws. Twice the size of any bear or wolf.

“What is that?” I breathed, my fingers tightening on the sleeve of his jacket. The beast had a head like a boar with two gaping holes for a nose and steam for breath. It had yet to see us, too busy feasting on a doe .

“One of Molochai’s. I don’t know what he calls them.” He shifted, and I looked down upon hearing the faint swish of metal. With his free arm, he unsheathed a long, curved blade. A scimitar, I remembered one of my friends had called it. “I don’t typically bother with introductions.”

I shuddered. “I thought they didn’t come this far north.”

With the arm that shielded me, he withdrew another weapon from inside his worn leather jacket—the one he usually wore, though I’d never given any thought to the things he stored beneath it. Nausea churned my stomach when I saw the second weapon. The sheer brutality of it.

The hatchet blade was connected to a well-worn wooden handle. I had watched Phillip use something similar once to cut up our cow after she died. It was a meat cleaver. A butcher’s knife.

“Looks like they do now.” He tilted his head down toward me but kept his eyes on the beast. “Be quiet and stay out of sight.”

“Wait!” I hissed. “Gavin—”

But he broke into an agile sprint, propelled by sheer power. He ran right toward the monster with lethal quiet, only making enough noise to draw its attention—a shrill, sharp whistle—after curving his path to draw it farther away from me.

Sinister eyes with a translucent third eyelid peered up from its prey.

The creature let out a series of hair-raising, menacing clicks and lunged at Gavin.

I had to cover my mouth to keep from screaming.

Teeth bared, my savage teacher snarled right back—a beast in his own right—and dodged the creature’s claws once, twice, again.

I had seen him kill two people—the woman in the temple and the red-haired rapist. Both had been quick. But I could see from his menacing sneer and the vicious light in his eyes that for him, sparring with this monstrous devil was fun .

Gavin moved with feline grace despite his large, imposing build. One swipe of his scimitar, and the beast was bleeding from its chest. Its bark of pain was sharp and dissonant. Scattered—as if more than one soul cried out from within.

The strike was not enough, however. Whatever armor lay beneath the scales on its chest and back looked too thick to penetrate deeply enough to kill.

Panic struck my core when I realized his blades might not be enough.

The beast lunged again, layers of teeth gnashing—more unhinged now in its pain.

Gavin played with the beast, exhausting it as its blood trickled out, slowly depleting its endurance.

Three more swings of his scimitar, and it was bleeding more.

But then, its clicking intensified. It got closer. Too close.

With one swipe of three razor-sharp claws, blood spattered off Gavin’s chest, and he was thrust onto his back.

I barely registered his devious grin as he hit the ground, snarling through the pain like he fed off it.

The rational part of me saw him grip his butcher’s knife, saw how he was ready to wield it the moment the beast was off guard—thinking it had won.

That rational part of me knew he’d planned it.

I knew, because he’d taught me how to take a bearable blow, to bide my time in order to seal a kill shot.

And three deep slices across the chest was evidently, to him, bearable.

But a spine-chilling scream erupted from my throat at the sight of his blood. Some ancient instinct obliterated my sense, as if he and I were tethered together by some divine bond, and I, too, had been carved by the hand of that beast.

All I could see was it raising its claws over him once more.

Not him. Never him.

A cry of defiance tore out of my throat, and I was back inside my wheel.

The same dread I’d felt the first time tried to stun me, trap me in the darkness, but I didn’t let it.

I fought free of the binding shadows and dropped, landing squarely on the silver disc.

The splintering shock of impact wasn’t as sharp in my ankles as before, and I focused solely on my objective: obliterate the beast to save him.

Not healing, but destruction, which was easier.

I could be more reckless, couldn’t I? There were more powers to choose from.

The wheel spun around me, and I held fast, reaching for something familiar until I grasped a spoke and felt something potent and powerful in the palm of my right hand.

Something we had just shared, him and I.

Cerulean blue.

The same touch of the sea god’s power I’d felt in that hot spring came rushing back.

I thrust my arm forward as if Rainar himself was reaching through me.

Water—whatever was left of it in my pores and the air around me—surged from my fingers at inhuman speeds.

Lethal, crystalline ropes that wrapped around the neck of that evil beast and squeezed.

The water’s pull nearly brought me to my knees. I needed only to think it into being, and one infinite rope of water curled around the creature’s jaw, into its mouth, and down its throat.

Its cries of pain were silenced. Its razor-clawed hands swiped through the air in a desperate attempt to grip the force constricting it. But it could not grip water.

It seemed only I could do that.

So I silenced that beast for the blood it had drawn from the man who held my heart.

Gavin made the final kill with one swipe of his butcher’s knife across the creature’s throat. It arched its back as if to howl, but it drowned instead. In water and blood.

The beast’s body crumpled to the ground. Gavin dodged it as it fell.

Then, he looked up at me.

“Did I not tell you to be quiet ?” he panted through gritted teeth. But I saw how his mouth twitched as he fought a proud grin. As his trainee, I deserved a scolding for disobeying orders. As his queen—and maybe this once, his partner in combat—I deserved his admiration.

With a wince and a grunt, he was on his feet beside the dead creature. He hovered over the beast and cocked his head, assessing the damage. He shoved its scaly ribs with his boot and chuckled. The water it had drowned in was still pooled in its gaping maw.

“Brilliant,” he muttered, smirking at me. “ You are brilliant.”

But I didn’t want to hear the compliment. No, my eyes burned hot at the sight of the three deep gashes in his shirt and through his shirt, across his hard, rippling torso. Blood. So much blood dripped through the slits of cloth. Not enough to kill or even debilitate, but horrifying nonetheless.

“I have to admit… Rainar, God of the Sea.” He bent down with a slight cringe to wipe the creature’s guts off his scimitar onto the dirt. “Not what I expected out of you next.”

My eyes narrowed, and I was too heated and scared to ask which of the gods’ power he had expected.