Page 50

He looked down at me, brow furrowed. “No.”

When he reached to take my bag from me, I dodged him and hurried down the stairs.

Either he could give in to whatever this was between us or I would carry my own damn bag.

I had been too concerned about Gavin’s wounds last night to pay much attention to the inn. It was clean and humble, similar to Damond’s place, only smaller. The innkeeper was nowhere to be found. I wondered if he’d heard us— Gavin —coming and hid.

We requested sausages and eggs from the tiny kitchen beside the foyer and ate together in silence.

To my left, across from the innkeeper’s desk, I saw a mirror that had been fully intact the day before.

Today, it was broken. Shattered, like it had been punched.

I glanced down at the blood staining the cloth bandage around Gavin’s knuckles.

I’d noticed his hand was wrapped this morning but not last night, which meant he’d done it between the time he rejected my kiss and I woke up.

My gaze volleyed between him and the destruction. “Are you going to pay for that?”

His jaw pulsed. But he kept his eyes on me while he fished a small bag of coins out of his pocket and dropped it on the innkeeper’s desk with a deliberate thump.

I let his gaze follow me to the kitchen, where I dropped off my breakfast plate, thanked the sweet elderly cook, and walked out the door .

He was cold and distant the majority of the day, but so was I. What we had become—roaring flames one moment, steel ice the next—was not sustainable. I didn’t know much about friendships. Hadn’t had many of them. But I knew that much.

After we mounted the horse, I kept my wolf pelts on as a barrier between his chest and my back.

As we rode southwest through thickening foliage, I remained silent and focused on the world around me.

Staggering white pines, leafless maples, and mountain ash.

The terrain was much like western Wymara—rocky, treacherous, and breathtaking.

If we were only a day from Brinnea on horseback, then we were nearing the ocean.

I had never seen the ocean. Gemma had been to Nyrida’s western shores off the coast of Avendrel a time or two, but not as far east as Brinnea.

She’d told me of a southern beach town called Peradine where, in the summer, the women only wore thin strips of colorful cloth and went everywhere barefoot.

They were eager and willing to bed when men came to visit.

Thus, it was a frequented spot by bachelors from the Caves when not on duty.

I was too afraid to ask how often Elias visited there.

“Are you alright?” His deep voice, rich with concern, washed over me. Startling me, for we hadn’t spoken in hours.

“Yes,” I lied. “Why?”

“You just paled about three shades.” He lifted his thumb and grazed my cheek with it. “Something’s bothering you.”

I huffed out a disbelieving laugh. “Disturbingly observant.” When seconds passed with no reply, I added, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

The breath of his discontented sigh warmed my neck.

“For the record,” he began after a while. “I don’t mean to be… cruel to you. It’s true that I will not touch you. It’s equally true that I can’t stay away. And my entire existence, Ella, when near you, is nothing but a battle between the two. ”

I released a heavy breath and relaxed a little against him. Still vexed but too drawn to his protection to resist. The cadence of the mare’s hooves on the solid dirt trail set a soothing rhythm as we rode.

My frustration faded quickly. It was an effort to stay angry at him when he felt so secure. When he crushed my loneliness.

I fidgeted with the edge of the wolf’s fur and sighed. “Tell me some more things about you.”

His lips brushed over the crown of my head, and my heart leapt. “What would you like to know?”

“Where did you grow up?”

I heard the smile in his voice when he answered. “I grew up in Brinnea.”

“Brinnea is home for you?”

“It was once, long ago. I’ve lived in many places since then, but I can’t say I’ve called any of them home.”

The dirt path dipped steeply into a ravine.

Although the mare handled it well, I felt my body slide forward on the saddle.

With both reins in one hand, Gavin fastened his arm around my middle and held me tight to keep me from sliding any farther.

Without thinking, I rested my gloved hands on the arm that held me.

“Which place is your favorite?” I asked.

“I grew up in the tradesman district south of the old palace, but I built a cottage on the far southern outskirts of Brinnea, on the beach off the Windcrest Sound. Tucked in rock and trees and hidden away. That cottage is my favorite place.”

“The palace ?” I asked. “What palace?”

Gavin’s hand flexed against my stomach. “Brinnea is where the Whitlocks lived. Simeon, Christabel, her husband, and—” He stopped and cleared his throat. “And their castle was built along the sea cliffs, overlooking the city. But it’s all ruins now.”

After four hundred years, I imagined it was .

“Will we be close to the ruins tomorrow?” The final word grated in my throat. Tomorrow was too soon.

“Yes. I can show you if you’d like.”

I squeezed his hand. “Yes, I would—”

The mare let out an agonized groan before stumbling, losing her balance beneath us. Instinctively, I grasped onto the horn of the saddle to keep myself from falling.

“Fuck,” Gavin hissed, and had us both off of the mare before I could register what happened. My feet hit the ground, but he kept me close to him.

The black mare fell to her knees, then to her side. I cried out for her when I saw the arrow in her shoulder. I tried to run to her, but—

“Insidions.” Gavin grabbed my arm and nodded to a group of at least ten people clustered in the trees to our right.

They wore black fighting leathers with a blood-red sigil of a bull’s head engraved on the front.

Some wore black cloaks with hoods. Others went without cloaks but displayed sinister face and neck tattoos.

The shapes of skulls and bones and symbols I’d never seen before were inked onto their skin.

One of them, I noticed, wore an empty bow and a quiver filled with arrows just like the one lodged in the shoulder of our mare.

They were close—too close for us to run and remain unnoticed.

And they were coming right toward us.

I gasped when he restrained me with my back against him and his cold blade pressed carefully but firmly against my neck.

“What are you—?”

“Do you trust me?” he whispered in my ear.

My voice was lodged in my throat, so I nodded.

He shifted his mouth into my neck so that my hair was covering it. I realized it was so they couldn’t see him giving me orders. Despite my fear, with his lips against my skin, it was an effort to focus .

“Act terrified,” he commanded, his voice low, “and when I say the word ‘hunt,’ you run as fast as you can, east toward the river. Start counting and do not stop until you get to three hundred. Then, I want you to hide. When I’m done with them, I will find you.

” His steel arm tightened around my stomach. “Do you understand?”

They moved toward us quickly—twenty steps or so away now.

“Okay,” I breathed through clenched teeth, too afraid they’d notice if I nodded.

Their leader wore no hood or mask. He was a tall, middle-aged bald man with pale-blue eyes like ice and thin, red lips. The rest flanked him, but all had their eyes on me.

“Hello, Smyth,” the icy-eyed Insidion purred.

Bile rose in my throat. The familiarity in his gaze when he looked at Gavin…

“Cherno,” Gavin acknowledged, his voice cold— evil , almost. I felt his mouth curl into a sinister smile against my temple. “It’s been a while.”