“There’s not goingto be a duel,” Sass announced, her eyes narrowed. “Cali is your friend, or have you forgotten that you thickheaded lug?”
Thrain frowned, and his shoulders sagged along with his whiskers. “I suppose she is that.” He hiccuped loudly. “But how can I compete with a pantheri?”
“Maybe by not fighting over some total stranger,” Lira said before she disappeared into the kitchen.
“Marina isn’t a stranger!” Thrain bellowed, then belched again. “She’s a goddess.”
Vaskel reared back from the scent of apple brandy belch, waving a hand in front of his own face. As much as he wanted to shake the dwarf, he couldn’t fault him for falling for such a skilled charmer. Not when he’d also believed her carefully crafted web of lies. Not when his soul was bound to hers because he’d trusted in her intoxicating promises.
Sass shot him a look that landed somewhere between pleading and exasperated. “You want to take this one?”
Vaskel hooked a hand under Thrain’s elbow and steered him to the pair of overstuffed armchairs flanking the fire. He deposited the dwarf in Val’s usual chair, and Thrain collapsed into it like a deflated wineskin.
Vaskel took the chair across from him, draping his tail over one armrest and hunching forward with his elbows on his knees. “Do you know how Marina told you we knew each other from way back, that we were childhood friends?”
Thrain scrunched his mouth as he focused on the hellkin, tilting his head and eyeing him warily. “But nothing more than friends, eh?”
Vaskel thought about how he’d felt about the female hellkin when he’d first met her. He’d been captivated by her beauty and her talent, marveling at how she sweet-talked her way into the good graces of others and out of all sorts of trouble. It had only been when he’d known her better that he’d seen the cracks in her facade and the malevolence beneath the seduction.
He took a deep breath. “We weren’t childhood friends. We crewed together a long time ago.”
The dwarf’s brow furrowed. “That’s not what?—”
“I know what Marina said, but she was counting on me not wanting to reveal my past. She was right. I haven’t wanted to admit that I ran with her and a few other dodgy types when I was a young hellkin because the things we did weren’t honorable and I’ve been running from them ever since.”
Just then, Lira emerged from the kitchen carrying two steaming ceramic mugs. She crossed the room and pressed one into Thrain’s meaty hands and passed the other to Vaskel. “Drink this. It might help clear your head.”
Vaskel curled his hands around the warm mug and inhaled the spicy aroma of chai steam curling from the hot drink. If he was being honest, he might have preferred the same liquid courage Thrain had, but he sipped the chai, anyway.
Lira patted his shoulder before she returned to the kitchen, leaving the hellkin and dwarf alone in the great room. Vaskel didn’t dwell too long on where Sass had gone, since he needed to focus on Thrain and stopping a duel.
Thrain slurped his chai loudly through his bristly beard. “You crewed with a healer?”
Vaskel bit back a scoffing laugh. “She wasn’t a healer then, and she isn’t now. Marina did what I did. She sensed danger and used her natural infernal charms to get what she needed from marks. She’s also deadly with a blade and knows her way around a bow.”
Thrain blinked as if the hellkin was speaking troll. “I don’t understand.”
“Hellkins are naturally gifted when it comes to manipulation and cunning. I’ve spent decades trying to use my talents for good, but it’s all too easy to fall into the trap of using them for nefarious purposes.”
The dwarf sat up straighter, bristling. “You’re saying Marina, my Marina is nefar…lious?”
“I’m telling you the truth, Thrain. She isn’t who she claims to be.”
Vaskel’s friend sank back in his chair, sloshing a bit of chai onto his long whiskers. “But why? Why come here and pretend to be something she’s not? It doesn’t make sense.”
The hellkin paused. If he told Thrain the truth, there would be no going back. The dwarf could decide not to believe him. He could run back to Marina and tell her what Vaskel had said. He could bring even more of her wrath onto him and possibly the village. Marina could very well forget about the three days she’d given him and insist his time was up.
In the past, he might have taken the safest route. He might not have dared to trust his friend. He might not have taken a chance that a fledgling friendship could be more powerful than the hellkin’s dark influence. Even now, he hesitated before taking the leap.
Then he dragged in a deep breath and shoved up his shirt sleeve. “Because of this.”
Thrain’s gaze fell onto the inky marks weaving up his arm. “What in Grognick’s beard is that?”
“This is the soul bind that Marina put on me twenty years ago when I was too young and foolish to know better. The reason she’s here is that she’s come to collect on it.”
Thrain squinted so hard his eyes disappeared completely beneath his bushy eyebrows. “Collect on it?”
The marks sizzled with heat, and Vaskel scratched at them before pushing his sleeve over them again. “Make me go with her. Force me to return to crewing with her and a bunch of hellkins who don’t care a whit about glory or honor.”
