A knot of onlookers had formed around two men and a woman playing thrall. The triangular board between them was drawn onto the table with chalk, their pieces each unique. Even after hundreds of years, thrall was still a popular game, in part because it could be played using items of little value. Carved rocks or wood could make the pieces. Anyone could draw the board. And playing the game of skill gave the desperate humans of Velora the illusion that they still had some control over their lives.
There wasn’t much coin left, so other items changed hands as the onlookers placed wagers. A bit of ribbon, a heel of hard cheese. Two men bickered over the value of a prostitute.
But it was the quiet patrons lurking in corners that worried me more.
“You are a quiet patron lurking in a corner,”Isanara pointed out.
“Exactly.”
She made her own perusal of the tavern, then finished by snapping her fangs at the woman seated nearest to us, who quickly vacated her chair. I rolled my eyes.
I understood her point too well. Garrick was dangerous. I was dangerous. Even without Isanara at my side, we were conspicuous. I’d learned during the months between leaving my coven and entering the temple that the less conspicuous someone tried to be, the more they tried to hide, the more dangerous they were. The more unpredictable.
My eyes snagged on a head of overgrown wine-red hair framed between two blonde women.
Nash.
“I hate being right.”
“No, you don’t,”Isanara snorted.
We should have stayed up in our rooms. I should never have brought Isanara down into this fray. The handful of peoplewho’d seen her on the way up spreading rumors about a dragon could not be more dangerous than two dozen drunken, desperate humans having confirmation of one.
One of the blonde women threw back her head in an overzealous laugh. Nash watched her breasts bounce, the hunger on his face turning my stomach. I knew his crime from the Justice Gate. I should have let Garrick kill him after the Mercy Gate when I’d had the chance. Any crime he committed from then onward could be laid directly at my door.
Nash tossed back his red waves and looked past the woman who’d climbed into his lap. His eyes locked with mine. He’d known I was there, had surely seen us enter and now knew we’d taken one of the rooms above the tavern.
Slowly, with malice curling the corners of his mouth, he shifted his gaze from me to my familiar. He examined her with open, deliberate leisure, just to remind me that he could. I’d brought her down here, I’d exposed her to him.
A low, threatening growl rolled out from between Isanara’s jaws.
I made a sound to match it.
Garrick emerged from the crowd, two metal platters balanced in one impossibly large hand while the other lingered near the hilt of his greatsword. He only had to look at my face before the implied threat became real and his hand closed around the weapon.
“Back corner, third from the left,” I said, forcing myself to stay in my seat. I watched as Garrick found Nash, though his brow barely creased before he turned back and set the food on the scarred table between us. “It seems we were not the only supplicants drawn by the promise of a soft bed and a meal we did not have to cook.”
Garrick lifted one silvery brow. “How many meals have you cooked since the Mercy Gate?”
I blinked across the table at him. What a luxury it must be to feel so confident in one’s own abilities that the threat of impending death was no more than a nuisance.
He slid a set of utensils wrapped in a threadbare napkin across the table. When I did not reach for it, he leaned forward, bracing his forearms against the wood and crowding into my space so that I could see nothing but him.
“No one will touch you.”
Garrick did not touch me, but his words did. I felt them in the crevices of my body, setting the delicate hairs on end, in the recesses of my soul, where I’d only ever been alone.
Beside me, Isanara decided that the occupants of the next table were getting too comfortable. She snapped her tail, swinging the spiked end close enough to take a chunk out of the wood of their table. The woman fainted, her companion gathering her up and dragging her away as Isanara hissed through her teeth.
“You are drawing too much attention.”I reached for the bundle of utensils as Garrick settled back in his chair.
Isanara wove her head side to side in a threatening serpentine motion.“Let them look. If they try any more, I will take their hands and then their eyes for good measure.”
“For someone who does not eat humans, you seem to enjoy imagining how you will eviscerate them.”
“Everyone needs a hobby.”
I could not keep my exasperated huff inside. Garrick tracked the motion, his gaze lingering a beat longer than was necessary on my pursed lips.
