“My promise extends to your familiar,” he said, reaching for his own fork and knife.
I paused with a bite of nondescript meat halfway to my mouth. “What happened to proving to you that I can defend myself?”
“Just because you can protect yourself does not mean that you should always have to.”
I’d been protecting myself for four hundred years because I had been alone for four hundred years. Even when my family was alive, even when I was dead. I heard what he said, but I was not sure I was quite ready to believe it.
We ate in companionable silence, the din of the crowd more than making up for our lack of conversation. I tried and failed not to watch Garrick, who was busy tracking my every bite. The boiled potatoes and stringy meat were not seasoned or prepared to the standard Garrick had accustomed me to. I did not risk inflating his ego by telling him.
CHAPTER 51
A few minutesafter we finished eating, a barmaid wandered by to collect our platters and ply us with drinks. Her gaze lingered on Garrick. Her hand lingered longer. When Isanara snapped her jaws, slicing the woman’s apron away from her skirt, I almost leaned over and kissed her shimmering lavender scales.
But I was not the only one with eyes on my familiar.
The longer we sat in the tavern, the bolder the other patrons became. A pair of unkempt men nursing ales took up at the empty table beside us.
Nash held his seat in the far corner, but I could feel his oily gaze on me. I refused to look his way, keeping him in my periphery but not rewarding him with any more than the bare minimum of my attention. He was the sort of man who got enjoyment out of inciting fear in women. I would not indulge his malignant fantasies.
Nor was he my only concern. As the sky darkened beyond the small windows, so did the tenor of the attention we drew.
“We should go back upstairs,” I said, swirling the purple wine I’d been nursing for the last hour.
Garrick sipped the dark brown spirit he’d chosen. “You cannot show them your fear.”
“I am not afraid.” I drained the rest of my wine to prove it. “Not for myself,” I amended.
Isanara projected a sound of absolute disgust into my mind.
I ignored her, casting my gaze over the crowd. Almost everyone had a drink in hand, though they weren’t flowing freely and hardly anyone was intoxicated. My guess was that most of the common room’s occupants could only afford a drink or two and hoped that would be enough for the barkeep to let them pass the night in blessed warmth.
Without more liquor to soften their minds, they turned their bitterness outward. A strapping bounty hunter and a buxom, well-fed witch with a dragon were easy targets for their angry desperation. My power crystallized in my veins, ready to break free.
But Garrick’s words anchored me.Use your power, he’d urged me, not just on its own, but in tandem with my other skills.
He’d meant my active power, but it wasn’t the only one at my disposal. By whatever trick of fate or intervening gods, my power had not faded yet. I would use it.
“I can handle this,” I said quietly. “From deep the well of liquid flame, grant these drinks a potent claim.”
Garrick paused with his drink halfway to his mouth. “You think intoxicating them further is the answer to the problem?”
“I think distracting them is the best of a lot of shitty options,” I said, propping my elbow up on the tabletop and nearly upending my glass of wine. Except it was empty now, thankfully. “Now go put down a ridiculous wager on that game of thrall and distract them.”
He stared at me across the table for several beats, his eyes reflecting the shimmering light of Isanara’s scales. Then he downed the rest of his drink and went to do as I’d asked.
I leaned back in my chair, pressing into the wall behind me. I anchored myself with every point of contact, noticing my body like Tomin had taught me. The wood dug into my shoulder blades. My hair pulled slightly where it was pinned between my body and the stone slab wall. Instead of letting the sensations overwhelm me, I catalogued them one by one, and in doing so, gained a measure of control over them. It was not perfect, but the frost in my veins did not solidify and fracture into uncontrollable ice.
I reached out for Isanara, skating my fingertips over her scales. Avoiding the spikes along her spine had become second nature, just like walking with her constantly twining around my legs. The power of the bond between witch and familiar had our bodies speaking to one another on a level beyond conscious recognition.
The raucous crowd around the thrall game grew. I watched as several onlookers swayed on their feet, the effects of my spell already taking hold. My mind swam with satisfaction, warming my cheeks and chest where I’d left the top of my shift unlaced.
A few minutes more and the tavern’s occupants would be drunk enough they would not notice us slipping up to our rooms. I would not even complain about Garrick’s insistence that we share the bed. It was practical, for our protection. And if we shed a few layers to sleep in relative comfort, that only made sense. The bed was not nearly large enough for Garrick’s long body and my round one. We would inevitably have to touch and if that led to?—
“What a lovely companion.”
My fantasies ground to a halt, the wine I’d downed turning to acid in my stomach.
Nash slid into Garrick’s empty seat. He filled it well, but his shoulders were no match for Garrick’s. But the cruelty in his eyes as he openly appraised Isanara… despite the morbid tales thatfollowed Garrick the Red and the crime laid at his feet at the Justice Gate, I’d never seen cruelty in Garrick’s eyes.
