“What are you doing, witch?”
This time, I was the one who avoided his eyes. It was damn hard when all I wanted to do was look at him. Even with his eyes pulled together and his mouth turned down in a suspicious frown, the rugged lines of his face called to me. It was slightly warmer here on the southern edge of the continent, and he’d unknowingly done me the favor of packing away his traveling cloak, which meant I could truly enjoy the breadth of his shoulders and thickness of his arms.
“Sparring.” I rolled my shoulders, testing my muscles and trying to loosen the last of the previous night’s stiffness. Too bad I hadn’t had the foresight to leave the neck of my gown unfastened. I’d seen the way he stared at my breasts when he thought I was not looking.
He stepped around the wall of jagged ice. “You should save your energy for the Memory Gate.”
“You were the one who taught me the importance of building my endurance.” I pulled out the smaller of my two daggers. The blade was shorter, but it fit better in my hand.
He did not put down his pack, but he did not begin hiking for the mountain, either. His frown did deepen. “I am also the one who spent the last three weeks keeping you alive, against all odds. Driving yourself too hard, too fast, is a poor way to repay my devotion.”
My reply caught in my throat. Surely he hadn’t meant?—
“I will not fight you, Koryn.”
Except that he was, just on a different front. But I suspected that more than me, Garrick was fighting with himself. Even from across the camp, I could see the way his eyes shifted andbrightened as he watched me caress the hilt of the dagger in my hand. I saw that glow in his eyes now for what it was—desire.
Finally, after torturing him for several more long, drawn-out moments, I slid the dagger back into my belt. Garrick’s throat slid, his chest heaving. He was as affected as I was.
I held his gaze as I spoke. “I am in full possession of my mind, Garrick.” I echoed back his words from the tavern. “I know what I want. And this time, there is no chance I am going to forget.”
CHAPTER 59
We climbed in strained silence.The few times I caught Garrick looking my way, he turned away just as fast. Even Isanara’s reappearance was not enough to loosen the tension between us.
The quiet gave me time to plot.
I set up my bedroll while Garrick pulled out our food supplies and began to prepare the evening meal. He’d augmented our stores before departing from the tavern on the other side of the Devotion Gate, but it had taken us longer than it should have to travel between the two gates, even with Garrick carrying me. If the Memory Gate did not await us the next morning, we would have gotten to try our hands at hunting.
As I watched Garrick’s competent hands at work, I felt certain they’d have been up to the task. But I wanted them otherwise occupied.
Wingbeats overhead signaled Isanara’s return. She’d joined us around midday before taking off again. The tiniest barb of regret formed inside of me at what I was about to ask of her.
“The stained one has already reached the temple,”Isanara reported.
“We expected as much,”I replied, though I did relay the confirmation to Garrick. He nodded. Apparently, talking to me was too dangerous now, too.
“Have you eaten today?”I asked my familiar. She circled the campsite we’d set up at the edge of a valley, flaring her wings in and out in a series of movements she always seemed to repeat after extended periods of flying. The dragon equivalent of stretching, maybe.
Her head snapped up, yellow-green eyes finding me instantly. “I gorged myself on a vein of iron,”she said.“I will tell you if I need your help finding nourishment.”
“That was the agreement,”I agreed.“In order to get you to stop rooting around my pack like a toddler.”
She snapped her jaws in my direction.
I responded with a smile.“Not a fan of the comparison?”
“Are you being irritating intentionally?”
“I often wonder the same thing about you,”I shot back. But she’d caught me.“I thought if you were in a huff, maybe you would fly off for another few hours.”
Her neck swerved to the side, scales glimmering teal and then violet, then back to lavender in the dying evening light.“And why would you want me to do that?”
I looked pointedly past her curved horns to where Garrick knelt over the fire, turning the roasted potatoes.
Isanara blinked up at me. I knew that dragons could not smile. Her muscles did not quite work that way. But the swish of her tail from side to side said enough—Isanara was enjoying herself immensely.
When I did not speak, she planted herself on the ground and curled her tail around her hind legs.“I guess I will just settle in for the night, then.”
