“He’ll be coming for you, too,” I pointed out. The sooner I had his agreement, the sooner I could find a bed and sate both the exhaustion building in my shoulders and the ache low in my belly. “A well-placed spell could disable him long enough for you to neutralize him.”
Was that a twinkle of amusement I saw in the corner of his eyes? Did he actually find my proposition laughable?
“And what spell will you save for yourself?”
I exhaled more steadily this time. He was going to accept my offer and keep my secret. “None. I’ve met enough of his kind over the years. I will stay well away from the bounty hunter.”
The corner of his eye crinkled in time with the tilt of his wickedly lush mouth. “Too late for that, witch.” He leaned down, closing the space between us too quickly for me to step back. “Iam Garrick the Red.”
CHAPTER 13
The Dark Godmust have been laughing from his obsidian throne. Hell, we were in the first temple of the Seven Gates. After all the chanting and praying, all seven gods were probably looking down on us right then. And laughing hysterically.
At least the lust burning beneath my skin had banked, stifled by pure humiliation.
I put one hand on my hip, closer to my little dagger. Though I doubted I’d get the chance to draw it if Garrick the Red decided to attack me. But a bounty hunter who’d made a fortune on a desolate, dying continent would not be stupid enough to attack me in a temple where it was expressly forbidden.
I was not defenseless. I was never defenseless. Even without my coven to bolster my power, I had killed the man who’d attacked me outside of the tavern. I could hold my own, even against Garrick the Red. He had twenty years of killing for hire? I’d been resurrected nearly four hundred years ago. Let him try me.
Never mind that he’d made a career out of killing, and I’d flinched away from it at every turn. It was not the moment to dwell on my failures as a witch. There was always plenty of time for that in the night, when I ought to be sleeping.
This man was used to intimidating people wherever he went. I’d watched it happen in the tavern the night before. But now we both saw each other for what we were. His reputation may precede him, but that did not mean he scared me.
I cocked my head to the side. “Who would have guessed—Garrick the Red is blond.”
His own head tilted to match the angle of mine. “The red refers to the blood.”
I snorted. “Congratulations. That is the bare minimum to keep you alive.”
He uncrossed his arms, the action shrinking the space between us. He could have touched me as easily as I could have stabbed him. And damn it all to the Dark God’s coldest, cruelest hell, but there was that flare of desire in my stomach again.
“Not the blood in my veins. The blood on my hands.”
My eyes snapped down to those very hands. Huge—they were ridiculous. They should have been out of proportion to the rest of him. Buthewas huge, especially in comparison to my short stature. He wouldn’t need one of the weapons strapped to his body to hurt me. He could rip me apart with his hands alone.
Blood on his hands, indeed.
I bit my tongue before I could say something worse. I still needed him to keep my secret. I was supposed to be bribing him.
I forced my arms down from my waist to hang at my side. Garrick tracked the movement with his eyes, his lids lowering a fraction as my thick cloak fell back into place around me, hiding my body.
“My offer stands,” I said.
He at least did me the courtesy of looking at my face as he denied me. “Keep your spells for yourself, witch.”
The word bristled against me like wool on bare skin. I’d forced the mother in the tavern the night before to call me what I was. But from Garrick’s lips, it rubbed wrong. Maybe becausehe did not say it with even the slightest hint of fear—but plenty of derision.
“I have a name.”
“I’ve already told you mine.”
And looked so fucking smug while doing it.
I wanted to withhold my own name just out of spite. But unlike his, there was no prowess or gravity associated with mine. Once, I could have said Koryn, daughter of Gallatin of Crenmea. Or Koryn, frost witch of the Midnight Coven. In their own times, both would have meant something. But not now.
Now, I was just — “Koryn.”
“Koryn,” he repeated, rolling the syllables over his tongue. “Koryn, the wicked witch of Canmar.”
