There was no indecision in the rough lines of his face. He was going to kill Nash without a second thought.
I envied that, too.
“I released her. Now you release me,” Nash demanded.
Unwise to risk moving his throat at all with Garrick’s blade that close, but I couldn’t say that I would have been able to keep my mouth shut, either.
Garrick twisted his arm tighter. Nash’s face contorted as he struggled to keep in the cry of pain.
“I made no such agreement,” Garrick said. His face was unmoved. His expression had not changed at all in the last minute. The night turned his turquoise eyes to a sapphire so deep it was almost black. The line of his mouth, which had quirked up into a smirk more times than I could count in our short acquaintance, remained flat.
The lack of affect shouldn’t have been menacing; itshouldhave been neutral. But my stomach clenched… and my thighs squeezed together.For fuck’s sake,I chastised my body.
“You can’t kill me,” Nash bit out.
“You probably shouldn’t tell him what he can’t do when he has you stuck like a pig for slaughter,” I said. Nope, definitely could not have kept my mouth shut. But at least talking served to distract me from my body’s very inconvenient reaction to Garrick.
“You’re a bounty hunter. I can pay you,” Nash said, trying to twist away from Garrick’s blade. But Garrick was exactly what Nash had pointed out, and he was far too comfortable holding someone at knifepoint to allow them such an easy escape.
Garrick chuckled. I could not help but mark the difference from the sound that had caressed my senses in the temple. There was no humor here. No amusement. Only threat.
But Nash pressed on. “I have gold.” No response. “Land. My father has plenty of it that he will cede on my behalf. Anything. Name it, and it is yours.”
Garrick worked his jaw, slowly distorting the line of his mouth. Then again… as if he was actually mulling it over.
I did not consciously decide to make the sound low in my throat. But there it was, nonetheless. Garrick’s mouth curved, just for me, before he shifted his eyes back to his captive. “There is nothing you have that I want badly enough to alter my course.”
I blinked in the darkness. What the fuck did that mean?
“We weren’t going to kill her,” Nash insisted. He struggled again. He was stupider than even I’d estimated. I heard a faint crack. Any tighter, and Garrick would snap the bones in Nash’s arm.
“What you wanted was worse than death,” Garrick said. “To enslave her. Belittle her.”
“Nothing is worse than death.” The words slipped from my mouth unbidden, a whisper in the darkness.
Garrick’s gaze remained on Nash, but a muscle tensed in his jaw. “Then death shall be his punishment.”
“Don’t!”
Garrick’s head snapped up, and that smooth affect was gone. He looked right at me—because I was the one who’d screamed the protest. Not Nash.
A deep divot had taken up residence between Garrick’s brows. Tendrils of pale hair fell forward to frame his face, aface that was ruggedly handsome but just then contorted into surprise and disbelief. It was still handsome, even so. Irritatingly so. But most marked was the intensity in his eyes. The same intensity I’d felt before now bored into me in a way that should have been impossible to detect in the darkness of midnight.
I could shape my frost into ice, but I had not used my power to freeze the three of us in the clearing.
Even Nash had stopped his squirming, staring at me in disbelief. At least, what he could see of me in the dark. I relaxed a bit. He could not see my face. With his human eyes, the best he could make out would be my silhouette. The uncontrollable emotions playing across my face were safe from both men.
“He was not going to kill me,” I said. I was just as stupid as every human in the tavern, every human who attempted the gates. So fucking stupid. “He understands now. Let him go. The gates will kill him for us.”
Us. That was the weapon I chose to wield.
I thanked the Dark God for his gifts, which allowed me to see how Nash’s eyes widened when he realized the implication of that word. That from now on, I was not alone. A witch and Garrick the Red. He would not attack again.
Still, his heartbeat thundered in the night. For several beats, I thought Garrick would ignore my request. I understood that for what it was. Garrick could ignore me and kill Nash. For more than one of those heartbeats, I thought he would. Then his hold eased. He shoved the other man to his knees in the snow but did not restrain him any longer.
Nash swiped up his sword and clambered to his feet. The glare he cut in my direction was anything but grateful. But then he disappeared into the night and that was all that mattered. The ice I had not even noticed forming in my veins slowly began to thaw.
Garrick sheathed his blade, his head tilted ever-so-slightly in the direction that Nash had disappeared. Listening, I realized. He was determined to protect me even now, when the danger had passed.
