Even when he no longer needed to. He’d saved my life, I realized.
ThatusI’d used against Nash was pure bravado, the Lifebind between Garrick and me was done. So quickly. Then why didn’t I feel relief?
Still, I took a few steps closer so he could see me easier in the darkness and inclined my head. “Thank you.”
His expression was anything but neutral as he turned and glared at me. “I don’t want your thanks. I want you to stop being so naïve and thoughtless that you get both of us killed.”
Naïve. I had walked this continent for nearly four hundred years, and this human had the audacity to suggest I was naïve? He could rot in the Dark God’s hell.
“You saved my life, we are done.” I reached to pull my cloak around me as a shiver of cold prickled my neck. But I did not have my cloak. Rilk had seen to that at the Mercy Gate. He could go to the Dark God’s hell right along with Garrick the fucking Red.
He already has.Rilk is dead.
I could not bring myself to feel anything but relief about it. If I’d had a beating heart, it would have clenched and twisted at that moment. My stomach did the job instead.
I squeezed my fists at my sides and tried to ignore the shivers making themselves more demanding with every passing second. We were approaching the deepest, coldest part of the night. Without a cloak, the next two hours would be torture. But first I had to find another place to sleep. Rilk’s reeking body was not the sort of bedtime companion I enjoyed.
I turned north, lifted my hand to harden the snow and make walking easier, and left Garrick the Red to his own problems. I was not one any longer.
“Check your wrist.”
My feet stilled. Even my hand flicked, as if it too wanted to obey his command. What was it about this man that made all good sense desert me?
Whatever it was, I fought it hard. I refused to lift my arm, even as I realized that there had been no burn of magic or power. The dissolution of the Lifebind did not have to feel the same as the forming of it, I reasoned. The workings of the gods were rarely logical.
Garrick closed the space between us in two easy strides, grabbing my forearm with one hand and tugging off my glove with the other. Even without my stronger sight, I could see that hateful tattoo on the inside of my wrist. The lines of the rune were straight and true. A single line branched into three two-thirds of the way up. Then, alongside it, the same shape was copied in inverse. Garrick did not bother to pull down his own sleeve to show me that his was still intact as well.
“You saved my life for no purpose other than mercy, when doing so put you at greater risk by exposing yourself as a witch. You would have been safer to let me die. A true act of mercy,” he breathed. He’d gotten so close to me that I could see every detail of his face. Not just the broad features, but the intimate ones as well. A half-moon scar no bigger than a fingernail that framed his right eye. The flecks of pure, clover green in his eyes that must be responsible for the turquoise they appeared to be at any distance other than this. The moonlight changed them even more, making it seem like the ring of slightly lighter blue around his pupil was glowing.
He released my arm, increasing the space between us enough that I could actually breathe as he exhaled and added, “I cannot say the same.”
Right. He’d only saved me because it benefited him—because if I died, so did he. That wasn’t mercy.
“There is no escaping the Lifebind until its terms are satisfied.” His words were heavy—disturbingly so. They lacked the intensity or the menace that I’d come to expect from him.
“I could kill you, and then I would be free.” I thrust my chin out in challenge.
“You could try,” he said, the corner of his mouth quirked upward, that smirk back in place. “You’d risk the wrath of Seraxa after she’s shown you such favor.”
He emphasized the last word, infusing it with sarcasm. But his heart was beating faster than before, faster than it had been even when he’d held Nash at knifepoint. Despite the dark, I could see that the divot between his brows had not entirely smoothed. For once, my heightened senses provided me with an advantage rather than overwhelming me. They told me that Garrick the Red was hiding something.
I folded my arms beneath my breasts. “Why didn’t you accept his offer?”
Garrick huffed a soundless chuckle. “I do not need gold or land.”
How much of that acerbic humor was genuine and how much of it was a front?
“This is Velora. Those could be the very things that keep you alive from one week to the next?—"
“He tried to kill you,” Garrick said. “He does not deserve redemption.”
The biting edge of humor was still there, but so was something else. Something that I could not quite account for, but I could read just the same. The way his jaw worked aroundthe words, the rough sound of him clearing his throat of unnamed emotion.
“And that would kill you, by extension,” I said slowly.
His smirk faltered.
He shifted forward, old snow crunching beneath his boots as he moved closer, trying to see me better in the dark with his human eyes. I did not try to disguise my face. I let the confusion show, my lips parting slightly, my eyes widening, as the full force of him flooded over me. The height discrepancy between us should have afforded more space, but his mouth seemed to hover mere inches from mine.
