Any softness or concern that had been in Garrick’s face before was gone, the cold mask back in place. He’d retied his hair, the pale blond now tight where earlier the tendrils had fallen forward to soften the severe lines of his jaw.
Not blond, I realized. Silver. Like a fae.
I swallowed the observation.
“What did they ask for?” I said instead.
Garrick paused only long enough to look me up and down, the way he did each morning before we started out. His customary check that there was nothing about me that would slow us down. The acolytes must be waiting somewhere ahead with our provisions for the next stretch of the journey.
He did not meet my eyes before turning away. “We’ve told each other enough secrets for today, Koryn.”
PART IV
DEVOTION
They place themselves above the gods,
And so, they must atone?—
For every step, a test of faith,
In every act, devotion shown.
CHAPTER 38
I could not believethat I had ever entertained thoughts of goodwill toward Garrick the fucking Red. If the man had ever slept, I would have contemplated killing him just to free myself of the Lifebind between us. But if he did sleep, he never let me see it. When my eyes opened in the morning, he was there, cooking breakfast over the open fire. When I fell into my bedroll at night, too exhausted for even verbal sparring, he was there, banking the flames to see us through the night and ward off any of the mountains’ more aggressive occupants.
I couldn’t even call him a bastard anymore. Not even in my mind. It was too damn derogatory now that I knew about his parentage.
It was only a few hours past midday, and already I was about to collapse. The first half of the day had been a brutal upward climb. When we’d started downhill after our midday meal, I’d almost wept with relief. Only to remember that going down was just as punishing when you had to keep a body as considerable as mine from tumbling head over ass straight down the side of the mountain.
“You do not need to sigh louder to get your point across. I have excellent hearing.”
I had not even realized I was sighing. Though the way my breath came in and out of my chest, with significant weight, suggested I had been doing exactly that. Even my subconscious hated Garrick the Red.
“Of course you do,” I shot back. The fae had heightened senses, just like witches. I fixed my eyes over Garrick’s shoulder. If I looked right at him, I was liable to freeze him where he stood.
He turned to face me, hands braced on the straps of his pack where they rested over both of his impossibly wide shoulders. “Do you want to rest?”
I walked right past him, determined not to admire those shoulders. “Not if you don’t.”
“Stubborn little witch, aren’t you?”
The woods were thinner up here in the mountains, the air as well. It made all of our words sound longer, stilted.
“Do not call me that,” I said between gritted teeth.
Garrick had stopped walking. For fuck’s sake. If I stopped, I seriously doubted my ability to get moving again.
“It is what you are,” he said.
“I am not little. I am a witch. Call me that if you must. But don’t saddle me with an infantilizing sobriquet to entertain yourself.” I was sweating everywhere. Despite the cold that held Velora in its perpetual grip, despite the frost that ran in my veins, I was so fucking hot. I unstrapped the cloak from my shoulders and tugged at the buckles that held my leather vest in place atop the wool overdress. Cool, brisk air found the triangle of my chest that I’d exposed, and I could have wept.
Garrick made a distressed sound in his throat. My eyes fell closed as I savored the bliss of the cold air snaking between the crevice of my breasts. I did not open them to see if he was choking on his water.
“Nicknames do not have to be infantilizing. They can be endearing,” he said, his voice still gruff.
I sighed—loudly, just as he’d said. “And I am supposed to believe that when you call me astubborn little witch, it is a term of endearment?”
