A sharp knock reverberated through the room, shaking the spindly chairs at the table and snapping Isanara to attention. I dropped the gown, my curved blade suddenly in my hand instead. I had not even consciously reached for it. Garrick’s lessons were having more impact than I’d realized. I’d known where the blade was instinctively. I was more aware of my surroundings. Somehow, I knew that only one set of boots had climbed the stairs. One person waited outside my door.
I certainly wasn’t foolish enough to open it.
But I’d been about to leave. Whoever waited on the landing stood between me and finding Garrick.
“Identify yourself,” I called through the door, forcing every bit of imperiousness I could muster into my voice. I tried to summon a memory of Maura, thinking of the tone of veileddisappointment and condescension she wielded so effortlessly. But instead, it was Alize’s haughty visage that came to my mind.
Isanara growled at my side, though I doubted the sound permeated the door. The volume of the tavern’s dining room two floors down had increased steadily over the past few hours.
A loudthumpvibrated through the door, the sound of a fist landing against the wood and then staying.
“You know exactly who I am, Koryn.”
My breath caught in my throat.
Isanara huffed with disappointment and returned to the fire while I unlocked the line of metal stalwarts that sealed the door.
I steeled myself. He’d been out in the storm for hours. He would be wet and irritated and every bit of Garrick the Red. That was good, actually. It was easier to keep my distance when he was snarling than when he smirked.
But I was completely unprepared for the man staring back at me from the other side of the door.
His silver blond hair was unbound, the wet ends curling as they skimmed his shoulders. His bandolier was missing. So were his leather tunic and the wool layers he usually wore. He stood before me in nothing but tight leather breeches and an unbuttoned gray linen shirt that hung loosely over his chest. A sculpted, glistening chest still damp and smelling vaguely of cinnamon.
“You bathed,” I rasped, my voice suddenly a hundred times scratchier than before. His skin was not pale and cold from the storm but flushed from scrubbing.
Like mine.
For the first time in our acquaintance, we were not separated by the layers of leather and wool that Velora demanded. Just two paper-thin layers of linen remained between us. I could feel the heat of him from the other side of the threshold. My skin pebbled, my nipples tightening against the linen of my shift.
The firelight over my shoulder reflected in Garrick’s eyes, illuminating the ring of green and setting the turquoise aglow.
“So did you.” The timbre of Garrick’s voice matched my own.
Dangerous. So dangerous.
“I thought you were out in the storm.” My pride—what remained of it—kept me from saying more. From admitting the feelings that had so inconveniently crowded my empty chest.
“I was.” He nudged something with his foot.
Our packs, both stuffed with coal. In his other hand, he loosely held the bow and quiver that were usually strapped to his back. Isanara appeared between our feet, muttering something indecipherable as she shoved her head inside the nearest pack.
Garrick’s mouth curved in an affectionate smirk as he lifted the bags and moved them into the room. Isanara moved with him, far too busy stuffing herself with ore to bother removing her head or offering a word of gratitude.
“Thank you,” I said as I closed and relocked the door behind him.
I had not asked him to venture off into a storm to find food for my familiar. I hadn’t needed to ask, because Garrick justdid. Even when I should have been the one to do it. Even when Isanara, by her own admission, could go weeks without eating. Despite her insistence, she was a child, she was my responsibility, and she needed to eat. So Garrick fed her.
He bent down, spilling several large chunks of coal across the wooden floor. Isanara lunged for them.
“Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” he admonished, but I heard the amusement in his voice.
He set the bow and quiver on the table and then turned to face me, the muscles of his calves and thighs bunching beneath the tight leather that covered them. His eyes snagged on the dark blue wool gown I’d dropped on the floor. He swiped it up, weighing the fabric in his hand, then slowly lifted his gaze to me,as if realizing what I wasn’t wearing. His throat slid beneath his fresh shave.
“It is already dry,” he said. He made no move to hand me the dress.
I raked my teeth over my lower lip. “A drying spell.”
His mouth settled into a line. Not firm, not tense. But not smirking or smiling either. “Convenient. I had to leave most of mine to hang in the other room.”
