The brand slipped with Safine’s reappearance at his side, delicately wiping her hands off, and he forced himself back to Decker Belmont, barkeep at theLoose Goosesaloon.
Rotham’s head lolled to the side as Decker nudged him into the hungry edge of the river. The current tugged at his feet like it wanted him to join the corpses lining its bed.
Under cover of darkness the water gleamed a deep burnished maroon he’d never seen before, as if Earth herself taunted him and turned her own veins to blood.
Safine—never fazed, back-to-business Safine—swung into the saddle and urged her mare to follow in the gouged hoofprints of the runaway horse. She’d find the riderless mare and bring her back to the livery to be sold as she always did.
Decker took the back way home, a blur of staggered steps and looming hills. Ender’s Ridge hid his fangs, but the Blessing could not hide the evidence of their bloody destruction, so he kept to the shadows.
The door to his bedroom rattled shut behind him. His body begged him to rest and process the suddenassault of food.
Feverishly, he splashed water into the basin, scrubbing his hands raw, drowning out his gasping breaths with gulps of whiskey that didn’t burn, but still washed away the oily taste of Rotham.
Liquor mingled with reddened water in the white basin when he retched.
Faintly, he caught the sound of a heartbeat next door through his ragged mind—Safine must have returned.
But the barn was silent.
Safine had headed into the hills, away from home. Evenhecouldn’t have returned so quickly from capturing the stray horse.
Decker grasped the edges of his nightstand, the room tilting and narrowing to the single, hushed heartbeat, like the body the heart belonged to was hopelessly trying to calm it.
Through the sliver of nailed-shut velvet curtains, an oil lamp in the window of the abandoned chapel diffused a gentle glow into the alley between them.
The erratic heartbeat Decker had never heard before whispered in his head long after he collapsed into bed.
