Chapter 2

His torso was a tapestry of violence. Long, pale scars from old battles crisscrossed his broad ribs and chest—thick, jagged lines left by broadswords, claw marks from some northern beast, and the distinct, circular pucker of an old cauterized pike wound near his hip.

And now, fresh butchery was etched across the canvas.

The crossbow bolt was buried two inches deep just beneath his left clavicle. The skin around the puncture was already swelling, angry purple and slick with blood.

"This is going to hurt," Aveline whispered. Her hands were shaking. She pressed her palms against her woolen skirt to dry them, but the tremor wouldn't leave her fingers. "I don't have enough poppy-milk left to dull it. I gave you the last dose two nights ago."

"I don't need poppy-milk," Garrick said quietly.

He raised his right hand—the one uninjured—and gently caught her trembling wrist. His palm was rough, calloused from years of gripping broadsword hilts, but the touch was impossibly soft. A lover’s touch. A protector’s touch.

"Do what must be done, little bird," he murmured, using the pet name that always made her ribs ache with silent torment. "I have endured worse than a bit of iron."

"Stop calling me that," she choked out, looking down at his chest instead of meeting his eyes. "You don't have to endure anything for me. You shouldn't have jumped in front of that quarrel, Garrick! You could have dodged. You could have pulled me down!"

"And risked a ricochet taking your throat?" Garrick’s brow furrowed, a flicker of genuine bewilderment crossing his features, as if her logic were utterly incomprehensible. "My life belongs to your shadow, Aveline. You know this. If a bolt flies in your direction, my flesh is its destination. That is the only way the world makes sense."

Aveline closed her eyes.

*My life belongs to your shadow.*

The words were poison wrapped in honey. She felt the faint, ghostlike hum of her own magic resting at the base of her skull—the fragile, silver threads of mind-weaving she possessed. She wasn't a battle-mage; she couldn't summon fire from the sky or tear stone asunder. Her gifts were subtle, delicate, meant for untangling memories, comforting the dying, soothing feverish terrors in children.

Or, when driven to the edge of an abyss by butchers, something far darker.

She swallowed the bile rising in her throat, picked up her iron forceps and a small flask of strong grain alcohol, and doused the metal tools.

"Bite down on this," she commanded, handing him a thick strip of cured leather.

Garrick took it between his molars. He didn't look away from her. His amber eyes remained locked onto her face, watching her with a devotion so pure, so completely devoid of self-preservation, that it bordered on holy madness.

"One," she whispered, positioning the jaws of the forceps around the barbed shaft beneath the skin. "Two..."

She didn't say three. She gripped the shaft, pushed slightly to clear the barb from the muscle fiber, and yanked it out in a smooth, brutal arc.

Garrick’s body arched, the thick cords of his neck standing out like iron cables. A muffled, guttural groan tore from his throat behind the leather strip, and his knuckles turned white where he gripped the stone slab beneath him. The rock actually chipped under the sheer force of his fingers.

Dark blood welled up, spilling down his pale chest in a warm cascade.

"I have it, I have it," Aveline babbled, dropping the bloody iron head into the dirt. She grabbed a wad of clean linen and pressed it hard against the wound.

Garrick spat the leather strip onto the floor. His chest heaved, his skin clammy with shock, but his gaze never left hers. Even as his vision blurred from the blinding pain, his right hand came up to steady her trembling hands against his chest.

"See?" he rasped, offering her a faint, bloody-lipped smile that broke her heart into a thousand jagged pieces. "Clean. You have steady hands, Aveline."

"They aren't steady," she sobbed softly, pressing harder to stanch the flow. "I'm shivering like a reed."

"They are the hands that keep me alive," he said simply.

She reached for a small clay pot containing a poultice of crushed winter-bloom and ground bone-ash. Scooping the pungent paste with two fingers, she packed it into the gaping puncture. Garrick merely closed his eyes, a shudder rippling through his massive frame, but he did not make another sound.

As she began winding linen strips across his shoulder and beneath his armpit, her body was drawn close to his. Her chest brushed against his uninjured shoulder; her breath mingled with his ragged exhalations in the frigid air of the kiln.

There was an agonizing heat radiating from him. For months, they had fled through the mud and the ruins together. She had slept curled against his side beneath freezing rainstorms, guarded by his broadsword, warmed by the sheer furnace of his vitality. She knew the rhythm of his breathing better than her own. She had memorized the line of his strong jaw, the faint stubble darkening his hollow cheeks, the way his lips parted slightly when he dreamed.

He tilted his head slightly, leaning into her touch as she wrapped the bandage over his collarbone. His cheek brushed the soft curve of her neck.

"Garrick..." she breathed, freezing.

"I smelled the elder-flowers on you when I woke this morning," he whispered, his voice thick with an exhaustion that tore away all pretense. "Even here, in this rotting bog... you smell of the orchards back south. Do you remember the orchards, Aveline?"

Her hands tightened on the linen bandage. A violent spasm seized her chest.

"I remember," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

"We will reach the border sanctuary," he murmured, his eyes half-closed, his forehead resting gently against the hollow of her collarbone. He was leaning on her now, letting his immense weight sag just an inch, a rare surrender to his broken body. "Three more days through the mistlands. Once we cross the Silverveil River, the Inquisitors cannot follow. Their writ doesn't run in the free valleys."

"And what will you do then?" she asked, the question slipping out before she could stop it. "If we reach safety. What will you do, Garrick?"

He paused. For a long, agonizing moment, the silence stretched between them, filled only by the wind howling through the overgrown briers outside.

He raised his head, looking at her with a sudden, unsettling lack of clarity.

"What will I do?" he echoed.

The question seemed to strike him like a physical blow. His amber eyes flickered, the pupils contracting, then dilating erratically. A faint tremor shook his temples, and a bead of cold sweat rolled down his cheekbone into his stubble.

"I..." He frowned, his brows knitting in profound confusion, like a man trying to read words written in water. "I stay with you. I protect you."

"Garrick, you were a sellsword," she pressed gently, her heart hammering against her ribs, driven by a morbid, self-destructive urge to probe the prison she had built. "You had a company. You had contracts. You had a life before... before we met."

Readers also like

The Archon’s Favorite Muse Mara Vane · Fantasy Romance She came to study the Sun Gate; its dangerously beautiful guardian thinks she came to study him. The Wound Between Us Mara Vane · Fantasy Romance A battle-hardened assassin follows a trail of phantom wounds to a fortress where the answer could cost her everything.