"If I wanted to tell you, I wouldn't have lied in the first place."
"Keep your secrets then, wicked creature. And I will keep mine."
"What secrets do you have?" I demanded, as he pulled away.
He laughed, infuriatingly, because it was the laugh that made me feel like my soul was singing. He moved to finish packing his bag.
"What secrets," I demanded again, feeling an urge to stomp my foot like a child. The memory that beneath my feet was a taproom smeared with blood might have been the only thing that stopped me. It was too easy to forget all the world around me during moments like that, when it was easy between us.
We left the eerily silent Beaver Trap and stepped out into an equally quiet world.
The brothel was on the edge of Cold Garden, at the end of an L-shaped street near the forest. We took the wide avenue that headed in the direction of the more populated areas since Io wanted to find some inhabitants of the city and reassure them that the threat had seemed to pass.
But the streets were empty until we were more than halfway across town.
When we reached what looked like a wide plaza with the vague snow-covered outline of a fountain in the center, a group of armed men, dressed in furs stepped out from between two buildings.
"I wouldn't be out and about right now, friends," one man called as he saw us. "There are wolves in town. They carried away seven people from the whorehouse with not a trace left behind."
"I saw it myself," came a voice from the back of the group; a familiar man with a bushy red beard jutting out from his fur hood.
Io greeted them with a nod. "We have dispatched them already. They were not wolves, though, but hellhounds. Bar your doors and do not travel at night for a time. They will not come out in the sunshine."
He indicated behind us before he added, "You'll find their carcasses in the spruce. Burn them after dawn."
The men looked at us with a mix of wariness and respect as we continued through the plaza.
Io's big boots made the trudge through the thick snow much easier as I followed closely behind him, keeping in his tracks.
I looked up, startled as the sound of dragon wings filled the space around us. I assumed we would meet the dragons outside of town to keep from startling the citizens of Cold Garden any further, but suddenly Veles' inky black scales were in front of us as he landed in the deep snow with a thud.
I turned to give the cold garden men a reassuring smile, but a figure was coming from between the buildings, pushing past the men.
A handsome, expressive face under a shock of blonde hair split in a wide grin.
"Sera!" Rhychulson Nygaard, the son of the Knight of Cold Garden, was striding my way. I had not seen him since the night I met Io in the brothel for the first time after stabbing him—the same night Rhychulson made his wild confession to me.
I turned to stride back and meet him, wrapping my arms around his tall frame over the dark brown fur he was wrapped in.
"You are the last person I expected to see here!" he said, drawing back to look down at me. "We weren't even sure you made it out of Albiyn until a bird came from your cousin."
"I made it, but I didn't think you would even be in Cold Garden yet," I told him.
"Father called me home right after I saw you last—took me away from all the fun, but it turned out to be a good thing." He looked at me ruefully.
“Have you heard from Petta?” I asked. The last time I saw her, she and her father had been heading north with one of the first groups leaving Albion.
Rhychulson shook his head. “Not yet. But they will likely come through Cold Garden on their way home.”
“Tell her…tell her I will fix it. That we will all go home soon.” I felt guilty that I’d hardly spared a thought for her and Rhychulson in the chaos of the last days.
"Speaking of, I heard about your betrothal," Rhychulson said with comically raised brow. "Is that him?" He was looking across the plaza behind me.
I glanced back to see Io standing beside Veles with his arms crossed over his chest, glowering. "No," I said, suddenly wishing I could tell Rhychulson that Io was the one I had gone to meet that night. "That is his brother," I said instead. "He's taking me to Nightfall. We got caught in a storm and then, well...hellhounds."
"Hellhounds?" Rhychulson said with a look of horror.
I put my arm in his and led him away from the group of men in Io's direction. We stopped when Veles' big head swung around in front of us and eyed Rhychulson menacingly.
