“Then how I fix this,” Silfast pleaded, again clutching mournfully at his nose. “How we find her. Where shego.”
And despite the misery, the sheer curdling mess, Gwyn’s helpless, blinking eyes searched for Joarr. Joarr, who was looking straight back toward her, as if he’d been searching for her, too. Searching for an answer from her, even, because she’d been the one to give Stella that thought about the henbane, and…
“My house,” Gwyn whispered, to his waiting eyes. “Goddess curse me, I told Stella she could stay at my house.”
Silfast barked some kind of outraged sound from the floor, but Gwyn fully ignored it, and kept her eyes on Joarr. Seeing how his own eyes shifted, changed, slipping behind his mask. Not hiding, perhaps, not like Gwyn had always thought, but… seeing.Magic.
And when his eyes refocused on hers, they were sharp and hard, glinting with purpose, with urgency. With the truth of something learned, known, from just standing here, and breathing. And if Gwyn hadn’t felt so bereft, sodestroyed, she might have almost been tempted to marvel at it, demand details of it,revereit.
“Ach, your house,” Joarr said, his voice stilted. “But at your house…”
He grimaced, and that was surely guilt flashing across his eyes, and regret, andrage. The sight already far too familiar today, too meaningful, too painful. The things he’d known. All he’d seen. His plan for her, because…
There was… danger waiting at her house.Destruction.
And gods, Gwyn had been so stupid. So stupid to offer such a thing to Stella, to think it would still be safe. With all the men, all the threats, the impending law. How could she have thought her house would be free of it? How could she have possibly thought it was a good idea to send Stella there?
“There are — men at my house, aren’t there?” Gwyn finally said, numb, empty. “Or there will be. Men come… forme. From Roy, and my father.”
And she should have fought it, railed against it, sought to change it — she was supposed to have another week of freedom, they still hadtime— but maybe that had always been a futile, foolish hope. And maybe Joarr had seen that, and known that, too. Maybe that was why he hadn’t said he’d loved her. Why he hadn’t made her his mate.
And once again, Gwyn had been a fool. A patsy. Apawn.
Stupid. So, so damnedstupid.
“Very well, then,” she whispered, or perhaps sobbed. “Let’s go.”
30
They left the mountain via a twisty, circuitous, underground route. Following paths Gwyn had never before seen, many of them rough and narrow, their walls jagged and shadowy in the light of her lamp.
The goal had been to avoid encountering any other orcs, and so far, it had seemed successful. Aided, no doubt, by the way Joarr would sometimes stop at a fork in the route, his eyes shifting — and then choose one, without hesitation, without looking back.
It should have been shocking, maybe, impressive,astonishing— but Gwyn’s whirling brain seemed to accept it with the same deadened, empty resignation that had swarmed her this past half-hour. Her orc lover had magic, the father of her child could see thefuture, and he’d lied to her again and again, and she should have seen it, shehadseen it, stupid, stupid,stupid.
She’d been trailing along behind him, blinking blankly at how he was holding up a still-staggering Silfast, and taking slow, controlled steps. His lean body tall and unyielding under Silfast’s added weight, his shaggy head fixed straight ahead. Not once glancing back at Gwyn, not speaking to her, because he’d wanted — he wanted —
“Brothers!” called a voice, deep and familiar. “Silfast. Wait!”
Gwyn dully turned to look, and her blank eyes found… Kalfr? His grey-skinned form jogging up the corridor toward them, his narrow gaze fixed to Silfast’s teetering bulk.
“What has caused —” Kalfr began, sliding to a halt before them — but his voice broke off as he leaned toward Silfast and inhaled, slow and deep. “Ach,” he said, flatter than before. “Is Stella safe?”
Silfast was glaring at Kalfr, a garbled-sounding growl burning from his throat — and beside him Joarr visibly exhaled, and then bodily shoved Silfast away, toward Kalfr. “For now,” he replied, clipped. “We must reach her before nightfall.”
Silfast’s staggering body had reeled toward Kalfr, and Kalfr braced himself to catch him, even as Silfast kept growling down into his face. “You sh’ll no speak of this,traitor,” Silfast spat at him. “No toanyother.NoBautul.”
Kalfr seemed to be expending considerable effort to keep Silfast upright, and he shoved him against the nearest wall, and repositioned Silfast’s huge arm over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t do that to her,” he said, his voice thin. “Or to you.”
Silfast growled again, but didn’t seem to resist Kalfr’s handling, either. And soon they were hobbling along again, with Silfast’s massive form pinned close to Kalfr’s side, his head occasionally lolling toward Kalfr’s shoulder.
“You two ought to go ahead,” Gwyn heard Kalfr’s low voice say to Joarr, who was now striding unencumbered in front of them. “Seek to speak to Stella first. Learn if she wishes to see him.”
Silfast barked another furious growl, which no one paid any heed to, because Joarr was nodding over his shoulder at Kalfr — and then, finally, glancing back toward Gwyn. His eyes fully hidden behind his mask again, but his brows raised, his head angling her forward. Toward him.
Gwyn’s breaths were coming shallower, the constriction clamping tighter in her chest, but she made herself nod, and lurch around Kalfr and Silfast. To where Joarr had actually stopped to wait for her, and once she’d caught up, he instantly fell into step with her, his gaze prickling on the skin of her neck.
Gwyn reflexively reached her hand to her neck, as if to rub the feeling away — but there, of course, was a telltale twinge of pain beneath her fingers. Because Joarr had used histeeththere, last night. He’d marked her, for the first time. Because… because…
