Page 106 of The Silversmith

Bile rose in my throat. The familiarity in his gaze when he looked at Gavin…

“Cherno,” Gavin acknowledged, his voice cold—evil, almost. I felt his mouth curl into a sinister smile against my temple. “It’s been a while.”

Chapter twenty-five

Aviolent gust of wind crossed the path where we stood. The trees shuddered, and so did I.

“Always a pleasure,” their leader answered casually. “I’ve been wondering where you’ve been.” His pale-blue eyes lingered on me as he tilted his head, eerily curious. “But it seems you’ve kept yourself busy.” He chewed something and then gathered his saliva with a nasty swirl before spitting a glob of wet, tar-black gunk onto the ground. He grinned at my scowl and took a few steps toward us.

“She is… delicious.” Another Insidion sidled up next to Cherno. His face was tan and tattooed with skulls, his eyes unnaturally dark spheres. He licked his lips. “You’ll give us a taste before you kill her, won’t you?”

I stiffened in Gavin’s grasp, but he gave me a reassuring squeeze. Trust him. I needed to trust him, but—

Gavin chuckled darkly. “You know I don’t like to share my toys.”

I sucked in a breath. The evil on his tongue was too convincing.

Cherno opened a switchblade and twirled it between his fingers. The other Insidions laughed, all of them inching closer.

“And I haven’t had her yet,” Gavin snarled, and dragged me a step back from them. “She’s for me… or no one at all.” His blade flexed against my neck but didn’t break skin. “Try anything, and I’ll slit her throat. She’ll be no fun to either of us cold.”

Cherno’s eerie orbs of ice scanned the length of my body. “She looks fresh. She’d feel good at any temperature.”

My gut screeched in warning. My eyes burned with tears—silent, but not fake. One fell off my cheek onto Gavin’s hand beneath my jaw. And in response, I felt his rage ripple through his chest into my back.

“Mine,” Gavin snarled. His rage turned possessive. “She is mine.”

And that, I knew was true.

Cherno rolled his eyes. “Always a game with you, Smyth. So… irritable. But come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen you fuck a woman, despite your unsavory claims.”

“A man can’t cherish his privacy? I like to be the last and only thing they see while I choke the life out of them.”

I whimpered unintentionally. Gavin subtly stroked my rib cage with his thumb in an attempt to console me.

“Prove it.” Cherno sneered, head cocked. “How about you bend her over right here and let us all watch you make her bleed?”

Gavin gave a low, wicked laugh against my ear. And then, as if he wanted to steal the breath from my lungs, he pulled my earlobe between his teeth in the most unnervingly sensual way and purred, “Let’s enjoy the hunt first, shall we?”

He thrust me with convincing force into the cold, hard dirt on his left. With a throaty grunt, I propelled myself up from the frigid earth and forward.

The sickening sounds of metal on metal and tearing flesh erupted behind me. I counted but made it only to twenty before I looked back, only for a moment, and saw that no one was following me. For he’d already killed three and not one made it past him.

There was a head on the ground amongst the bodies. Cherno’s head.

I halted mid-sprint, knowing well he would scold me for it later. Still, I stopped, curiosity and terror winning me over. To my right stood an ancient oak tree. I lunged behind it, remaining fully concealed by its wide trunk.

And I watched as he tore through the rest of them.

They were nothing to him. Nothing.

He killed fluidly. Different than he’d been with that ebony, scaled beast. The beast had been just that: a beast, a massive creature three times his size, and he had played with it. These were just men, and no man was a match for him.

He did not laugh while he slaughtered them. No sinister grin contorted his face. By the time he pulled his scimitar from the throat of one Insidion, his sharp cleaver was lodged into the skull of another. He knew where they were—every one of them—and he butchered them all.

I remembered Ezra’s command at the temple. Advice that this time, I did not heed.

“Don’t watch… Trust me.”