Page 133 of The Silversmith

Maybe I didn’t have to kill Molochai to free my people from him.

Molochai had been scorned by the woman he loved. He’d lost himself in the rejection. If the one thing that had driven Molochai off the edge was not having Christabel… maybe I could replace her. If I looked like Simeon—looked like her—maybe I was close enough.

Maybe the one thing that undid Molochai could put him back together just enough to end the suffering.

And I could feel free knowing the ones I loved were safe.

Indeed, I could get Gavin’s wife back and save my people. I could make a deal of my own. Me and my power in exchange for Gavin’s wife and Nyrida’s freedom, and with the condition that Molochai and I would leave Nyrida and never come back. I remembered Gemma and Finn mentioning foreign lands across the Brinnean sea.

It hurt most parts of me to stand, but I did. I’d refused to promise Gavin I wouldn’t sacrifice myself for my people. That was true. I would do what I needed to do. And for him, his happiness, and his peace, I would do more.

I had to do something.

With shaking fingers and blurry eyes, I wrote down what I wanted him to know. Then, I slid into my boots, climbed out the first floor window, and stole the single, dark-brown gelding at the inn. Gavin would be slow to follow on foot if he tried.

I stopped at the edge of the forest. Gavin and Felix were nowhere to be found. I took one last look at the green and red firelights of the solstice celebrations.

And I rode south to Molochai’s camp.

Chapter thirty-one

Gavin Smyth - 24th of Floris, 402 Years Ago

Ihad been working since dawn on a set of iron candlesticks and a detailed piece of silver art decorated with intricate metal vines and leaves. It was some asshole’s last-minute gift to his wife for a forgotten twenty-fifth anniversary. Normally, I wouldn’t waste my energy on some prick’s urgent demands, but he was paying me triple to have it done within the day.

So here I was, a slave to coin and well past any reasonable hour for supper, perfecting my trade for someone who would find my efforts unappreciated.

But a man had to eat.

The coals were white hot, the ashes like a chalky snow that would burn through flesh in fractions of a second. I knew that smell of burnt flesh well enough and had scars here and there to show for it, though it had been a while since I’d gotten too close to the coals.

“Excuse me, sir?”

A woman’s sweet voice broke the silence. That word, directed toward me, had me chuckling. I’d been called many things by many women. Sir was not one of them.

But spoken in that voice, I fucking liked it a little too much.

Generally, I preferred my women like iron and steel—flexible and willing when hot. Quickly chilled with ice-cold words and water when it was all said and done.

I wanted them eager to please and easy to part with. With their asses in the air, hair wrapped around my hands, and their faces effortlessly forgotten. By the way I heard this woman’s bleeding heart in her voice, I could tell she was not for me.

I turned around to the source of that sweet voice with every intention of telling her to get the hell out before she regretted it. I opened my mouth to order her away, because I didn’t like women in my arms. I liked them on their knees.

But one look at her, and I knew she would put me on mine.

My smirk disappeared. The breath left my lungs as if Sussurro himself had reached inside my chest with his golden hand and ripped it right out. A pit—a cavern infinitely deep—formed in my stomach as I searched for adequate words to describe her. There were none, and there never would be.

Her eyes were a deep forest-green speckled with gold, as if the sun was shining through the canopy of her soul. She had adorable freckles over the bridge of a button nose. And her silver-blonde locks, bound by a loose, long braid that curled around the curve of her perfect, kissable neck, made me imagine things I would crush the skull of any other man for thinking.

A shiver wracked my body, and I cursed quietly at the new territorial need possessing me.

She wore a dark-violet cloak made of velvet, embroidered with black flowers. Thin, shiny black boots. She came from money, that much was clear. She embodied power and grace. Whatever realm of heaven had dropped her into my blacksmith’s shop was far too good for me.

Panic pressed me to force her away, if only to protect myself from the inevitable attachment that was already rooting in my chest. But I refrained, because within those first seconds, the desire to keep her right where she stood trumped the frantic fear of whatever deep, unknown agony this girl could inflict upon me should she wish.

She was young—too young. No older than seventeen.

But she was mine.