Page 148 of The Silversmith

“Five minutes, Smyth!” snapped Damond. “Give me five min—”

“She is my wife!”

That voice. Once warm and soothing, now cold, threatening. My leaping heart and churning stomach collided and made a tangled disaster of my torso. Whether from the physical pain or that evoked by recollected truths, I didn’t know. But it hurt.

I could still hear their voices outside the door, but they had lowered them enough that I couldn’t make out what they said. Outside the opaque glass window, I saw gentle blue and white foam washing over sand. A beach, and beyond it, the gray sky of a winter’s day loomed.

The door to the small bedroom creaked, and I looked up to see Damond. He closed the door partway, turned, and gave me a contrite smile. He wore brown pants and a blue sweater. On his head—the same round glasses and impressive mop of brown curls. I’d seen him only days before, but it felt like lifetimes.

“Hey, Ary.”

I eyed him warily, remembering the conversation with Gavin I’d overheard that first night in Tovick. There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that he’d known. Never again would I trust so easily. It would lead me to destroy myself. Not Damond, not a single one of my friends, not Simeon or Elowen or anyone in those Caves.

And certainly not Gavin Smyth.

He read the doubt on my face and promised, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I grunted through the pain of hoisting myself from laying to sitting.

“Try to stay still—”

I silenced Damond with a furious glare, nostrils flaring, lip curled, and could tell I startled him. Indeed, I startled myself with the flames of disdain charring my insides. Had never felt anything so unsettling and had never cared so little about what anyone had to say about it.

“Molochai dragged a knife through my body.”

“Yeah.” Damond shuddered, lowering himself into a wooden chair beside the bed. “Yeah, he did.”

“He ripped out my heart.”

Damond nodded.

“And then he threw me over the edge of a fucking cliff.”

Nervously, he shifted in his seat and nodded again.

“My heart’s beating, Damond.”

“Viridian.” He gestured to me. “God of Healing… and Regeneration.”

I gave a low, disbelieving snicker and shook my head.

“It’s true, Ary,” he contested.

“I was dead, Damond. I remember being somewhere else.” The words snapped out of me. My throat pinched at the memory of Oliver. “How could I have remade my own heart if I was dead?”

“He told me he prayed to the Selvaren. Something ancient, in their language.” Damond bent forward and clasped his hands in his lap. “He saw it with his own eyes. Your blood pooled around you, the ground tasted it, knew it was you, and then you breathed as if your blood commanded life itself.”

“He,” I uttered coldly.

But I knew who. Had heard his rumbling voice just moments earlier on the other side of that bedroom door. He was here.

Molochai’s son.

The Butcher of Nyrida.

Fragments of the dream I’d just woken from drifted back. I sat there and relived it all.

Oliver. His words. His… peace.