Page 54 of The Silversmith

I was wholly disarmed beneath the intensity of his stare and weight of his words. Despite his brutality toward the world around us, I felt safe with him to want things I’d never known how to want.

My feeble knees threatened to undermine me. I stared at his mouth—full, symmetrical lips, rich with color, framed by a soft, dark-brown beard. I wondered how those lips felt, how they tasted. Those lips were parted like mine.

Hungry, maybe, like mine.

But one word echoed through the heady fog of my mind, loud and clear.

Wife. His wife. And what he wanted, it—she—would not slip through his fingers again.

“Good—” I stumbled over the word, withdrew my arm from his grasp, and cleared my throat. “Good night.”

After crawling beneath my quilt, I was afraid to look back.

***

I descended a staircase of elegant black marble, curved around a brightly lit, grandiose foyer. I felt like I was floating. But not the fun, light, airy kind of floating. No, I couldn’t compare this sensation to flight. Parts of my body felt elsewhere. Dispersed throughout the room, fractured at odd angles, like broken bones or shards of dull glass no longer capable of refracting light. Parts of me void of life.

And at the bottom of the stairs, Phillip and Oliver lay dead in pools of blood.

I screamed in the dream, but no sound came out. When I inhaled, the breath cut off halfway to my lungs. I was stuck on that staircase. Stuck in scattered pieces with half-breaths like I had been stuck in that golden casket and—

“Aryella.”

I heard him, but the emptiness was swallowing me whole.

“Open your eyes, Ella.”

I woke the moment I felt his hand on my face. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of his protective form kneeling in the dirt. The fire flickered behind him, stars were bright in the sky, but I saw only him.

“Breathe with me.” He led me through a few long, deep breaths. “That’s it,” he encouraged, softly stroking my cheek with his thumb, summoning an addictive warmth to my skin. “Good girl.”

I reached up to grab a hold of his wrists like I had after that first nightmare. My gaze drifted to where the others lay, but it was quiet.

Gavin shook his head, guiding my eyes back to his. “They’re all asleep. It’s just you and me.”

I wondered how that was, having woken up the entire room after my last nightmare. “Did I scream?”

“You were crying. It was quiet, but—”

“And you heard me from over there?” I nodded to Gavin’s sleeping mat on the other side of our camp, at least fifteen paces away. Untouched.

“No. I was sitting next to you. After today, what we saw—what you saw—I just wanted…” He swallowed thickly. A nervous Gavin Smyth was an oddly heartbreaking sight. “I wanted to be close to you.”

My heart stumbled and sighed. I closed my eyes, knowing I could only handle either the tug in my chest or the comfort of his gaze. Both, and I might throw my arms around him.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.” But I continued anyway, like he drew the truth right out of me. “Phillip and Oliver… I found them dead, and it… my heart feels like it has a fungus.” My eyes burned and tears dripped off my cheeks. “But it’ll just do the same to you.”

“The damage to me is done.” He stroked my cheek. “I promise. Better me than you, Ella.”

I closed my eyes and leaned into his warmth.

“Give me your burden,” he gently implored.

My desperate need for his comfort was so overwhelming, I thought I might suffocate if he took it away.

“All of it,” he added, “so that you don’t have to carry it anymore.”