Page 81 of The Silversmith

I shuddered when I saw fresh blood oozing from the barely healed knife wound on his left shoulder. The one I put there days ago and reopened just now.

“I’m sor—”

“Don’t you dare apologize.” His deep voice was clipped, his jaw tight. “You will fight, you will survive, and you will apologize for nothing.”

He stepped to the side and gestured for me to pass before him back to the tavern.

I obeyed, but for the rest of the day, I refused to look at him or talk to him.

I knew why he’d done it, and though I would never admit it to him, I was glad he had.

That burst of energy—that defiant eruption I’d felt upon thrusting my momentum forward to hurt my attacker—had been missing last night. And we both knew I’d needed to find whatever would make me fight. To kill. If pure self-preservation wasn’t enough to motivate me, then I needed something else, another type of fuel. I needed to find it now before someone even worse came after me.

And I’d found it. Injustice. Against others. Even against me. Hatred of all things unfair. I loathed myself for hurting him by accident while he attacked me, provoked me, scared me, willingly.

It had felt anything but fair.

He knew it. So he helped me find a drop of that fuel in a space that was safe.

Safe for me, though not his groin, flesh wound, or bloody lip.

Chapter twenty

After training on the third morning in Tovick, I waited for Gemma, hoping we might spend the day together, but she and Finn were nowhere to be found. Where they hid away, I didn’t know, but I assumed they weren’t both “sleeping” in the same room as the others.

Gavin remained close but quiet, probably sensing that I was still irked about his surprise attack from yesterday. Training that morning had been awkward. I ran and sparred with Ezra without giving my teacher a single word or look.

After lunch, I sat on a tattered leather sofa in the back room of the tavern, happily out of sight from its daily customers. The book Ezra had given me for my birthday was informative but dull. I’d already read through it twice and could recite the Rexus dynasty rulers and the years of their reigns. Now, in the present, with all that lay ahead, it didn’t feel useful.

And I needed to feel useful.

Eventually, my patience ran out. I asked for more books, and Damond delivered, escorting me and a silent Gavin to a magnificent library a few blocks south of the tavern. My old home in Warrich didn’t have that many books, and I had read through each one several times over. But the towering red-brick cylinder with a glass ceiling cross-hatched with iron had thousands.

I almost tripped when I entered, too focused on the lofty black iron staircase spiraling all the way to the top to notice two wooden steps beyond the entryway. I caught myself and turned in circles, eyes upward, gawking. I didn’t know so many books could exist in one place at a time. I didn’t know so many books existed at all.

Every space on the wall was a bookshelf, and not a single ledge was empty. Volumes bound with black and reds and blues and greens, were all the decor this space needed. It would take years—lifetimes, maybe—to get through these. I wondered if Elias liked to read. If, after going to the Caves, I could come back here again. Maybe he’d come with me.

Gavin strode past, sparing neither of us a glance as he grabbed a thick blue book from a shelf and sat, overtaking the majority of a brown leather love seat on the main floor near the door. Forever my sentry.

No, I reminded myself, stomach dropping. Not forever.

I followed Damond to a circular table in the center of a room illuminated by chandeliers crafted with iron and green wax candles lit with bright flames. “Does he not trust you to be alone with me?” I muttered so only Damond could hear.

“He does, actually.” Damond pulled out a chair and gestured for me to sit. “He’s a possessive, jealous bastard when it comes to you. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I—” He clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth, contemplating how to continue. “Well, Ary, you’re not my type. I have… alternate interests.”

My brow furrowed, not quite understanding.

Damond merely chuckled at my confusion, waving a hand. “In any case, with or without you, I’m not sure you could keep him out of this place if you tried.”

“Why not?”

A twinkling smile gleamed on Damond’s face, his cheek pushing against the bottom rim of his round glasses. “Because it’s his. He built it.”

My mouth fell open. I looked up at the iron features dominating the space. Likely crafted, at least in part, by a blacksmith. “The whole library? He built the whole library?”

Damond nodded. “Blacksmith, stonemason, glazier, carpenter—Smyth is many things.” He gestured around. “It’s his home, actually, here in Tovick. He’s got living quarters downstairs. Indeed, he’s my friend and could stay with me whenever he wants, but he prefers to distance himself from The Black Badger whenever possible. My ‘hedonistic shithole,’ he so lovingly describes it.”

I frowned at that.