Page 97 of The Silversmith

I let out a quiet chuckle. “No, that’s for me. What do you want?”

“I just…” He cupped my face in his hand, searching my eyes until I couldn’t breathe. “I just want you to know me… know who I am, Ella.”

“I do.” I rested my hand over his heart. “I know you.”

His thick throat bobbed as he swallowed. A want-filled stare darted to my mouth. I feared his kiss almost as much as I wished for it. Because I knew it would enliven me and gut me all at once.

But more than I wanted his kiss, I dreaded the separation of our bodies. And I knew, if I leaned in any farther, he’d toss me to the other side of the pool again just to escape temptation. So, before he could force a safe distance between us, I wrapped my arms around his neck, my legs around his waist, and buried my face in his shoulder so he couldn’t be tempted. So he had to hold me instead.

And he did.

My eyes and throat burned at the truth I was afraid to admit. I cried silently into his shoulder, realizing Warrich was not my home. Phillip, Elowen, and even Ollie, who I loved dearly and would give my life to bring back, were not my home.

Those Caves filled with my friends, my people, and my betrothed, were not my home.

He was home.

A home I could not keep.

Chapter twenty-three

He carried me out of the hot spring minutes later. When he separated my arms from around his neck and set me down beside my bag and dry clothing, his reluctance to meet my gaze churned my stomach.

“Why are you wearing that vial around your neck?” In an effort to distract myself from the sharp twinge of his averted eyes, I looked at the emerald liquid swirling with eerie life inside the confines of its small glass container. Until he turned his back to me and pulled the shirt he’d been wearing over his head. “I’ve seen it twice now. You’ve been wearing it with your rings since we left this morning.”

“It’s nothing.” He tucked it beneath his collar.

“Secrets.” I tsked. “You know, they might catch up with you one day.”

He briefly winced but offered no response.

For hours, he said nothing. We rode in excruciating silence, and even though I wore fresh undergarments, my green wool cap was fastened cozily on my head, and he wrapped himself around me, I felt cold.

Our black mare had incredible endurance, but even she had to stop and rest a few times. The steep and jagged edges of the Wymaran mountains were treacherous and took her longer to traverse. When she stopped, we ate the bread, jerky, cheese, and berries we’d packed.

We followed this pattern until dusk, when finally, we reached the outskirts of a tiny village consisting of a single tavern, an inn, and a few homes. From afar, it reminded me of how the small village outside of Tovick might have looked before the Insidions ransacked it. Whispers of smoke slithered out of the few chimney stacks, and though the dull, shadowy light of dawn had yet to disappear, candles cast a calm glow in many of the windows.

We dismounted our mare to search for a stable to rest and shelter her from the cold. There was a thin cluster of evergreen trees around the village—more trees than we’d seen all day in the rocky, mountainous tundra. The map Finn had given me for my birthday was tucked away in my bag, but I had Nyrida’s landscapes memorized enough to know the return of trees meant we were drawing closer to Brinnea and the sea.

I felt compelled to give our mare gentle strokes of thanks along her sleek black neck before retiring her for the evening. Her nearly onyx eyes seemed to smile back at me.

When I turned to follow Gavin toward the village, I was stopped by something hard. His arm—a steel cage that curled around and pulled me into his side.

“Don’t move.”

Turning my head as little as possible, I followed his eyes and choked in a horrified breath. I saw the ugliest creature I had ever seen.

Just north of the village, at the edge of the tree line, stood an ebony beast with iridescent scales, razor-sharp teeth—a hundred of them, at least—and four feet with blades for claws. Twice the size of any bear or wolf.

“What is that?” I breathed, my fingers tightening on the sleeve of his jacket. The beast had a head like a boar with two gaping holes for a nose and steam for breath. It had yet to see us, too busy feasting on a doe.

“One of Molochai’s. I don’t know what he calls them.” He shifted, and I looked down upon hearing the faint swish of metal. With his free arm, he unsheathed a long, curved blade. A scimitar, I remembered one of my friends had called it. “I don’t typically bother with introductions.”

I shuddered. “I thought they didn’t come this far north.”

With the arm that shielded me, he withdrew another weapon from inside his worn leather jacket—the one he usually wore, though I’d never given any thought to the things he stored beneath it. Nausea churned my stomach when I saw the second weapon. The sheer brutality of it.

The hatchet blade was connected to a well-worn wooden handle. I had watched Phillip use something similar once to cut up our cow after she died. It was a meat cleaver. A butcher’s knife.