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“Oh, sweetheart, you can’t begin to imagine what exactly I’m thinking right about now. Let me see this.” Another tug on the fabric revealed two scabbing marks where his teeth must’ve punctured skin, though purple-blue bruises colored the outline of his bite print. “This is fucking awful.”
Galantia shoved my finger off, tugging the scarf back over it as if Malyr’s bite mark was something precious that needed covering and cradling. “I said it’s fine.”
“None of this isfine.” Everything was different from how I left it, leaving me desperate to reconnect with her, to show her that I might not kiss, but I did care for her deeper than I’d realized until now. “How long ago did this—”
“Stop fussing about it!”
All blood left my face, letting my cheeks prickle with the onset of numbness. “I just meant to help.”
“I know,” she said, her features finally softening as her gaze lowered to the ground. “But it’s not needed. He didn’t do it in malice or in a flare of temper. I… I wanted this.”
“You… wanted him to bite your scar?” I’d never much judged Malyr’s sexual urges, or questioned why they were how they were, but this? “That’s a new sort of deranged.”
“I don’t expect you to understand.” She threw a hand up as if she didn’t quite understand it either, and then turned toward the window by the desk. “At first, when he hurt me, there was only pain. Then, it aroused me. But now…” A sigh. “There’s something more to the pain, the hate, the resentment. Something I always wanted.”
Strange how, against the dropping of my stomach and the numbness that spread across my skin, my first thought was that Malyr had to be a damn good kisser. So good, he’d actually managed to make her think this wayward dynamic between them was love—or, at least, something on the verge of it.
Just like I’d feared.
I swallowed past a lump in my throat, feeling sorry for her and me right along with it because… Where did this leave me? “You know, you can never bethatfor Malyr, either.”
She swung around, deep vertical wrinkles set between her glistening eyes. “Why do you have to say that, hmm?”
Because he had stirred her up against me as if he had any truer claim to her that wasn’t based on politics and negotiations. “All I’m trying to tell you is that you should be careful around Malyr and question his motives.”
“Question his…” She gripped the train of her shift as if her level of perplexity required her to cling to something. “What aboutyourmotives, Sebian?”
“Oh, my motives are in question now? Mine?” The only man of two who actually cared about her in a way I hadn’t in years? So manylonelyyears. “From the moment I took you, I looked after you as well as I could, didn’t I?”
“And why, pray tell, might that have been?” A lift of her chin. “The time a man has to wait before he can kill his enemy is well-spent between the legs of his enemy’s betrothed.”
My jaws locked up so fast and hard that my ears twitched, because that sure as shit sounded like the stuff that came out of Malyr’s mouth. “I’ll chance a guess. He told you?”
“Does that make it any less true?”
“No.” But it made me wonder all the more why he’d clearly been busy these last eight days, driving a wedge between Galantia and me, putting a heavy burden on our friendship. “I wanted you to fucking scream my name when I made you come, and have it echo in your head while that bastard Domren failed to get you there. The difference being that I could discern between you and Domren while, to Malyr, youareand alwayswill bea Brisden.”
“And yet, at times, I can make him forget,” she murmured.
“Do you know that Cici came out of his chambers the morning I left?” I asked, if only in a pitiful attempt to turn this shit right back around on him. “She looked a tad… disheveled.”
For the fraction of a second, her lips turned into a narrow line, but she nodded it away. “He told me that he spoke to her. Malyr sent wagonloads of grains and food to Tidestone, to ensure the army he needs is fed come spring, yes, but also to reassure me of hismotives.Lord Taradur is overseeing the safe transport.”
“Malyr extending a kindness toward your father, even if it gives him a slight benefit?” My stomach gave a strange roil, almost like a warning from my guts, because I didn’t believe that for a fucking second. “If anything, Malyr personally drilled holes into the wagons to have it all spill on the way there.”
“Well, I guess we’ll find out once it arrives sometime after my visit with my parents,” she said. “I tried finding fault in his motives, Sebian. I really did. But I couldn’t. And I’m no longer trying.”
Yeah, Malyr had obviously kissed her wits goodbye, because something about this story didn’t add up. “When did he command the food be transported to Tidestone?”
She shrugged. “The day you left, I presume? Like I said, the decision somehow came out of the conversation with Cici, which was why she was in his chambers in the first place.”
“And when did he tell you about the arrival time?”
“Same day. At the cliffs.”
The day Malyr had spilled ink over a handful of snowflakes…
My gaze trailed to the window. Or more precisely, to the white blanket of snow beyond it. Flying the distance between the southern stores and Tidestone took about five days. No amount of horses could pull that through snow and muck in the timeline she suggested.
