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My throat clenched. I resisted the urge to reach out to him, to care about him. “That water must be freezing.”
“Concerned about me?” He held his hands up to inspect them. “Should I be touched?”
“I didn’t save your life just so you could die of hypothermia.”
His shoulders tensed. “You’re right.” When he stood, his pale eyes glinted in the light of the dying sun. “You saved my life.”
The intensity in his stare took my breath away.
He dropped to one knee. “I swear undying loyalty to you until the debt is repaid.”
4
His words sounded formal, as if he had memorized them from a book. I was speechless. Silence stretched between us. He kept kneeling before me, his face inscrutable, his dark hair stirring in the wind.
He almost looked like a man proposing marriage.
Finally, I laughed. “Undyingloyalty? You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“Ardis.” He had never said my name before. It curled low in my belly. “I would never joke about such a serious vow.”
“But what does this even mean?”
“I pledge myself to protect you. I will do anything necessary.”
Anything.I didn’t doubt that.
“Well, fuck,” I whispered.
Bring him back to Vienna. That was my mission. It ended the moment I delivered him to the archmages. Then I would be done, and on to the next mission. But that never involved him falling to one knee and swearing undying loyalty to me.
When a crow cawed in a nearby pine, I flinched. Fatigue always frayed my nerves.
“Only until Vienna,” I said. “I—I have work to do.”
“Right.” He all but rolled his eyes. “Back to business, killing for the highest bidder. I can help, you know. I’m good at killing.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
His smile was frosty. “Though I prefer to work with the dead.”
“Get up.” I exhaled a cloud of white. “We’re going.”
He stood, wincing, and clutched his wounded arm to his chest. “Where?”
“The train in Petroseni. It leaves in about an hour.”
“We’re riding there?”
“No.” I glanced at the sky. “We’re flying.”
Diesel engines powered a zeppelin skyward.
Wendel closed his eyes and leaned against the wall of the zeppelin’s utilitarian cargo hold. His borrowed long coat was slightly too big for him. The sleeves partly covered the white knuckles of his clenched hands.
Was he always this deathly pale?
“You need to drink something,” I said. “The medic said plenty of fluids.”
