AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ivy offers me a small smile. “And I’d be willing to wager good money that you did as good a job as you could with the information you had. In any case, it isn’t your job to protect me. There’s nothing to fail.”
A growl creeps up my throat. “I failed to even stop King Konram from placing that wretched demand on you. I know how much you’ve hated every time you’ve taken a life. And the moment you do, every other scourge sorcerer there will be out for your blood. He shouldn’t have asked it of you. He’s got a whole army trained to kill for him.”
Somehow her smile turns even more sad. “But none of them could make it to a meeting of the Order of the Wild.”
The growl bursts out of me. I push to my feet with a surge of resolve. “I should put an end to this entire thing. March down the hall to Torstem’s office and run him straight through.”
Ivy catches my hand. “And then what? His main accomplices will have a chance to scatter and regroup. The king will have to put you on trial. It’ll come out that I infiltrated their group, and then anyone out for vengeance will come after me anyway. How does that help anyone?”
I exhale in a rush, but I don’t have an answer.
Ivy straightens her posture with an air of resolve. “At least if I do it myself, I can control the situation. I can probably take him down without the others even realizing the knife was mine. And then it’ll be over.”
She says the last three words like a prayer.
I shake my head. “And you’ll have to carry that much more weight on your conscience because I’m too damaged to shield you.”
The anguish of my latest dreams echoes through me—the dreams where I see her up on the hangman’s platform from across the square, the executioner just looping the noose around her neck. The dreams where I run and yell, but my boots sink into the cobblestones like mud, and I’m still much to far away when the trap door drops beneath her.
Ivy shatters the image with a guffaw and gets to her feet. “Stavros, I’ve seen you spar. If it comes to a fight, I’d rather have you defending me than anyone else, even myself. If you were too ‘damaged’ to be a threat, I wouldn’t have been scared of you. But we can settle this right now.”
I’m distracted enough by her use of the past tense when she mentions her fear that I don’t quite process her last statement. “Settle what?”
The next thing I know, the woman before me has whipped a knife from her boot and lunged at me.
If she could read my emotions in that moment, she’d know how true everything I said to her is. My pulse jumps with surprise and a little alarm, but nothing close to panic.
I know down to my soul that she isn’t turning traitor on me. This isn’t a real attack.
But that doesn’t mean she’ll shy away from jabbing me a little if it proves her point.
The tip of Ivy’s blade skims the side of my hand just before I block her strike. A pinprick of pain tells me she broke the skin.
More than two decades of honed combat instincts kick in. I shift my posture, dodge her next blow, and check her stance for an opening.
I took off my sword belt after I came back to the room, so I’ve only got my hands to work with, though the metal prosthetic serves as a decent weapon. I snatch at her wrist to try to disarm her, but she darts out of the way just in time.
Her knife never stops flashing for an instant. She’s no match for me in size, but she’s so fast I barely have the chance to overpower her.
As we circle the sofa and approach the window, Ivy keeps me on the defensive, blocking and parrying. But I’ve fought difficult battles before.
I rap her shin just hard enough to put her off-balance and attempt to topple her with a shove of my shoulder. Ivy scrambles backward, but she’s retreating now.
Her knife clangs off my prosthetic, and I wrench the curved metal loop around just in time to snag on Ivy’s hand. With a twist, I send the weapon careening across the room.
I yank her arm toward me and catch it in my other hand. With a breathless laugh, Ivy squirms against my hold. Her knee rams toward my gut.
She doesn’t have a hope without her blade. Tucking my other arm around her head to cushion it, I heave us both onto the floor and let my much larger frame pin her limbs in place.
“That’s enough,” I say. “What in the realms are you playing at?”
Ivy beams up at me, her hair fanned across my forearm, her grin so bright even the blurring of my vision can’t hide its delight. “Not playing. Just proving why I don’t have to worry about your protective abilities. Even whenI’mattacking you, you manage to protect me as well as yourself.”
I stare down at her, my stomach flipping over with a heady rush like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
Gods above, this woman is more than incredible. I don’t have the words to describe her.
But describing isn’t what I most want to do with her right now.
