Chapter Thirty-Nine Riela
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Riela
Strong arms caught me as the world shifted under my feet. No, that wasn’t the world, that was Garrick hoisting me up against
his chest because my legs had given out. I was cold and exhausted, worn thin from channeling too much magic.
And I had to do it again tomorrow.
I squinted at the early evening sky. Whenever tomorrow was. I was too tired to work out the time difference.
My stomach growled, and I shuddered as I remembered the dinner I hadn’t been able to enjoy because a bleeding Etheri had dangled
overhead. “You’re not really going to keep Lord Cainsian suspended for a month are you?”
“He’s lucky I didn’t kill him,” Garrick said flatly.
“But won’t that kill him?”
“No, it’ll just make him wish he were dead. And hopefully it’ll make everyone else think twice before they insult or attack
you.”
“So it’s my fault,” I whispered.
“No,” Garrick growled, jostling me slightly. “I gave him the chance to apologize. He chose not to, even knowing what the refusal
would mean.”
Garrick stepped forward into my bedroom. Unlike me, he didn’t need to pass through a physical doorway first. I considered
the unfairness for a moment before dragging my mind back to our current conversation.
“I can’t eat with him overhead,” I admitted softly. “It was all I could do to make it through one meal.”
“Blame me,” Garrick demanded as he moved toward the chairs in the little sitting area. Silver flames ignited in the fireplace, and he dragged one of the chairs closer, then sank into it with me in his lap.
I blinked at him, but my tired brain couldn’t parse what he meant. “Blame you for what?”
“For your sickness. If I’m the cause, your nausea will transfer to me.”
“But it’s not your fault,” I argued, then amended, “Mostly not your fault. None of the Etheri seemed to have a problem with it.” I shuddered. “Lord Lotuk licked the blood from his
hand like it was part of the meal. Do Etheri drink blood?”
“No, he was just trying to get a rise out of you.”
“It worked.” I blinked sleepily as the heat of the fire started sinking into my chilled flesh, but a thought made me sit up
and look around with a frown. “Wait, did Vastien make it back with us?”
Garrick’s arms tightened almost imperceptibly. “Yes, he’s patrolling in his wolf form.”
I slumped back down and tucked myself against Garrick’s chest, trying to steal some of his warmth. “You should’ve told me
he was Etheri.”
“He wouldn’t make a very good spy if I gave away all of his secrets,” Garrick responded, his voice dry.
“I petted him! Like a dog!”
Garrick chuckled. “If he didn’t want you to touch him, he wouldn’t have let you. Grooming and petting are no more intimate
than someone brushing your hair.”
“That is intimate,” I grumbled. My nose wrinkled, and I corrected myself. “Or it requires some level of trust, I guess. I let Lady
Bria do my hair for dinner, but she mostly used magic, and Vastien was there, too.”
Garrick ran a finger over one of the many braids I needed to undo before I slept. “It was beautiful.”
The little glow of warmth the comment caused was tempered by the fact that I didn’t know if he was complimenting me or Bria. I sucked in a fortifying breath and asked the question that had been plaguing me all evening. “Is Lady Bria your betrothed?”
Garrick’s body turned to stone under me. After a long, long pause, he finally murmured, “It’s . . . complicated.”
My heart sank. That wasn’t a no, but when I tried to squirm out of his lap, he refused to let me go. “Put me down,” I demanded
quietly.
“No.” Before I could blow up at him, he tucked me closer and whispered, “I would like to tell you a story. Just . . . listen.”
He took a deep breath and let it out as a soft sigh before beginning. “Once upon a time, there were three children who were
inseparable. Two boys and a girl, close in age, but not in status. One of the boys was treated like a prince.”
I snorted, and Garrick smiled before continuing. “The other boy was poor but loved. But the girl, the girl was not loved. Her father hadn’t wanted a daughter—hadn’t wanted children at all—but when the girl’s mother disappeared, he was honor
bound to take her in.
“The boys did their best to protect their friend, but they were young, mere children, and the girl’s father was highly respected.
So the three of them hatched a plan—the little prince would court the girl, and her power-hungry father, seeing her potential
worth as a future queen, would treat her better.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while,” Garrick murmured. “Long enough for the girl to grow up and find her own power. But by then, there were others
who were desperate to get closer to the prince, and so his friend returned the favor by continuing the ruse.”
“And the other little boy?” I asked, already guessing the answer.
“Watched the prince’s back.”
I nodded. It was as I’d expected. Softly, I asked, “Are you sure Bria remembers it’s a ruse?”
Garrick’s silence was answer enough, and this time, he allowed me to stand. I tipped his face up so I could see his eyes.
My hand cradled his gorgeous jaw and yearning hit so strongly that I had to blink back tears.
“Lady Bria was kind to me because I was important to you. I will not repay that kindness with betrayal, nor will I be a poor substitute for her while we’re on this side of the door.”
His eyes flashed. “Is that what you think you are?”
I smiled sadly. I knew I was no match for the lovely Etheri. “You’ve made me no promises, and I don’t expect any. But I won’t
be involved with someone who is betrothed—real or not.”
Garrick studied my face for a moment before understanding broke across his. “You’re jealous. That’s why you were so quiet
when you returned from your bath.”
My temper woke. “Actually, I was furious that you could go from having your tongue in my mouth to making doe eyes at another
woman in the space of an hour.”
He laughed, the bastard.
I turned to storm away, even though this was my bedroom, but he snaked an arm around my hips, pinning me in place. I rounded on him. “Let me go.”
“No.” He swept my feet out from under me and I tumbled back into his lap. “Bria isn’t my lover,” he said quickly, and I stopped
trying to escape long enough to listen. “She never has been. She is, however, one of my oldest friends. Just like Vastien.
And I still wanted to punch that smug wolf directly in the face because he’d helped you bathe—and then offered to wash your
back. I knew he was just trying to get a rise out of me, and I still lost control. Because I was jealous.”
Garrick’s voice was a dark rumble of sound, and I blinked, momentarily distracted. “Vastien kept his eyes closed the entire
time.”
Some of the tension eased from Garrick’s body. “He’d better have.”
“You were jealous?” I asked quietly, certain I’d heard him wrong.
“Bitterly, yes.”
My heart fluttered at the honesty in his tone. He wouldn’t be jealous if he didn’t care, at least a little. “I wanted to hate Bria,” I admitted quietly. “But she was so kind when she didn’t have to be. I was serious earlier. I won’t betray her by sneaking around behind her back.”
Garrick raised my hand to his lips and brushed a featherlight kiss across my knuckles. I shivered and his eyes darkened, but
he merely murmured, “When we return, I will speak with her.”
“Don’t break her heart, Garrick. She deserves better.” He nodded in agreement, and I climbed to my feet. My legs were wobbly,
but I managed to turn and sit at the nearby table. “Good. Now make me some stew and some of that vile tea, if you please.”
I glanced at him. “Do you think I could hide the tea’s taste in the stew?”
He chuckled. “I think you’d ruin a whole bowl of stew if you tried.”
I fell asleep before the sky had completely darkened and awoke with dawn painting the horizon faintly pink. I wasn’t rested,
exactly, but I no longer felt like my heart was being squeezed through my ribs, so I counted it as a small victory.
I washed and dressed in the silvery blue tunic that was quickly becoming my favorite. I paired it with dark trousers and the
tall boots Garrick had given me. No one would mistake me for Etheri, but at least my clothes would blend in. Hopefully.
I picked up the stack of books from my bedside table and asked the castle to take me to the library. When I stepped through
the door, the room was unexpectedly bright, and I blinked against the light.
I put the books on the return pile, since Garrick’s magic could return them faster than I could, then went to gather some
new volumes.
I rounded the shelf and found Garrick slumped over the table we’d been using as a research staging area. He glanced up when
I appeared, and I paused in surprise at his rumpled hair and the intense exhaustion on his face. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks,” he replied, voice bone dry.
“What happened?”
He let out a weary sigh and gestured at the table. “I channeled a great deal of magic yesterday, then I spent the night looking for a way to make it easier for you to keep us in Lohka.”
“And? Did you find anything?”
“Nothing semipermanent.” At my questioning frown, he elaborated, “A blood bond would probably remove the touching requirement,
at least, but it can’t be reversed. And it has unwanted side effects.”
Grim slid into view from between two shelves like a dark ghost, and I still found it hard to believe that this wolf was also
Vastien, the person. “Good morning,” I murmured. “Can you really understand me like this?”
Grim snorted and pointedly looked away from me, his canine chin in the air, and I laughed. “Okay, I deserved that.”
I pulled out the chair across from Garrick and looked at the mess he’d made of my neat stacks of books. “Which of these have
you looked at?”
“All of them.”
“All of them?” I asked in surprise. There had to be at least fifty new books on the table in addition to the stacks I’d gathered
for myself. No wonder he looked so haggard.