Chapter 21 Galwell
Galwell
He woke with pounding in his head.
No, Galwell realized. It wasn’t only in his head. The pounding was the rhythm of music echoing in the room, damning his efforts
to doze. Ugh.
He groaned, righting himself on the uncomfortable booth where he’d curled up for fitful sleep. The revelry in Mona’s club
had only died down for several hours, and now the pummeling music was restarting?
Except he was in no position to complain. Mona was sheltering him from the entire Vestriyan royal guard, who were out for
his head.
Well, they could have it if this headache carried on.
He rubbed his stinging eyes, preparing for a miserable day of hiding. Of cowardice. Should he get drunk? Would that improve
matters? He’d never gotten drunk before, his large and muscular body seeming always to absorb the drink’s effects faster than
he could imbibe. Perhaps that could be his goal for the wayward day—drunkenness.
He waved down one of Mona’s leather-clad servers. “Your . . . worst alcohol please,” he demanded with heavy-tongued words.
The server eyed him pityingly. One more new experience for Galwell the Great. Pity! How grand.
He hunched in his seat while the server departed to retrieve his order. He wondered whether the staff recognized him. Whether they cared they were sheltering Vestriya’s fugitive wanted for murdering their prince. Or had Mona’s depravity, her entire lack of morals—
“Our worst alcohol?”
The amused voice repeating his order shook him from his condemnations. Mona stood over him, holding what he presumed was his
drink.
She slid into the booth opposite him, not surrendering the glass. Her smirk was ruthless. “Look at you,” she crowed. “What
a villain you’ve become.”
Galwell glared. He reached for his drink—his hope of salvation—which Mona deftly withdrew out of reach. Galwell glared harder.
“The entire royal guard is pursuing you, you know,” Mona informed him. “They’ve even sent the shriekwings. I’ve never done
something bad enough to warrant a search by shriekwing.”
Galwell grimaced. So that was the sound he’d heard outside when the music quieted, like daggers on chalkstone.
“I’m impressed,” she remarked, sounding genuine. “A little jealous, even.”
“I’m innocent,” Galwell grumbled.
Mona sipped from his drink, maddeningly. “Are you?” she returned. “And yet you’re hiding while the real villains are out there.
No guilt for that?”
Galwell clenched his jaw hard enough for his teeth to hurt. Mona knew exactly which insecurities in him she was playing on.
He repeated the rationale he’d found meager comfort in, like a one-log fire on a Northern Mountains night. “If I’m caught,
it could mean war between Mythria and Vestriya,” he explained. “Thessia believes marrying me would prevent it. I can’t let
it come to that. No matter if it means I’m reduced to getting drunk in your criminal lair.”
Mona grinned. Once more, Galwell had the infuriating impression of having played right into her hands. Into her hands was not where he wanted to find himself.
Or—well, no, not like—
“Ah, so there remains a hero in there after all. I wasn’t so sure,” she commented coyly.
Galwell’s gaze narrowed. She straightened, arching her back, her posture working unfairly to emphasize the swelling curves
of her breasts. Mona the Merciless, indeed. Galwell diverted his gaze.
“What choice do I have? I cannot leave here. It’s not safe,” he reasoned.
“Curious you think it’s safe here,” Mona said, brows raised.
Of course. Didn’t he learn yesterday not to make assumptions about Mona’s regard for him? “I suppose it’s not,” he ground out. “You could
hand me over directly to whoever wants to kill me like you always threatened.”
Pondering his point, Mona nodded. “It’s a shame the spymaster is unwell. I could have given him the city’s most notorious
villain. I am the second, of course,” she conceded, looking like she very much enjoyed the concession.
Galwell snatched his drink from her distracted hand. Mona laughed, the delighted sound like shattering crystal, while he drank
recklessly. He needed to get so drunk his thoughts would become unfocused. Then Mona could not read his incriminating mind.
“Drunk people reveal the most, actually,” Mona said.
Galwell grunted.
“What is it you wish to hide from me, exactly?” she asked him, leaning forward, folding her now-empty hands calmly on the
ebony tabletop.
No, Galwell would not have her intruding upon his mind. Whether with her magic or with prying conversation. He needed to shift the focus off him. Onto her. “Nothing. There’s nothing to discuss. Just shelter me until you can collect whatever it is Clare promised you,” he said.
Mona’s sly gaze pinned him, completely aware of his motives. Rather clumsy, he could admit of the effort.
Of course it was, though. Galwell the Guileless had no need for evasion or subtlety in the usual particulars of his heroic
life. Only Mona, with whom survival required gifts of deceit, demanded otherwise.
“Ario is the touchy subject, then?” she inquired.
Galwell dug his fingernails into his thigh, hoping the pain would consume his thoughts.
“You did seem very grouchy about him before the game,” Mona mused. “Did he do something to you?”
“Of course not,” Galwell replied readily. He welcomed the relief of an easy question. “He’s a wonderful young man and I hope
he makes a full recovery. I’m sorry you won’t be able to continue your conversation with him. You seemed to get along so marvelously.”
Mona blinked. Galwell gulped.
Slowly—victoriously—his counterpart smiled.
The former hero knew this was not good. In fact, he suspected this was how he would feel if the shriekwings got him, their
murderous cries currently filling the Vestriyan sky.
“No, you’re not,” she replied.
Galwell was out of patience with her games. “Not what?”
“You’re not sorry,” she said. “You’re . . . pleased.”
He pushed his incredibly strong fingers into his leg, hoping to pierce his skin. Whatever was required to dispel the unheroic
inclinations Mona was uncovering in him.
“Stop that.” Mona reached under the table.
Her touch, improbably gentle, combined with the removal of his self-inflicted pain, was too much for Galwell. The relief made his thoughts explode from him. Not within his head—but straight from his mouth.
“Does what we shared the other night mean nothing to you?” he exclaimed.
Mona withdrew her hand from him in surprise, so startled she did not even gloat.
Small mercies, Galwell reckoned.
“What we shared?” she repeated.
He struggled to explain himself. “When you—when we—” Frustration was starting to consume him. The heat coloring his cheeks
only worsened his plight. Indeed, were questing this difficult, Mythria would have fallen to the Fraternal Order and Galwell
would have ventured no farther than his village marketplace.
Galwell suddenly understood his sister. Her agony when everyone teased her about Vandra. Perhaps it was better to be a withdrawn
grump. What did emotional honesty earn you? Nothing but scoffs and pitying looks.
Mona scoured the pity from her face. “Our night together was a lot of fun, G. I’d happily pick up where we left off anytime,”
she promised him.
“But you wanted to flirt with another man,” Galwell insisted, hoping to hide how perplexed her nonchalance left him. He did
not succeed, for Mona’s eyebrows shot up.
“Just because I want to fuck you doesn’t mean there are any promises between us. We’re not betrothed to each other,” she clarified.
“Why not?” Galwell asked.
Mona laughed, not unkindly. She reclined in her seat, looking comfortable now. At least one of them was, then, Galwell thought.
“Galwell, surely you know the difference between lust and love,” she started gently.
“I know people pretend there is a difference,” he replied. “To me, I suspect there isn’t.”
Her eyes widened. For the second time today, he’d managed to surprise the mind reader. He would have congratulated himself
on the feat were he not in the darkest mood of probably his entire life.
“I see,” Mona said.
Her noncommittal reply managed to embarrass him even more. “Just leave me alone,” he pleaded.
He drank deeply from the hard liquor in his black glass. Alone. It was his new destiny, he supposed. He did not have his old friends, whose lives in Mythria had continued on without him.
He knew not where his new friends were. Probably hiding from peril themselves. Or—who knew—perhaps they genuinely suspected
him of plotting the gruesome murder of the crown prince of Vestriya!
Even if they wanted to, they could not come for him. Not without endangering themselves or their Queendom. Or without being
forced to wed him, apparently.
He would stay out of everyone’s lives, he decided, and they could carry on like they had when he was dead. It would be better
this way.
“That’s not true,” Mona said.
Her voice hummed with urgency, but her words did not affect Galwell the way she intended. “Get out of my head,” he ordered
her. He was getting angry now. It felt . . . good. Like scratching an itch to the point of painful relief. No wonder everyone
he knew found comfort in the emotion’s masochistic clutches.
Mona only shook her head. She stared him down, imperious. “You came here to hide, but this isn’t you,” she insisted. “You
need to be out there, fighting. Being . . . heroic.”
For once, she’d not made the notion sound offensive.
It offered Galwell no reassurance, however. “I’m hardly a hero anymore. Haven’t you heard? I’m a wanted criminal now,” he said sharply. “Besides, it’s not like I can go gallivanting in the streets. I can’t risk war. Or marriage to Thessia.”
“You don’t want to marry her?” Mona pressed him.
“I just explained my feelings on the subject of marriage, Mona,” he said slowly, with undeniable indication. When he’d first
made his vow to Thessia, he hadn’t known what he was sacrificing. Now he did.
He held Mona’s gaze, daring her to test him. She could use her magic to discern his meaning exactly. Fine. He wanted her to
understand. To feel how deep the well of his desire was.
Instead, Mona stood. She met him confrontation for confrontation, with fire in her Grandhart-cerulean eyes.
“After the game, I managed to make contact with the mysterious figure who hired the guild to kill you,” she informed Galwell.
“We’ve brokered a meeting in the Evriel Mountains. If you could get out of the city, you could uncover the plot. I suspect
it’ll connect to framing you for Ezio’s murder. It would bring justice to you and to Vestriya.”
Galwell glanced down, frowning into his glass. He’d nearly finished the contents yet felt no drunkenness. Of course not. “What
do you care for justice?” he challenged Mona.
Surprisingly, her crystal eyes flashed with hurt. “You think very little of me for proclaiming to love me,” she remarked.
Impatient, Galwell set his glass down heavily on the table. “Why do you care, Mona?” he repeated stubbornly. “None of this
involves you.”
Mona hesitated. “I . . . I don’t like seeing you this way,” she finally confessed.
Hope flickered in him. The emotion had its own stubbornness, he found. He could never quite manage to stamp it from his soul, whether with drink, unfortunate flights from royal law enforcement, or dealing with this frustrating woman.
Perhaps part of her did care for him.
If Mona read his thoughts on that subject, she remained quiet.
“I have no crew,” he replied, eyeing the table dejectedly. “A real hero knows how dependent he is on those who help him.”
“Good thing you have me, then,” Mona replied.
Galwell looked up. He would permit hope no further, however.
“I’ve been smuggling in and out of this city for years,” Mona went on. “I can get you out, and we will go to this meeting,
and you’ll get the fuck out of this tavern and start acting like yourself again.”
“You’d . . . do that for me?” Galwell asked. He did not hide his surprise. Nor could he have, with Mona’s magic.
She looked uncomfortable. “Don’t read into it. Just sober up and be ready to go at nightfall,” she ordered him gruffly.
When she walked off, Galwell found himself grinning. Yes, perhaps she cared for him more than she pretended—or even more wonderful,
perhaps Mona the Merciless was not merely the criminal she considered herself to be, the mercenary who thought only of her
own interests. Perhaps she was good inside.
A hero, even.