Chapter 24 Galwell
Galwell
Galwell had never known wonderment like this.
Oh, the snowy peaks of the Evriel Mountains were stunning, of course. Cloudlike snowbanks of lavender surrounded them on the
winding road. The winter wind ruffled his enchanted coat, sewn of hand-magicked fur imitating the soft pelts of cloudfoxes.
The sky overhead was deepening from purple into night.
Yet these natural splendors were not what captivated him. Instead, his focus was on the woman sitting in front of him in the
massive sloping hroxen saddle.
Mona, wrapped in imitation furs herself, looked more carefree than he’d ever seen her. When snow tumbled from the purpling
sky, she laughed with delight.
Galwell’s heart swelled at the sound. The medical implications of this worried him, for he’d often heard himself deemed “bighearted”
or said to possess the “largest heart in Mythria.” In moments of Mona Grandhart’s laughter, Galwell nervously hoped these
characterizations were indeed figurative.
She lifted her head, catching the lavender snowflakes on her cheeks. Her eyes closed in pure bliss.
Galwell was certain she was the most beautiful wonder in the realms.
Mona startled. Galwell remembered.
She eyed him skeptically while snowflakes dusted her lashes. “You can’t seriously think that.”
“You are more beautiful than anything I’ve ever laid eyes on,” Galwell replied.
Mona said nothing. She eyed him a moment longer, looking stunned—stunned that he’d just said exactly what she’d heard him
think.
Why this puzzled her puzzled him. The hroxen lumbered forward, swaying over the snowbanks.
Finally, Mona faced forward without replying.
Galwell refocused on the snowy splendor. He breathed in deeply, welcoming the night scented with the sweetness he’d noticed
on their daylong journey. Vestriyan snow was unique, nothing like the mercilessness of the Northern Mountains in Mythria.
The gleaming landscape was idyllic, not isolated, glistening with crystalline cold. It was, he’d gathered from Mona, a place
of peaceful refuge. When he’d inquired whether they need remain vigilant for snowsnakes, Mona had simply laughed.
The farther they got from the capital, the more his worries left him. Up here, the guards were not looking for the villain
Galwell. No shriekwings menaced the purple sky. The mountainfolk had not seen the conjuration of his face assassinating their
prince.
He was just another traveler. Another adventurer. For the first time in a long time—perhaps ever—Galwell the Great felt the
peculiar sensation that he could be whoever he wanted.
They reached their destination too soon, in Galwell’s humble opinion.
The mountainside village looked postparchment-perfect, the sort of snowy hamlet one might expect to see indulgently rendered in storybook scenes of the Winternight Festival.
Dwellings sturdily fashioned of resinous redwood, smoke curling from chimneys that stood jauntily on roofs decked in pale purple pillows of snow.
Overhead in the darkness, Vestriyan starjays with their shining tail tips flew, sending pinpricks of light streaming through the night.
The wind gusted over the idyll while they dismounted their hroxen. Galwell didn’t feel the cold—he quite liked his coat, which
Mona had provided him while they stole out of the city, hidden in a shipment of quarry stone.
He followed Mona into an inn. Every window overlooked the vast mountains with breathtaking views. While she consulted with
the clerk, Galwell waited in the cozy lobby, admiring the fire. They had real cinderoak here, probably chopped down nearby,
forfeiting none of its fresh potency. The crimson of the flames indicated how the fireplace’s single log was producing enough
cinnamon-scented heat to warm the entire floor.
Mona’s smirk was doing some of the work, though, when she concluded her conversation with the innkeeper. She returned to him
looking delighted, and very evil.
“Our meeting will be in the hot spring,” she informed Galwell.
“That sounds lovely,” he replied honestly.
Mona raised her eyebrows in coy innocence. “You packed your swimming clothes?”
Now he understood. The problem. The source of her delight. Reading him understanding her, Mona grinned gleefully.
“Did you really not know where you arranged a meeting with my would-be killer? Seems like leaving me vulnerable in a hot spring would be exactly what they
want,” he said.
“They don’t know you’re coming. And no.” Mona wrinkled her nose. “You really don’t know how meetings between two evil undisclosed villains work. Follow me,” she ordered him, without waiting for Galwell’s objection.
He watched her swaying form proceed to the stairwell. What could he do except follow?
The stone staircase led them down to what Galwell gathered was the inn’s spa, where stones like the quarry slabs they’d escaped
the capital alongside were heated for massages and ever-warm baths. Their destination waited past these features, the centerpiece
of the spa—the hot spring itself.
Off the main room, the hot spring’s current flowed into private chambers. The spa’s attendant led them into one.
The cozier dimensions of the private spa, half contoured of stone and half of the inn’s same sturdy wood, concerned Galwell.
Perfect for assassinations, or—
Worse. When the attendant departed, closing the door, Mona started immediately to undress.
“Shouldn’t we wait for our contact?” Galwell managed. Did his voice sound pinched? Strangled? No doubt merely the lingering
effect of the frost in his lungs.
Mona shrugged. “He’s running late and my ass is killing me after that ride up the mountain,” she informed him. “I could use
the healing waters. Possibly a massage.” Raising an eyebrow, she dropped her coat to the floor, then bent over slowly to unlace
her snow boots.
Galwell found himself watching, mesmerized. Their hroxen could have crashed through the spa right now, and he suspected he
would have continued to watch Mona.
With unhurried deliberation, she removed her riding wear, stripping down to only her underclothes. He’d never seen the skin of her shoulders, her stomach, her thighs. The warm, sun-dusted contours of her, seeming somehow to glow with her own untamable light. Perhaps she did want to kill him.
Well, he’d died in worse ways.
Mona slid into the hot water, moaning obscenely. Galwell was certain his cheeks had assumed the deep crimson of the firelight
upstairs. Natural bubbles and foaming currents in the hot spring obscured her body within the sheer fabric of her underclothes—but
Galwell’s imagination had never had such cause to run wild before in his life.
It wouldn’t do. He felt the rogue grip of passion pushing him in dangerous directions.
Controlling himself, he sat down heavily on the bench, far from the hot water.
“You’re not joining me?” Mona inquired.
He wanted to. He desperately wanted to. On his bench, despite the steam warming the room to fireside temperatures, Galwell
felt like he’d stepped outside onto the Evriel mountainside in nothing except his underclothes.
But he could not forget the deeper cold he’d felt with Mona. The last time she’d seduced him—the way he’d felt the next day
when she revealed how little their passion meant to her.
“I want to,” he said honestly. “I want to touch you in that water. To taste you. To have you taste me again. But I . . . want
it to mean something to you, and I know it doesn’t.”
Mona’s smirk slipped.
“You really just say what you’re thinking all the time,” she remarked.
He shrugged his enormous shoulders. “I have no reason for deception. Especially not with you.”
Mona sank deeper in the water, the foaming opaque surface rising to the tops of her breasts. Wanting pierced Galwell. Cold, desperate cold.
“Curious. Most people feel the exact opposite,” she said.
“I’m not most people,” Galwell replied.
Her confident gaze faltered. Mona paused, eyeing him like—like she was realizing something.
“No,” she concurred. “You’re not.”
He did not know what Mona found surprising in this revelation—Galwell the Great, hero of Mythria, villain of Vestriya, possessor
of uncommon magic and presently living his second life, who preferred milkbrews without whipped candycream on top—was quite literally not like most people.
But he continued, offering Mona more of the honesty she evidently found uncanny. “It must be horrible, knowing exactly how
much the people in your life conceal from you. How much they lie,” he said. “I expect, even among my closest friends, they
all have secrets, thoughts that could hurt me. I know people are not always their thoughts, but nevertheless, I’m grateful
not to know every worst one. No wonder you carved out such an independent existence.”
His companion’s expression went Evriel-wind chilly. “You mean no wonder I’m such a villain,” she snapped. “You think you’ve
figured me out. Mona turned to darkness because she saw the darkness in everyone around her.” She scoffed.
With his magical strength, Galwell knew how to heap extra gentleness onto precarious gestures. And in the company of Mona’s
wisecracking sibling, he’d learned it sometimes felt easier to speak ill of oneself so that others would not indulge in the
opportunity.
He kept his voice soft. “I think it would be very hard for anyone to endure knowing all that. It’s remarkable that despite your knowledge, you’re no villain,” he said.
Real surprise shocked the disdain from Mona’s features. “You—can’t believe that,” she pressed him.
“You know I don’t lie.”
Seeming conflicted, she considered his response. Finally concluding . . . something, she turned, concealing her face from his view.
“You think I’m not a villain, do you?” she murmured. “Ask me what it is my brother promised me in exchange for keeping you
safe.”
Despite the dark charge in her ominous invitation, Galwell didn’t flinch. “Whatever it is, I won’t think less of you for it,”
he promised her.