Chapter 24 Galwell #2
“Very well.” Mona turned back to him, her upper half rising from the water, glistening in the steam. Galwell fought to concentrate
despite the crystal-clear droplets clinging to her skin. “I propose a game, then,” she declared. “You tell me lies, and I’ll
tell you truths I conceal from everyone. We will see which of the two of us is happier in the end.”
“I love games,” Galwell replied readily.
Mona raised an eyebrow.
He grinned. “Not bad for my first lie.”
She laughed. “Let’s begin, then.” She paused, thinking. Water trickled down her skin. “I killed my first man when I was fifteen.
Name of Kell,” she announced. “He was a mentor to Clare. Sort of bandit father figure, even. Clare loved him. But on a con
together, I learned from Kell’s thoughts that he planned to leave Clare behind to take the blame. The people they were stealing
from would have killed my brother.”
She shrugged hollowly.
“Clare wouldn’t listen to me when I warned him. He trusted Kell. He believed he could be reasoned with. Of course he did,”
she said. “My brother, the noblest thief there ever was. Because he gets to live a life where he can’t hear the evil in people,
clawing in their minds like rats in a cage,” she went on viciously. “I do. So I did what Clare couldn’t. I gutted Kell—I made
him suffer.”
Galwell knew Mona expected him to react to her bloody violence. He did not. His mind—his legendary heart—lingered on Mona herself, young and trying to protect her older brother.
“He would have killed someone you love,” Galwell replied without guile. “You saved Clare, even if he didn’t thank you for
it.”
“He did more than not thank me. He said he never wanted to see me again,” Mona spat. Her eyes flickered. “He called me merciless.”
Mona the Merciless. Galwell imagined her then, as if in a conjuration. The young Mona, losing the love of her family, fleeing home with Clare’s
condemnation ringing in her ears. In Vestriya’s underworld, she’d remade herself in the echo of the most painful word anyone
had ever said of her.
“I’m sorry,” he finally replied. “I’m sorry for what it cost you.”
Mona scrutinized him, but she looked like his earnest, understanding response pleased her. “Now the lie,” she prompted.
He sat upright on the bench. He would perform his disingenuousness in support of his words, he decided. His posture would
seem . . . carefree. Sturdy. Confident. Everything he did not feel. “It is . . . easy to be a hero,” he ventured. “I never
doubted my sacrifices.”
With heaviness in his throat, he found he—Galwell the Great, with inhuman strength—could not carry the confession’s weight
effortlessly.
Mona watched him, her gaze without judgment. It was . . . welcoming, and welcome. It was what he needed.
Finally, she nodded in satisfaction.
“After that first kill,” she continued, “I was wanted for murder in Mythria. I fled my ungrateful family and came to Vestriya
hoping for a fresh start, only to lose my friends, those who took me in, to a horrific accident. I have no one to blame for
their deaths. If I did, maybe I’d feel better, because I’d have sought my revenge. Instead, I can only blame everyone and
everything. Fate. The world. All I can do is take my vengeance daily.”
Galwell’s heart broke for her. Lost, unmoored, grasping onto the only family she could find, only for tragedy to rip from her everyone she cared for. No wonder she had hardened herself to everyone she knew. Her honesty emboldened him.
“I’m glad my friends erased my sacrifice and brought me back to life.”
Mona’s breath caught. “You wish you’d died?”
Galwell stared down the ugly feelings within him. He let himself acknowledge them fully. “No. I’m glad to be alive. But . . .
they stripped me of my heroism. I do not know how to be the one saved.”
Mona didn’t flinch away from his feelings. “I think you can still be a hero even if you have to be saved from time to time.”
Galwell considered this. He didn’t know how to reply.
Wordlessly, Mona sank underwater, vanishing for moments before resurfacing, using her hands to slick her hair back perfectly.
Her eyes opened, finding his with unreserved understanding.
The look pulled Galwell from his seat.
“I don’t regret not getting in that pool with you,” he lied in rasped syllables. Even while he spoke, he was shedding his coat, his
riding clothes. He removed everything down to his underclothes.
Mona’s severe expression never changed, yet her eyes danced with delight when he stepped into the wonderfully hot water. The
scalding reminded him of truth itself. Pleasure extracted from pain. Raw relief on the edge of exposure.
“That’s two lies now,” Mona observed. “I owe you something good.”
The note of promise in her voice made good sound like its opposite. He waited—on the edge of himself now—while Mona drifted closer, parting the water with even, rippling
movements. When she neared him, he could glimpse the peaks of her breasts under the wet fabric of her underclothes.
“I flirted with Ario to make you jealous,” she confessed.
Galwell felt himself grow hard at the admission. It demanded everything in him not to reach out and cup her curves.
“I can’t wait to go home to Mythria,” he murmured. He was delving deeper into his soul for these lies now. He knew he should want to return
to his homeland, where he was revered, where heroism was uncomplicated. Yet the idea filled him with dread.
Mona swallowed. She was close, close enough that forbidden magic seemed to vibrate in the distance between them. “Being with
you . . . scared me,” she confessed. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I’m afraid of what it means. What you could mean.”
For once, Galwell wished he had her magic. He wanted to hear that thought resonate deep in her heart, not only on her lush
lips. I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t stop thinking about you. Instead, he had only this criminal’s honesty to rely on.
But the desire in him cared nothing for criminality, or honesty, or lips deceiving hearts. Passion roared in him. He reached
for her, chasing impulsiveness like he never had, and pulled her body close.
“I hate how wicked you are,” he rumbled, then pressed his lips to her neck, hungry with need.
She moaned into him. “Which part of that is the lie, Galwell?” she got out, sounding like she was struggling with the syllables.
“That I’m wicked? Or that you hate it?”
“I don’t know anymore,” Galwell said. His hands sunk lower, his powerful muscles going taut when he caressed her hips—when
he clasped her ass—under the unwinding water.
It was another lie.
It severed his restraint, and Mona’s. His lips crashed against hers the moment she lifted her face to his.
In the hurtling rush, Galwell forgot everything of their snowy climb to this mountain of pure heat.
He could not even remember what cold felt like.
After forcing out noble lies, he realized how much he’d repressed his own desires—no longer.
He was pure selfishness now. He released his grip on Mona, letting his hands roam everywhere. Touching her everywhere. Delighting
with how deeply she seemed to enjoy it. He reached up, following nothing except ferocious want, to grab her hair in his fist.
Mona gasped.
“Is this what you like?” he demanded in a whisper.
“Yes,” she responded, breathless. “Is it what you like?
“No,” he lied deliciously from deep in his chest. “Not at all.”
Mona laughed. The sound was like snowflakes, except they pinpricked him with quick fire. Or like starjays, flying on winter
nights. Her laughter was dazzling light streaking through the darkness.
She reached under the water to stroke him while he groaned deeply into her neck, into the sweet night-floral scent of her
skin, still steaming with hot water. She urged him closer, closer, while he lost himself in her . . . only stopping when she
knew he was right on the edge. Then she withdrew to look directly into his eyes.
“Clare promised to tell me where our parents are,” she said seriously. “He’s stayed away from me for more than a decade so
that I wouldn’t read the answer in his mind. When I find out where our parents are, I’ll seek them out, and I’ll make them
pay for the life they forced me into. For surrounding me and Clare with people like Kell. For leaving me to kill my brother’s
ruthless friend, breaking Clare’s heart.” Her voice was ice cold, mercilessly guttural. “I’ll make them pay in every way I
couldn’t when I was a child.”
The shock disoriented Galwell. He stilled, staring into her eyes, suddenly horrified. Galwell knew from Clare that his parents
had been bandits. That his childhood had been full of uncertainty and fear. But Clare had seemed to move past it. While Mona . . .
She couldn’t possibly . . .
Yes, she could, he realized. It was why she’d negotiated her return to Mythria with Thessia. Not for criminal enterprise. For ruthless revenge.
In that moment, Mona heard everything he did not say. Her face crumpled, just for an instant. Then her indifferent, amused
mask returned. “See? Told you I’m no good,” she said. She moved past him to step out of the water. “I’m your villain, G. Not
your . . .” She gestured. “Whatever this is.”
Galwell’s hand shot out. He grabbed her wrist, unyieldingly but gently.
“Revenge won’t bring you happiness,” he said urgently. “Don’t do this to yourself.”
Halfway out of the water, Mona stared down at him. She held his gaze without mercy.
“What if I do?” she asked slowly. “Will you hate my wickedness for real?”
“I . . .” He did not know. He felt, deep down, in some place in his heart that reason’s light never reached, that he could
never hate Mona the Merciless. Yet he did not know how he could ever fully understand someone who lost herself willingly, entirely, in
such depths of gruesome vengeance.
He did not have to. Right then, their private room’s door opened. Galwell had nearly forgotten they were here for the inconvenient