Page 38 of Bound and Tide

A sprint away from the flooding prison as they blindly turned corners brought them to a quiet and seedy alley where Xander once again collapsed against the exterior of some stone building. “Why did you pull me out?” Xander wheezed, clenching onto his side, doubled over.

“You would have drowned, idiot,” Maia hissed, drawing a deep breath. “And you’re bleeding.”

“Of course I’m—oh.” Xander wiped a hand across his face, blood running from his nose. He felt awful, and the sight of his blood felt awfuller.

But the way the two were looking at him was the awfullest.

“Go home and take the runts with you.” He straightened, gesturing to the imps, not wanting their bulbous eyes on him either.

“But you look—”

“We completed what we came to do, didn’t we? Someone will be out looking for who did this—go home and stay there.”

The two hesitated, more concern on their faces than he could take.

“Go,” he spat, and they left, the imps scurrying along after, and finally all those eyes were off of him.

It was a perilous stagger to The Sleepy Salmon, but he made it, taken only for a drunkard by the few who saw him, and when he collapsed onto the realm’s least comfortable bed, even the voice that told him he was worthless could not keep him awake.

Chapter 18

LOVE IS A GOOD CHISEL FOR CARVING OUT HATE

“This is not the kind of work I had in mind,” Xander huffed as his boot broke through the snow bank and he was, yet again, up to his shin in slush.

Red just hummed as she walked ahead, and if it weren’t for her ass looking resplendent even under the layers she wore, he would have turned back. But then he’d probably be lost, and even arcana couldn’t get him out of these woods, not that he could risk its use.

So he just groused. “Bloody miserable.” Then took another sinking step forward.

Red wasn’t having a much better time of it, but she wasn’t complaining either. She never really complained despite that she was constantly overburdened with awful tasks like foraging for her shop in the dead of winter when everything was wretched. She needed a couple minions to do this for her, but Xander had sent the minions along with Maia and Costa after the prison, needing time alone to recuperate without having to worry over imps…or have imps worry over him.

“Why now?” he whined. “You never leave your apothecary, but then whatever god that controls the sky drops all this snow on us, and you’re determined to bury yourself in it.”

“Because it’s a holiday,” she said as if he should have known. “All the shops, including mine, are closed.”

“You mean to tell me that this is a divinely mandated day of rest, and we’re out here working?” He held his hands open to the clouds. “Strike me down, oh, Ahokayhuh or whatever it is the blind masses call you.”

She rounded on him. “Well, you can blame yourself. I waited for you to show up so I could bring you along, and today just happened to be the morning you decided to darken my apothecary’s doorstep after disappearing for another three days.”

She…waited for me? He sucked his teeth, a shiver running through him and not from the cold. “I did warn you that might happen.” But please let me lick you into ecstasy to make up for it anyway.

“That you did.” Her eyes flicked to the tree beside them. “And you are coming in handy.”

She’d gotten him to peel the thinnest slivers of bark off a phantom hazel and convinced him to prick himself over and over harvesting little round berries from a dreadfully thorny bush, and now she was motioning to the nearest tree and telling him he needed to shimmy up it and retrieve the deserted bird’s nest she was pointing out.

So, of course, he did.

“You cannot possibly use this in healing, it’s caked in shit,” he told her with the disgust of a much more squeamish man when he climbed down. Arcana would have helped, but he daren’t use it just then, not after the prison and the recuperation and…the voice.

“The shit’s the best part,” she cooed, nestling the twigs into her bag with a wink.

“How in the realm do I find you so beguiling?”

Red turned and trudged off through the snow. “Because for all the torture I put you through, I’ll take you somewhere you’ll enjoy, in the end.”

Dark gods, that was the crux of it, wasn’t it?

“Speaking of enjoyment,” she said, pushing a pine bough up and ducking beneath.

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