Page 25 of Tethered In Blood

“Well, I do.”

Of course, she did.

And judging by the smug, slight tilt in her voice, she knew how much she had grated on my nerves. She relished every damned second of it. A slow sigh escaped me, meant to ensure she heard my annoyance. If she continued to run her mouth, I had to steer the conversation to a more tolerable topic.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “Why?”

She twisted in the saddle as if she couldn’t believe I had responded. Then came that irritating, triumphant curve of her lips. “Oh, so you do engage in conversation,” she teased.

I shot her a look.

She cleared her throat. “Right. Why do I talk so much? It’s simple. I don’t like silence.”

I arched a brow. “Why?”

She shrugged, but it was too casual a gesture. “Because when it’s quiet, I overthink.” She sounded sincere. It was less that she wanted to provoke me and more that she revealed something she hadn’t meant to admit.

I should have left it at that and let the conversation die, just as I had with others I had cut short over the years. But I added it to the ever-growing list of things I should have done around her.

“Thinking about what?”

She hesitated, scrambling to push the information back behind whatever armor she wore, and sighed. “Oh, you know. Life. Death. The possibility that I could be thrown off this horse at any moment and break my neck.”

“Not if you hold on properly,” I scoffed

“So, youdocare if I fall off.”

“I care about getting to Silverfel without having to scrape you off the ground halfway there.”

She snorted but didn’t press further. Tilting her head back, she gazed up at the treetops as we rode beneath them. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, dappling her freckled face in shifting gold. “Well, what about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why do you dislike conversation?” she ventured.

I huffed, redirecting my focus to the path. “People talk too damn much.”

She let out a hearty laugh. “I can’t argue with that!”

Neryth chose that moment to leap over a fallen branch. His powerful muscles contracted and released in one fluid motion. The impact of landing sent a jolt through us both. Quinn rocked against me, and her head collided with my shoulder.

A vicious pain lanced through me. I clenched my teeth, willing myself to stifle any reaction and breathe through it as I had a thousand times before. But it was too late. She turned her head, undoubtedly ready to make another witty remark. Except her eyes darted across my face, catching that breath of pain before I masked it. Her expression soured.

Damn it.

I groaned.

“Are you—”

“I’m fine.”

“Like hells you are,” she hissed. Her brows creased, and her lips formed a tight line. The expression warned of an impending argument that didn’t interest me. But it felt different this time—less irritation, more… concern.

Hearing her curse stirred unwelcome feelings within me, and I despised how unguarded it sounded coming from her, slipping past her lips without a second thought. The way it settled into my skin was an irritant I couldn’t shake. It grated against me in ways I didn’t comprehend. I had heard women swear before and was accustomed to it, thanks to Calder. But hearing it from her unsettled me, and I had no explanation for why.

She became rigid again and sank into a blissful silence.

The sun dipped lower in the sky, streaking the clouds in molten gold and ember-red. The light fractured through the canopy, dancing shadows along the path ahead. The air cooled, the smell of damp soil thickening as dusk crept in. Before us stood the uprooted tree, it was massive and gnarled, its roots twisting toward the sky and dense with dirt and stone. The trunk sprawled across the path, its bark weathered and stripped bare where rain and wind had battered it. Moss and fungi crept along its surface, evidence of its long slumber.

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