Page 38 of Of Blood and Fire
Indeed, it would be, I said.But we can’t go about murdering our enemies when they’re also our allies.
No need this one.
Thatwas a truth I couldn’t refute.
Damon—whose sword remained pressed against his brother’s chest—didn’t even bother looking over his shoulder at the now contained Makki. He wore his weariness like a cloak, and his features were gaunt, his eyes ringed by shadows and the sclera a bloody hue. But never had I seen anyone looking so good.
He was here. He was home. Alive.
“Well done, wife,” he said softly.
“No more well done than your intervention, husband.”
He glanced at me then, and just for a second, the rest of the world melted away. It was him and me and a myriad of unspoken but nevertheless earth-shattering emotions crowding the space between us. Emotions that should not be, given how little time we’d known each other, but they were as strong and as real as anything I could have wished for.
I’d once dreamed of having a relationship as loving as that of my parents. That possibility lay before me... but only if we could survive what was coming.
I tore my gaze away. Until we’d talked, I could not let any of those emotions hold sway over me. A touch of uncertainty surged through our link, an acknowledgement of my emotional distancing, but it was almost immediately swamped by fierce determination. The man had not saved me to simply let me go.
“May I point out,” the fake husband growled in the brief silence, “that in the eyes of the church, this woman is married tome. She is mine to bed as I wish, Damon, no matter what the treaty might otherwise infer.”
“You might want to check your facts before you make a statement like that,” my Damon drawled, a vicious glint in his eyes. “DamonTorsigned the marriage register, not Damon Velez.”
“I don’t fucking believe you,” his brother growled. “The friar wouldn’t?—”
“Oh, the friar would and did. He and I had this cozy little chat, you see, about the whole situation.”
“The church will excommunicate him for that treachery?—”
“Highly unlikely, given that, according to the treaty agreement, Aric’s firstborn son was the marriage bargain, not his heir.” He smiled his fierce smile. “You and our father played a long and treacherous game, but you have finally been caughtby your own lies. Now, brother, if you don’t mind, please take five steps to your right.”
The fake husband scanned the space between him and Makki, his confusion evident in his expression. He couldn’t see the sphere he was being directed to, I realized.
“I cannot see the point?—”
He stopped and cursed as Damon pressed his sword harder into his chest. Blood welled around the point, staining his unbuttoned white linen shirt. His gambeson, I noted, lay near his feet.
“Do it,” Damon growled.
“Can I at least put my boots?—”
“No. Move.”
Fake husband cursed softly, then obeyed. The magic gleamed brighter as he approached, washing a kaleidoscope of color across the black stone walls untouched by the light tube’s glow and lending them a warm beauty. I’d expected the magic to stop him in his tracks, as it had initially done to me, but it didn’t. He stepped through the barrier and then just... disappeared.
I gasped, as did Makki.
“What have you done to him?” the stout man growled. “Your father will not?—”
“I am beyond caring what my father will and will not think aboutanything.” Damon waved his sword toward the dome. “You, in.”
“I will not go willingly to my death,” the older man growled.
“You do not. As much as I might wish to make an exception, I am a blood witch, and we do not kill our fellow humans in cold blood or anger.”
Makki motioned toward the sphere with such accuracy it was obvious he could see it. “Then what is that thing?”
“It is what we call a distance slip, and it is a rarely used and extremely difficult piece of magic that will deposit you midwaybetween Esan and Zephrine, on the other side of the Red Ochre Mountains.”
