Cursed by Ice (32 page)

“He went to Zandaria.”

“I should … should I tell him?”

“Why? You don’t owe him anything. You need to be as far from him as possible. He is cursed and would bring you down with him.”

“C-cursed?” she stammered.

“Yes. He told me. That’s why he leaves every night at dusk. He is cursed to freeze every night from dusk until juquil’s hour.”

“He … he told you?” The one thing,
the one thing
he
had refused to talk with her about … and he had told
her
about it. Shared it with Davine, not her.

A curse. She thought of what he had told her, about his immortality. Thought about all those times after juquil’s hour when she had been able to see his breath on the air even when it wasn’t cold … when his body had been so inexplicably cold, how he always warmed himself by the fire before coming to her … and she knew it was the truth.

“Help me,” she said to Davine, meeting her friend’s troubled blue eyes.

“I will. Wait for me here.”

It was an easy request, for Sarielle did not think she would be able to move.

Davine stood up and hurried into Garreth’s bedroom. She hastily dressed in her clothing, all the while telling herself that this was for the best. For all involved. Sarielle would be safer away from Garreth. She would suffer a broken heart, but she would heal after a while. It would just take a little time. That was all. Davine would earn her comfortable life and Garreth’s brother would be satisfied.

As for Garreth … Well, she didn’t much care about him. He had endangered her friend knowingly. Brought his curse to her doorstep. Sarielle was an innocent just learning how to be free. She didn’t need the weight of Garreth’s burdens.

Davine hurried back to Sarielle’s side.

Sarielle was numb as she went through the process of packing her things. Luckily Davine was there to help her. She wasn’t taking much. Just a change of clothes for herself. She felt Koro coming all the while and knew she needed to meet him on the keep walls or he would tear the place apart looking for her. She sent Davine to fetch the girls as she ran up to the walls and met Koro.

He saw her tears, felt her broken heart. He bristled
in frustration to feel her in such pain, knowing she wouldn’t let him help her.

I am going to leave this place for a little while, my love
.

He immediately wanted to go with her.

I need to hide, Koro. If you are with me, then I will be found
.

A wave of loneliness beat at her. He was afraid to be by himself.

I am always with you and you are always with me. In our minds and in our hearts. We will forever be together. And you can come find me in a little while. Just … remain safe in your cave. Now, come close. I need to take some of the shiny things from your scales
.

Koro came closer to her and lowered himself down so she could work some of the precious stones free from his scales. They would help buy her escape. She did not know where she was going, but she knew she had to go as quietly as possible; otherwise, Garreth might come after her. Although she didn’t see why he would. He had clearly moved on. Away from her. Why would he care if she left?

Koro flew away from her after she had what she needed, heading back to his cave as she had requested. He was such an obedient creature and she was very fortunate to have him. She had never taken being a wrena for granted. She knew how blessed she was.

And cursed.

She gathered up the girls, and Davine quickly found them a conveyance. It was a wagon going to the city of Zandaria. Even though it was going toward where Garreth was, there she could switch to another conveyance and slip away unseen and unknown. She would be lost in the sea of Kithians who had been invading Zandaria since its fall. She simply had to avoid Garreth.

To that end, she waited for dusk to leave, knowing that
his curse would keep him in a fixed place until juquil’s hour. By then she would have hoped to have left Zandaria, perhaps as part of a trade caravan, and escaped into the darkness of the night. The Zizo had perfect eyesight in the dark, unlike Kithians and, she assumed, Garreth and Dethan. She and her sisters would easily be able to travel throughout the night if she paid a Zizo driver to leave as soon as possible.

With her plans firmly in place in her mind, she left Kith forever.

Davine sought out Dethan as soon as Sarielle had left the city.

“She is gone.”

Dethan looked up from his papers and lifted a brow. “I’m sorry. Who is gone?”

“Sarielle.”

Dethan stilled and eyed her for a long moment. “Are you telling me that Sarielle has left Kith … for good?”

“Yes. I knew you wanted her gone … and now she is. And it is done in such a way that nothing Garreth can say or do will bring her back to him,” she promised Dethan.

“How did you do it?” he asked carefully.

“I made her believe he had bedded me,” she said quietly as she studied her clasped hands. When all of this had begun she had been looking out for herself, had been selfishly motivated. But now … She was not proud of what she had done. She had been seeking comfortable circumstances, but she did not feel comfortable. She did not feel safe and secure. She felt … dirty. Like she had done something her soul might never recover from.

“And that is all? All it took?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “She loves him. The betrayal … It was more than she could stand.”

Dethan frowned. Like Davine had said, he had wanted her gone and therefore should be happy with the results she had wrought, with the success of what she had set out to do, but for some reason he felt uneasy and … unclean. Even though he had not asked Davine to do this, he had made no secret of his desire to drive them apart. Now this was the result of his selfish desires.

He knew Garreth cared for the girl far more than he ought to, that he perhaps even loved her, despite his claims otherwise. Dethan had never seen his brother so devoted to a woman before. Had never seen Garreth behave with such single-minded loyalty with a woman. He would not easily let this go, Dethan realized. He would no doubt try to hunt her down and bring her back.

“How did she leave? Won’t he be able to track her?”

“He won’t be able to. We hired a wagon to take her to Zandaria. Once she makes it there, she will switch to another way of travel and he will never be able to track her.”

“But no doubt he will try,” Dethan said absently.

“I can delay his realization of her escape for a night. If he returns to Kith from Zandaria tonight, I’ll send him a note saying she decided to sleep with the twins tonight and perhaps he will not seek her out.”

“If he tries to and realizes the twins are gone, he will be after her immediately.”

“You must convince him to wait until daylight. That will give her more time.”

If Dethan did that, then he would be taking an active part in this. He would be even more responsible for the entire business than he already was. Troubled, he said, “Thank you, Davine.”

“This … this is what you wanted, is it not?” she
asked uneasily. She felt sick in her soul. She needed to know it was the right thing to do. That it had been for a reason.

“Yes,” Dethan said carefully. “Though I did not wish to hurt the girl in the process. She is a good person and did not deserve such pain.”

“It was no more pain than she would have suffered had she stayed,” Davine said with a lift to her chin.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Dethan asked sharply.

“Separating them was the right thing to do,” she said, although she sounded as though she was trying to convince herself even as she was saying it to him. “Your brother is cursed. He would have brought that curse down upon my friend.”

“So she is your friend now?”

“Yes,” she admitted quietly. “And because she is my friend, I would have her escape him. I would say unscathed, but she is not. She is deeply wounded by this and I must accept my hand in that. But it was to a better purpose.”

“You are right. My brother is cursed. And this is for the better where all are concerned.”

“I think I will find my bed now. I am very weary,” Davine said, her head down.

“Good night, Davine.”

She left without ever once asking for compensation for her actions. She no longer cared about that. She no longer wanted a reward for causing such pain to another.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE

It was long past juquil’s hour when Garreth returned to the keep at Kith. He was drained from all his traveling and he felt as though his time in the orchard had been particularly brutal that night. He was looking forward to his bed and Sarielle’s warm body against his.

When he entered his room and saw she was not in his bed he was surprised. The covers were tossed about, as if someone had been sleeping within them. But he figured she was having one of her restless nights, which she had been having with increasing frequency these past nights. She would not tell him what was troubling her, and he had not pressed her. After all, if she wanted to keep something from him, he had no right to demand she tell him. Not when he was keeping his own secrets and had been so voluble about holding her at a distance regarding that secret.

There was a note on his pillow.

With a furrowed brow, he read it.

The furrow of his brow deepened. Of course it wasn’t the first time she had decided to sleep with the twins. She had done so before when Jona had had an unexpected nightmare one night. Perhaps that was the case tonight as well. The girls still had some trauma to deal with in the wake of their kidnapping.

Tapping the small note against his fingertips, he moved to stand in front of the fire, trying to chase away the remaining chill his curse had left behind.

Something wasn’t right.

He didn’t know what, and he didn’t know why he was feeling this way, but something wasn’t right and he had always followed his instincts. They had gotten him through more than one tight spot over his lifetime of crusading.

He went into her room and looked around. Nothing seemed out of place at first, until an acrid smell reached his nose. He followed the smell to a basin where someone—he presumed it was Sarielle—had thrown up the contents of their stomach.

Concerned now, he made his way out of the room and headed down the hallway to the twins’ rooms. When he opened the door, the bottom fell out of his world.

The beds were empty.

That could mean any number of things, he tried to tell himself. They could be anywhere in the keep. But something was telling him, warning him, that wasn’t the case. He went into the room adjoining that of the twins. Inside he found Moyra, asleep in her bed.

“Moyra! Where are the twins?” he asked, roughly shaking her awake.

Looking at him through sleepy eyes she said, “Sarielle came and packed them up. She said they were going to be traveling with you. Are they not with you?”

“No. They are not.”

Garreth left the room and tore through the keep,
waking whomever he could on the way to his brother’s rooms. When he got there, he thundered on the door, then let himself in.

To his surprise, his brother was awake, sitting in front of a fire and nursing a drink. A hard, blue liquor the Kithians made called gazz.

His brother was not one for hard alcohol. Dethan did not like to dull his senses in any way. The drinking of wine was usually the most he would engage in.

But the understanding was brief in Garreth’s mind, his thoughts turned elsewhere and panicked.

“Sarielle is gone! The twins as well.”

“I’m sure she’s somewhere,” Dethan said with a frown as he continued to stare into the fire.

“Dethan!” Garreth went up to his brother and stood in Dethan’s line of sight. “Help me find her!”

“Garreth, she’ll turn up,” Dethan said, taking another swallow from his glass. He then swirled the blue liquor around in the glass, watching the color in the firelight.

“What is wrong with you?” Garreth snapped. “I’m asking for your help here!”

“And you shall have it.” Dethan rose to his feet slowly and met his brother’s eyes, spreading his arms out wide. “What would you have me do? Run around screaming for her? The servants would be better at that than I.”

“You can start by figuring out who wrote this.” He held the note up before Dethan’s eyes. “I didn’t notice it at first, but it is not Sarielle’s handwriting.”

“How do you know that?”

“Sarielle draws a line beneath her name when she signs something.”

“Perhaps she forgot.”

“She does it by rote!” Garreth snapped. “Someone has taken Sarielle and the twins! They left this note to
delay me! Moyra said she left of her own accord, but I do not believe that.”

“And who would take her?”

“Anyone who wants control of the wyvern!”

“Yes, but until you figure out who, there is little we can do about it.”

“We can go searching for her!”

“In the dark? The Zizo may be able to see in the pitch of night, but I cannot.”