Cursed by Ice (33 page)

“The Zizo? The Zizo! It must be the Zizo who have taken her! They will try to use the wyvern against us in retaliation for taking their city!”

“The Zizo are defeated. The only ones left of them are the women, the elderly, and the young. All else are dead or imprisoned.”

“All the more reason for them to want revenge. We have killed all their men and—”

“So you think it’s revenge based, then? Not even a matter of trying to get the city back?”

“Yes!”

“Where is your proof of this? You are engaging in wild speculation.”

“Wild …? Dethan, what is wrong with you? Can’t you see the danger in this?”

“Of course I can,” Dethan said after clearing his throat. “But that may not be the only explanation.”

“What else could it possibly be?”

“Perhaps … Has it not occurred to you that she may have left of her own accord, as Moyra has told you?”

Garreth’s breath froze in his chest as surely as if it were dusk in the orchard.

“What do you know?” he hissed.

“Nothing,” his brother lied to him. Garreth knew it was a lie because Dethan would not meet his eyes.

Garreth lost all control. He grabbed Dethan by the front of his shirt, knocking the glass out of his hand. It
broke upon the stone floor. He slammed Dethan’s back into the stone wall that bracketed the fireplace, following him with the crush of his body and all his strength.

“What have you done?!” he roared.

“I have done nothing,” Dethan said, wedging an arm beneath his brother’s and shoving Garreth off himself. “I only mean to say she is a free woman of means! She can go anywhere, do anything! And she doesn’t have to answer to you for it!”

“No!” Garreth ground out. “Ours is not the kind of relationship in which she would simply vanish without telling me where she was going and why!”

“And just what kind of relationship is it that you have?” Dethan demanded of him. “A close one? A loving one? You know as well as I do that you are not free to give her those things. And perhaps she knows it as well. Have you thought about that? Perhaps she has left you before you could leave her!”

Garreth ground his teeth together as his head spun with thoughts and he tried to make sense of them all, to keep them calm and ordered. Losing his temper would not serve him in finding her, he told himself sternly.

“No. She would not leave me without word.”

“So you say. Perhaps word is coming … in the morning. When she expects you to miss her.”

Garreth held up the note. “Someone else wrote this,” he said through his teeth, “and I am going to find out who that someone is. They are going to know what happened to her!” Garreth paced. “Davine!” he said suddenly and with triumph. “They are the best of friends, Dethan! If anyone knows anything about what Sarielle’s true thoughts and feelings are, it will be Davine. We will speak to her and you will see … you will see she did not go on purpose!”

Garreth bolted out of the room. Dethan turned back
to his decanter of gazz and took a long drink, foregoing the glass this time.

Garreth made it to Davine’s rooms in record time. He banged on the door impatiently and incessantly until a sleepy serving girl opened it.

“My mistress is sleeping,” she said crankily.

“I am awake,” Davine said from behind her. She was pulling a robe on over a fully sheer gown just like the one Sarielle wore to bed. For a moment he could see the entirety of her body. But it meant nothing to him.

“Davine, where is Sarielle?”

“She is not with you?” she asked.

Again he was faced with another person who would not meet his eyes. What was wrong with everyone? Couldn’t they appreciate what was happening? Sarielle could be in danger. Or she could have … could have run away. Although why she would run away escaped him. Her reasons would not matter. He was getting her back … whether he had to rescue her from something or someone or she had run away, whatever it turned out to be, he would lay eyes on her again by the end of the day tomorrow or so help him …

“No, she is not with me. If she were with me, I would not be looking for her!”

“Of course,” Davine said. She brushed her hair back nervously. “Did she not leave a note for you?”

Now, that was beyond odd. He looked down at the note in his hand, his eyes keen on all the points that made it an obviously feminine script. His eyes began to dart around the room, searching … searching …

Suddenly he pushed past her and went to the secretary, which stood opposite the fireplace. There were several missives stacked neatly on it and one letter was only partially composed. Pulling a lantern close and turning up its flame, he examined the note in his hand and compared it to the half-completed letter.

“What are you doing?! That’s private!” she cried, pushing against him and covering the letter with her hand. He grabbed her wrist and turned the joint painfully against itself. Not brutally, but just enough to get her attention.

“How odd that the hand that wrote this letter is identical to the hand that wrote this note and signed Sarielle’s name to it!”

She opened her mouth to say something, but the dangerous look in his eyes must have warned her that she should not push him by denying the truth.

“Very well,” she said quietly. “I wrote the note for her.”

“To what end?” he demanded to know.

“So you would not go looking for her before dawn,” Davine answered honestly.

“Why?”

“Because she did not want you to!”

Garreth took a step back as if she had slapped him. “What are you saying,” he asked quietly, dangerously.

Davine swallowed anxiously and, again, answered honestly. “She wanted to leave you without incident. She knew that if she said something, if she tried to say good-bye, you would not let her go easily. She didn’t want a confrontation.”

“But … why would she leave? And in the middle of the night like a Zizo thief?”

“Her reasons are her own,” she replied. “But if I had to hazard a guess … she would rather leave than be left behind.”

“But I …” Garreth was at a loss. He couldn’t believe it. He simply could not believe it. Just that morning they had made love so intensely and she had seemed so happy. But all the while she was planning this? Planning to leave him? “I wasn’t going to leave her.”

“Yes. You were,” Dethan said from the doorway. “Or
are you saying you would renege on your agreement with Weysa? Do you know how foolhardy that would be? There would be no future in it. She would put you back on that mountainside again and never look back. Then where would Sarielle be?”

“Shut up,” Garreth ground out. “There has to be a way. I would have found a way.”

“Damn you, Garreth, there is no way!” Dethan roared at him.

“There has to be!” Garreth roared back at him. “I love her!”

“You don’t love her,” Dethan scoffed. “If you loved her, then you would stop being selfish and let her go. Let her go and be safe far away from you and away from the notice of the gods!”

“No,” Garreth said, shaking his head. “No.”

“Yes,” Dethan hissed. “What else can you offer her? A life of war camps and never being in one place long enough to make a single friend? Dragging those young girls with you from city to city as you make war upon many nations? And what if your army should fail to take a city? If you should lose a war and be taken prisoner? What do you think your enemies would do to the general’s woman? Rape? Murder? Desecration? These are the things you will open her up to.”

“You were going to do it! You took Selinda to wife and were going to—”

“And it nearly killed her in the process! She was heavy with child, yet she was on her knees day and night begging Weysa to release me from my vow to her! Do you think Sarielle would do any less if she were to fall in love with you? Hell, she probably already has! She’s an innocent young woman who’s never known the way of a man before you came. Of course she’s going to fall in love with you! What do you think she would do if she learned of your curse?”

“Dethan!” Garreth hissed, casting a sidelong look at Davine.

“What? Like it’s a great mystery?” Dethan said acidly. “You leave every night at dusk and don’t return for hours. Don’t you think she’s figured it out?”

“I have,” Davine informed them quietly.

That got Garreth’s attention. “You have what?” he demanded.

“I have figured out that you are cursed. That every night you suffer to freeze in the orchards. And if I could find out, then no doubt she could too. It may well be what prompted her to leave. No one wants to have a cursed lover.”

“No. She wouldn’t do that,” Garreth said, his voice tight and his hands curling into fists. “She wouldn’t care.”

“Then why have you never told her?” Dethan wanted to know. “If you believe that, why have you not told her yourself?”

“I … that-that means nothing,” he said.

“It means something, or you would have told her instead of letting her find out on her own. Or was it just that you did not care about how it might make her feel?” Davine asked.

“We don’t even know if she knows!”

“She knows,” Davine said. “Women always find out. It’s the only reason I can think of why she would want to get away from you as fast enough as she could!”

“No. You’re wrong,” he said, shaking with his wildly vacillating emotions.

“She loved you. I’m not wrong about that,” Davine said. “So what else could make her simply pack up and leave in such a hurry? What else could you have possibly done to her?”

Garreth didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want to believe she would so easily give up on him, that she
would turn away from him and run because of the trial he had to face every night. Wasn’t it bad enough that he had to suffer it forever? Could he not have one small solace? All he had asked for was time in her arms to help him forget about the weight he must carry with him everywhere.

The truth was everything had been fine that morning. He was sure of it. Something had suddenly changed, and just as his brother and Davine were saying, there was only one thing he had not shared with her … one thing that might make her run from him of her own accord. Either that or she was trying to avoid watching him leave her come springtime, which he must do.

But Dethan had taken a wife. Why couldn’t he? Why couldn’t he love Sarielle, come home to her in the winter?

In the next breath, he realized just how selfish that desire was, how unfair it would be to her. Still, wasn’t it better to have a love for part of a full turning of seasons than not at all? She was important enough for him to want that. Would she not be able to feel the same? Something rather than nothing? He would take one day with her even if it meant seasons without her would follow. One day would mean more to him than anything else in their world.

But if she had left because of his curse … then there was nothing he could do. Perhaps he could explain … Perhaps he could beg her to understand. He had to make her comprehend that though he carried this burden, it would not ever harm her or her sisters.

Was that true? He didn’t really know, did he? Weysa could be a vindictive goddess when she wanted to be. If she felt their agreement was in threat, would she take it out on the thing she felt was distracting him from his purpose? He honestly did not know. All he could do was vow to the goddess that he would not let his love
for Sarielle interfere with his goals and his actions on her behalf.

Oh, how he wished he could do what Dethan had done, wished he could free himself from this terrible burden. But if he were to do the same thing, even if it meant freeing one of his brothers from further torment, he would be burdening that brother with this same untenable agreement. But was it not better than whatever torture his brothers were suffering even now? Jaykun, he knew, was chained to a star, incinerating over and over again in perpetual agony, no relief ever to be found. As for Maxum … Not even the other gods knew where he was or what torment he was undergoing. Sabo, the god of pain and suffering, had been put in charge of his punishment and he had not revealed the location or nature of that punishment to anyone else.

All these thoughts went racing through his mind as his brother and Davine stood watching him with cautious expectation. They weren’t certain what his next actions would be, only, Garreth knew, that they were going to discourage him from anything to do with retrieving Sarielle.

“She is mine,” he hissed at them before he could think to check his own words. “Nothing you can say will change that fact. If Weysa wants to punish me for loving her, then so be it!”

“What if it isn’t you Weysa punishes?” Dethan demanded of him. “What if she takes it out on Sarielle?”

Cold dread and horror settled into the pit of Garreth’s stomach. Was he so selfish that he would risk her safety? Was he so blind to the possible consequences of his actions?

Frustration burned within him, stinging his eyes and restricting his breath. “I can’t do it,” he said in a hoarse rasp. “I can’t let her go.”

“You have to,” Dethan said quietly.

Dethan was right. Oh gods, he was right! He could not do anything to harm her. Could not bring her to be hurt in any way.

Unimaginable pain ripped through him, clawing at his heart. He turned from his brother and Davine and lurched down the hallway. He was going to be sick and he didn’t want anyone to be witness to it, didn’t want anyone to know just how weak with pain he was. He made it out of the keep and into the cold night air just in time. He fell to his knees as his stomach upended itself.

She was gone. And for her sake he had to let her remain gone. Had to let her go to live as full a life as she could, one that was free of the danger he represented. Yes, that was the best thing to do. The unselfish thing to do.

And yet … he did not think he could bear it. He had never known love for a woman. Not like this. And what stung the most was that he had held his feelings back from her. He had not told her how hopelessly in love with her he had fallen. Had not told her what a magnificent creature she was in his eyes and in his heart. Had not told her that he had never loved anyone the way he loved her, that she was beyond special. That she was rare and beautiful in his eyes.