Cursed by Ice (37 page)

“Why not?” Garreth wanted to know. “Have you got a better idea?”

“We can send runners out to all the nearby cities and search—”

“That will take too long! With winter setting in … I want my child and my wife with me! Not wintering in a strange place far from my side!”

“Your wife? She’s not your wife!”

“Not yet by law but in all ways that matter.”

“You can’t be certain … She may not accept you,” Dethan said uncomfortably.

“Why? Davine says Sarielle loves me. I have to believe she will take me back once she knows there is nothing standing between us. I don’t fully understand why she felt the need to leave … I can only assume it was fear. But all the cause for fear has been removed.” Garreth stopped and looked at his brother, a grin a mile wide on his lips as he thumped Dethan hard on the shoulder. “Free!” he said with pure joy. “I am free of that wretched curse and can now live a normal life!”

“Albeit an immortal one,” Dethan muttered.

“Don’t be jealous because you had to give up your immortality,” Garreth teased him.

“I am not jealous. I would much rather grow old with Selinda than watch her grow old without me. Have you not thought of that?”

That gave Garreth pause, but only for a second. “I don’t care. And neither will she. I will love her until the day she dies and that’s all that will matter.”

“Garreth … I have to tell you …”

“What?” Garreth said absently as he began to look around himself for other things that needed packing.

“She may not … forgive you.”

“Forgive me? What is there to forgive?”

Dethan swallowed hard. “She may not forgive you for sleeping with Davine.”

“Davine?” He laughed. “I’ve never slept with—” Garreth broke off when he saw the guilt stamped across his brother’s features. Suddenly everything seemed to rush in on him, seemed to make sense.

“What … what did you do?” he asked his brother quietly. Then more strongly,
“What did you do?”

“Sarielle thinks … that you slept with Davine.”

Garreth felt his entire body go cold. “Why would she think that?” he demanded of his brother.

“Because … Davine made her think it.”

There was a heartbeat. Two. And suddenly Garreth punched his brother square on the jaw, knocking Dethan back into a table.

“You knew? You knew this and yet you said nothing!”

Dethan fended off his brother’s next attack, this time prepared for the rage being vented toward him. And why not? It was certainly his due.

The brothers wrestled, the two almost evenly matched. But Dethan had always been bigger and stronger than his brother, immortality or no immortality, so he was able to leverage his raging sibling into a wall.

“Stop! I know! I know it was wrong. I know it
now
. But then … I didn’t want you to lose sight of your pact with Weysa. I feared the repercussions if you did!”

“This is why she ran from me? Davine sent her headlong into the world thinking I betrayed her?! And you let it happen!”

“I’m sorry!” Dethan cried, battling for control of the situation. “I was only trying to keep you safe. That’s always been my responsibility. One I failed to accomplish the day I dragged you up that mountain!”

“You failed me then and you’ve failed me now,” Garreth hissed in his brother’s face. “At least I can blame myself for following you on that trip, but this … this is no fault of mine! And you made me think otherwise!”

“Please! I know! Please forgive me, brother!”

Garreth finally shoved him off with a tremendous heave. Dethan staggered back and caught himself against a table. Garreth was immediately in his face.

“I will forgive you the day she becomes my wife and not a second sooner! And I’ll not have you under the same roof as her, so be ready to leave the moment I return!”

He turned and grabbed the saddlebags he’d packed and stormed off down the hallway. Dethan was hot on his heels.

“You need me to run these cities!”

“Only while I’m gone. Jaykun and I can run them without you once I return.”

“Jaykun is barely conscious!”

“He will be healed by the time I return. We both know this.”

“Garreth—”

“I mean it, Dethan. The moment I bring her back you are to get on your horse and go home to your wife!”

“Garreth, wait!”

Garreth finally came to a halt, and with a clenched jaw, he turned to face his brother. He took a breath and exhaled slowly. “Dethan … just let me do this. You and I … we are brothers, and as much as I want to kill you right now, that will never change. I just … I need to find her. We’ll deal with the rest later.”

“All right,” Dethan said with a measure of relief. He didn’t know if he could bear his brother’s anger toward him. But this was Garreth they were talking about. Garreth didn’t have a hateful bone in his body. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Yes. You can get that lying whore out of my house before I bring my wife back here. I don’t want Sarielle to have to see her face.”

“Do not be too hard on Davine. She … I think she feels the weight of what she has done.” Dethan swallowed. “She is alone in the world. She was just trying to survive.”

“And now Sarielle is alone in the world and trying to
survive when she should be here with me. By the gods, man, she’s
with child
!”

“I know. I’m sorry,” Dethan said, his contrition boundless.

“Stop saying that. Just … I have to go.”

He turned his back on his brother and left. This time, Dethan let him go.

CHAPTER
TWENTY-FOUR

Sarielle stood in the doorway of the small house, letting the cold air wash over her. For some reason her body had been burning hotly these past minutes, as if she were standing before a raging fire. The cold of the coming winter felt good against her body.

Behind her the girls sat before the fire, quietly doing their schoolwork. They had never had schooling before and were enjoying learning to read. They were sometimes frustrated because so many of the children seemed to know more than they did, but there were others who were at their same level and that caused them to not feel so bad. The whole business made Sarielle a little sad for them. They had missed out on so much. At least she’d had books to read when she had been idle as a wrena. The bennesah had allowed her them for reasons she hadn’t entirely understood. But she had been grateful for them. Perhaps that had been his entire motivation. To make her grateful and therefore more malleable.

As she took another breath, she felt the strangest sensation wash over her. It was familiar, in a way, but at first blush she couldn’t place it.

Then, when she felt a tremendous wash of air blast over her, she realized what it was.

“Koro!” she cried as the wyvern spun hard in the sky and buzzed the cottage once more.

What are you doing here, my love?
she wanted to know.

As delighted as she was to see him, his big body in the air would soon draw attention. Attention she did not want. Attention she did not want Koro to have focused on him. People would fear a large, fire-breathing creature like the wyvern. It was possible they did not have a wrena here, that they wouldn’t understand what was attracting him here. And she didn’t want them to understand. She didn’t want them to know she was a wrena. If they knew … there was always someone out there who would try to exploit her for her ability to control the wyvern.

Koro immediately let her know he had a gift for her. Sarielle could not help but laugh. Koro was clearly delighted with himself and this gift he had brought her.

“Very well. Let me see this gift!”

“That would be me, I believe.”

Sarielle gasped and whirled about, shocked to find herself staring into Garreth’s sea-green eyes.

The bottom dropped out of her world.

Garreth moved just fast enough to catch her before she sank to the ground. She didn’t lose consciousness, but her eyes did roll back for a moment and she exhaled in a rush.

“Easy,” he soothed her as he jogged her weight against himself. Then he scooped her up into his arms and stepped into the warm little cottage.

“Garreth!” the twins cried in unison.

They rushed him and he tried to accept their hugs while bringing their sister to a bed in the next room. There were two beds, one on either side of the room, bracketing the fireplace. He chose one and settled her down onto it.

“Fetch Sarielle some water,” he instructed the girls.

“I can go to the well all by myself!” Jona cried.

“I will help!” chimed in Isaelle, much to Jona’s consternation.

“Well then, it won’t be by myself,” she complained.

“But I want to help,” Isaelle said with a frown.

“Why don’t you both go to the well, but Jona can fill the glass,” Garreth suggested.

“That’s a good idea!” Jona said. Both girls ran off to the well in a burst of energy.

Garreth turned his attention to Sarielle. She was breathing shallowly, her eyes fixed on him now, her hand pressing against his chest as if to push him away.

“No,” she said softly, breathily. “Please. I don’t want you here.”

“I know,” he said just as softly. “But … I would like you to hear me out just the same.”

To his infinite agony, tears filled her eyes as she shook her head.

“No. It hurts too much,” she said, a sob catching in her throat.

“I know that too,” he said grimly. “But please … you have to know … Davine lied to you. I never took Davine to my bed. She created that fiction to chase you away from me.”

“But … I saw the note. I found her in your bed.”

“I never wrote that note. And I was in Zandaria long before she entered my bed. There was no way I could have come back and bedded Davine and then gone again to Zandaria. There would be no sense to it. No sense at all. Especially when you take into consideration that I was, and always have been, in love with you.”

“In … in love with me?” she asked.

“Yes, my sweet fira. In love with you.”

“But … you told her. About your curse. You told her and not me.”

“I never told her. She figured it out for herself. I don’t know how. Either Dethan told her or she followed me and found out. I never told her. The only one I ever discussed it with was Dethan. Only Dethan. I did not wish to burden you with it. I feared that if you knew, it would put you in some kind of danger. That it might anger Weysa somehow or … or … I don’t know what. All I knew was that I wanted to protect you. I never wanted you to be hurt. But I guess I hurt you anyway.”

“Yes,” she said softly. Then more tears fell from her lashes. “It hurt so much.”

“I’m so sorry, fira,” he said softly. Fiercely. “I want to kill Davine for making you think that I would do such a thing to you. I will see to it you never have to lay eyes on her again.”

“But … I thought she was my friend. I thought …”

“I’m sorry. She lied to you, Sarielle. I never touched her.”

Sarielle sobbed once more and then began to cry in earnest. He hushed her gently and pulled her into his embrace. He hushed her again.

“It’s going to be all right,” he murmured. “Hella has freed me from my curse. Weysa has amended her agreement with me. I am yours, fira, if you want me. All we need do is bring the name of the god of love to the people and we will be free to love for ourselves. I will leave you for short times in order to do so, but only for short times. Other than that … I am yours. I will be here for you and our child.”

Sarielle gasped. “How did you …?”

“Mordu told me. Or was it Hella?”

“The
gods
told you?”

“Yes, fira. The gods told me that you are carrying my child. That and perhaps the fact that I notice you’re a wee bit bustier than I recall. And you’re getting thick in the middle.”

“Thick!” she cried in outrage.

“Just a little!” he amended with a laugh.

“This isn’t funny! I … I’m still very angry!”

“Yes, but does it follow you’re mad at
me
, wife?”

“I … I don’t know. I’m still a little confu—Did you say ‘wife’?”

“As a matter of fact I did.”

“I …” She blinked away fresh tears. Tears of a completely different emotion.

She suddenly felt a burst of delight in her mind, and a great shadow whipped over the cottage.

“Oh! Koro! He’s going to frighten the neighbors!”

“Then send him back home before they put together a raiding party or something. I’ll bring you and the twins home.”

“Home?”

“Unless you’d rather stay here?” he teased her. “It’s a nice place, by the by, but … it’ll be hard to make love to you with the twins in the next bed.”

Sarielle blushed as the twins tumbled in the front door with a bucket held between them, water sloshing everywhere.

“I’ll get the glass!” Jona cried.

“I’ll help!” Isaelle said.

“You’re not supposed to help!”

“But I can!”

“Girls!” Sarielle called out.

“Sorry, Sari!” they chorused.

Sarielle looked into Garreth’s eyes and saw the broad smile on his lips. “A-Are you sure? We … we come all together,” she said hesitantly.