Night Shift (Kate Daniels #6.5)(124)

And she had warned Kavik that he was hurting her. No wound from a blade could have matched the agony of the emptiness spreading through him now.

“He was never deliberately cruel,” she continued softly. “If he had been, I would have left him behind—because how could I have trusted him at my side if he might turn and kick me in the chest? So it is not that you might have touched another woman, because I knew you might try to throw me. I knew you didn’t want to soften toward me. But you meant to hurt me tonight.”

No. He hadn’t known it truly would. But it mattered not, because she’d warned him—and he’d been so determined to stand firm that he hadn’t listened. Hadn’t seen.

He’d had everything. She’d told him that, too. Her kiss. Her warmth at his side. Her heart. Now he had nothing.

Except he could make certain she wasn’t hurt again. “What of your quest? You have my trust. I will ride at your side.”

Or behind her. Anywhere she went. Even if she never spoke to him again, he would follow her until the end.

“You no longer have my trust, warrior. I’m not traveling that path anymore. So I pray that I was wrong, and that was not what Vela meant, because you are not worth the pain you would do to me.” Her eyes were dull as she turned away. Sheathing her sword, she picked up Shim’s saddle and moved out to the stable yard. “And there is another kind of tamed, one I didn’t begin to consider until I learned you were Karn’s son. It simply means to bring something wild into a home, and that wild thing takes a place within the household. Perhaps my task is to return you to your place in the citadel. I would need to kill Barin—and I have already made a vow to see him dead, so I was on that path. Or perhaps I am meant to tame the demon. That was what I first believed when I came to Blackmoor. Perhaps that was the road I was supposed to take.”

Both roads so dangerous that they’d already taken too many people Kavik had known. New determination filled him. “I will help you.”

She set the saddle upon Shim’s back. “You will not be able to keep up with me.”

Maybe not. His mount couldn’t match the stallion’s speed. But he could follow. Blood pounding, he raced back into the stables for the black gelding.

He was cinching the saddle when Selaq came into the stables. “I’m leaving these other horses with you.” They would slow him down, too, and he’d survived for most of his life with nothing more than a horse and his sword. “Do whatever you like with them.”

“Mala is leaving?” The innkeeper whispered the goddess’s name on a long sigh as Kavik led the gelding past her. “Then this is the moment you’ve lost everything.”

Ice seized Kavik’s gut. That had not been his friend’s voice. Those were not Selaq’s eyes, orbs pale as a milk moon against a blue sky.

Her frigid hand closed over Kavik’s arm and iron seemed to fill his legs, locking them in place. “Stand firm, beast. Stand firm while I twist the knife.”

He had already stood firm for too long. “There is nothing to twist it into,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve destroyed my own heart. You cannot do worse than I have already done.”

“No?” Her smile was a scythe. With rigid forefinger, she tapped the armor over his chest. Abruptly his lungs constricted, cutting off his breath. “But Mala was right. She did understand what the taming meant. It was never a collar. And you had her heart, warrior.”

So she could twist the knife. There could be more agony. It joined the desolating emptiness as the last of his air escaped his lips.

“Oh, that is not the knife, beast,” she answered as if his thoughts had been spoken. Her icy finger slid down his throat. “This is the knife. Because she abandoned the path that I’d chosen for her.”

No. Understanding cut through him. His gaze shot to the stable doors, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t call out. Wildly he fought the heaviness of his legs, the choking airless grip on his voice.

But his strength was nothing, and Kavik was nothing when Mala’s scream ripped through the air, followed by a cry of limitless pain and despair. His empty lungs convulsed on her name. His body stood rigid. Blinded by agony, he looked to Vela. She had to let him go to her.

“Go to her? You want to see what is happening? I will show you, as I’ve shown her to you so many times before.”

Mala sobbing on her knees amid swirling feathers. Still wearing her cloak, but it was black now, as if all the red had bled into her face, into the ragged disfiguring scars that raked from jaw to hairline as if slashed by a dragon’s claws. Blood and her tears rained into her cupped hands.

Shim nudged her shoulder. All at once she scrambled away from the stallion, her hand fisted against her chest as if holding closed a wound that threatened to spill her innards onto the ground.

“The path is ended for us, my friend. I will not see you forsaken, too.”

The stallion shook his head.

“You must shun me!” she cried. “You must!”

Snorting, the stallion pranced an uneasy circle.

“Please, Shim,” she added brokenly. “Please. Return to your herd. I cannot see you hurt, too.”

The horse blew a long breath and pushed his muzzle into her shoulder again. She stroked his nose once before letting her hand fall to her side.

“Be safe, my friend,” she said. Her tears ran a jagged path over the ruined lines of her face as he continued past her. Head hanging, she slipped to her knees again, and her sobs were silent.