The Last Threshold (Neverwinter #4)(19)

“If we’re not at their camp by twilight, they’ll return to the city,” Drizzt said absently. He could not focus on the others. This hunt, so suddenly, was more important. “Vampire.…” Dahlia said again, ominously.

“We will find it tomorrow.”

“You indulge me,” Dahlia remarked. “I like that.”

Drizzt didn’t bother to explain his own interests, particularly when Dahlia moved closer, wearing an impish grin.

“Vampire,” she said again with a wide smile, her eyes sparkling.

Drizzt considered that grin, and wanted to share in her mirth at that moment, but found it impossible, for he was too troubled by the possibilities.

Dahlia moved right in front of him and casually draped her arms around his shoulders, putting her face very close to his. “No argument this time?” she asked quietly.

Drizzt managed a chuckle.

“Vampire,” she said and her smile turned in a lewd direction. She shifted to the side and lunged for his throat, biting him playfully on the neck.

“Still no argument?” she asked and she bit him again, a bit harder.

“You are hoping for a vampire, I can see,” Drizzt replied, and it was hard for him to keep his thoughts straight at that particular moment. It was the first time they had touched, other than riding, since they’d left the darkness of Gauntlgrym. “I would hate to disavow you of your wishes.”

Dahlia moved back to stare him in the eye. “Hoping?”

“Hoping to be one, then,” Drizzt said, “apparently.”

Dahlia, laughing, hugged him close. She brought her lips to his ear and kissed him softly, then asked, “Have you forgiven me?”

Drizzt pushed her back to arms’ length and studied her face. He couldn’t deny his attraction to her, particularly when she wore her hair in this softer style, and with the war woad barely visible.

“I had nothing to forgive.”

“My kiss with Entreri?” Dahlia asked. “Your jealousy?”

“It was the sword, playing on my insecurities, pressing my imagination to dark places.”

“Are you sure that’s all it was?” she asked, and she reached over and brushed Drizzt’s long white hair from in front of his face. “Perhaps the sword was only exploiting that which it saw within you.”

Drizzt was shaking his head before she had ever finished. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he repeated.

He almost added, “Have you forgiven yourself?” but he wisely held that thought, not wanting to open anew the wound inflicted by the appearance of the young and twisted warlock.

“Let’s go to Neverwinter,” Drizzt said, but now Dahlia was shaking her head.

“Not yet,” she explained, and she led him to a mossy bed.





Dahlia tapped Drizzt on the arm and when he looked up from his bowl of stew, nodded toward the tavern door.

Drizzt was not surprised to see the three enter, nor was he caught off guard by Artemis Entreri’s dour expression. When the assassin noticed him, he led the other two straight through the crowd to the table.

“Winter fast approaches,” Entreri said, pulling up a chair across from Drizzt.

“The night is cold,” he added when Drizzt didn’t respond.

“Good, then, that you decided to return to the city,” the drow replied casually.

“Oh, grand,” Afafrenfere remarked to Ambergris off to the side. “I will so enjoy watching these two beat each other to death.”

The dwarf snorted.

Drizzt, seeming unbothered by it all, went back to his stew, or tried to until Entreri’s hand snapped across the table and grabbed him roughly by the wrist.

The drow lifted his gaze slowly to regard the man.

“I don’t appreciate being left in a cold forest,” Entreri said evenly.

“We got lost,” Drizzt replied.

“How could you get lost?” Entreri asked. “You were the one who named the place of rendezvous.”

“Our road took us to the east, to unfamiliar ground,” Dahlia interjected.

“What road?” asked Entreri, still staring at Drizzt.

Drizzt sat back in his chair as Entreri let go of his wrist. The drow glanced to the side and motioned to the other two to take a seat. He wondered where he should take this. He was pretty certain now who and what Dahlia and he were hunting. The question was: Did he want Artemis Entreri along on that hunt? The encounter, should it happen, was going to be difficult enough to control as it was, and how much more difficult would it become with the unpredictable and merciless Artemis Entreri in the mix?

“What is your plan, drow?” Entreri asked.

All four of the others, even Dahlia, looked to him for exactly that answer, and it was a good question.

“You escorted me to the bowels of Gauntlgrym to be rid of that cursed sword,” Entreri said. “For that, I owe you.”

Entreri looked to Dahlia, pointedly so. “Or owed you,” he clarified. “But no more. I waited where you asked, and you did not arrive.”

“A great sacrifice,” Dahlia said sarcastically.

Afafrenfere giggled and Ambergris snorted.

Entreri turned his gaze from Dahlia to the other two before settling back on Drizzt.

“You owed me nothing,” Drizzt answered that look. “Not before and not now.”