words. He turned on whoever it was that had upset his lady.
Some of his guards, but it wasn’t them. Not Tallia, the little witch, though he knew her of old, but her companion. A Remorian, that much was obvious. The copper-bronze skin, the hair that until recently had been shorn just growing out now. The bond scar not quite covered by the garish rack shirt he was wearing.
A rack? Even a Remorian rack, come to the palace willingly? Is this another part of Josie’s plan? That twisty bitch is capable of anything.
Rillen pulled out his pistol, cocked it and pointed. He was half a heartbeat away from shooting the man in the head for the temerity of not only being here, but upsetting his lady, when Ilsa’s tremulous voice stopped him. “No! Please, Rillen.”
He looked away, a quick glance at her stricken face, and that was too long. A gun went off, but it wasn’t his. Heat flashed past his face and the bullet splintered a statue behind him. Tallia grappled with one of the guards. The now-useless one-shot pistol clattered to the tiles. Another guard went for Tallia’s back, but the Remorian stood like stone, his one hand raised as though to take Ilsa’s hand.
“Ilsa? What—”
Rillen raised the pistol again. Whoever this Remorian was, he was trouble. Rillen couldn’t let himself be distracted, not now. Not even by Ilsa.
Tallia fell with a wail under one of the guards, shouted something at the Remorian that Rillen didn’t catch. Still he didn’t move. Rillen pulled the trigger.
Chapter Sixteen
Van Gast flopped away, propped himself on the wall and gasped for breath. “Kyr’s mercy,” he said when he could. If Josie wanted to kill him, she wouldn’t need a pistol. His heart felt like it might actually explode. Be a great way to go though.
Her hand found his, and they slid to the floor, ignoring the reek of it. Van Gast didn’t care about that, not right at this moment. All he cared about was the way Josie felt against his side, her head on his shoulder, her breathing as ragged as his own. The way her other hand trailed over his chest, made patterns in the sweat. That she was here, with him, at last. Even being in the Yelen dungeons paled before that.
He breathed in the scent of her, all wide oceans and salt spray, far horizons and wild storms. She always reminded him of the sea—capricious, vicious, sharp sunlight over dark depths, ever-changing, never still. He felt the change in her now, like the turn of a tide, from crashing swells to a troubling eddy. He took her hand, let his thumb stroke the tender flesh on her wrist. Where any bond would be laid on. She shivered at that touch.
Her face was moonlight and midnight—the two sides of her, light and dark, love and hate, soft as clouds and hard as diamonds. No half measures for Josie, not ever. All or nothing. Van Gast dare not move for long moments, dare not breathe in case he broke the spell.
A soft smile, not her Joshing Josie grin but the smile that only he got to see, the one that always made him hope that maybe, just maybe, she loved him. The smile wavered before he could kiss it. “They’re going to bond us. I—I can’t, Van. Not again.” She’d never admit it, the fear, not outright. Not fighting, biting Josie. She got as close as she could, as he ever thought she would. “I’d rather die in this cell, or hang from their gibbet.”
One or the other, Rillen had said, just to him. Your choice. “You won’t be bonded. I’m not going to let them. I’d rather blow the fuck out of all of us. Dead is better than that.”
She stirred against him, and the feel of her skin sliding along his made all sorts of distracting thoughts pop into his head. Her words blew all that away. “If you were dead, I’d let them bond me, so I could forget. I wouldn’t want to remember what I had.”
She buried her face in his shoulder. No tears, not his Josie. He’d seen her cry once, and he’d known even then he’d never see her tears again. It wasn’t tears she was hiding now but fear, a fear she never let anyone see. Joshing Josie, afraid of nothing and no one. Except this. She’d probably rather die than say it.