A Chill in the Flame (Villains #1)

Twenty-five

Twenty-five

Hate was a funny thing in how often it blurred lines with love.

It had been just under a month since Tyr had stormed after his watery nemesis and the princess he’d been roped into keeping alive. And goddess, was she difficult to keep alive. From the moment he met her, she’d been at a party where she didn’t belong surrounded by people who quite literally wanted to slice her open and scoop out the very parts that kept her alive. Since his hunt for Dwyn had forced him back into Ophir’s path, she’d nearly burned the castle down, she’d tried to die at the ocean’s hand on more than one occasion, she’d created numerous terrifying serpents, and she’d aligned herself with the most dangerous murderer of all.

His resentment for the princess should have mirrored his loathing for Dwyn.

If anything, he should have been angrier with Ophir for dragging Dwyn—and him by extension—south, to a kingdom so ignorant that it seemed criminal to allow them to maintain their seats on a throne.

And yet…

He stared ahead at the women who walked arm in arm, sidestepping the trunks and dodging the branches that dangled in their path. Dwyn swatted a rust-colored leaf as if it were an attacking hornet. They’d been locked in what felt like ceaseless conversation for weeks on end. The two never ran out of things to talk about, and fuck did he hate it.

He cast a glance to the road that ran parallel to their hiding place in the forest. A peasant and his mule pulled a wooden cart full of freshly reaped wheat en route to Aubade. They kept to the forest, should a member of the king’s guard or a lone knight meet them on the regency’s road, but for weeks on end, they’d subjected themselves to exposed roots and mud puddles and untraveled paths for nothing. Of course, he knew the law of luck well enough to understand that the moment they stepped foot from the trees, they’d undoubtedly come upon a legion of soldiers and be forced back to the castle in chains.

Dwyn wanted very much for the women to continue on their own, but for once, it was Tyr who knew something she didn’t.

“He was at the party,” Ophir had said.

“So? We can get the information we need without him.”

“Absolutely not,” Ophir had argued. “It was you who told me to crave vengeance. The lone reason my heart continues beating is my need to see the death of every last man who took Caris from me.”

Dwyn had made a show of her displeasure. She’d thrown up her hands. “And Tyr is who you want to trust with this mission?”

“He was there,” Ophir repeated. “He saved me that night.”

“I saved you,” she argued.

“You saved me in the ocean. He saw Berinth. He spoke with the men. He knows their faces. He has the list.”

Dwyn had jutted an accusatory finger at him as if she were brandishing a knife. “If he were a true friend, he’d give you the list in its entirety right now.”

That one had stung. He and Ophir had exchanged the long, broken stalemate looks of two people who knew they were out of options.

Ophir defended him. “He’s giving us one name at a time because as soon as we have the whole list, you’ll get rid of him.”

“Exactly!” Dwyn’s fingers twitched as if to grab the princess by the shoulders and shake her.

And while it wasn’t a satisfying arrangement by any means, it told him one good thing.

Ophir had listened to him.

She certainly didn’t act like someone who distrusted Dwyn, and yet, she must have truly heard him the night he’d rescued her from being bashed against the seaside cliffs. She must have believed him when he’d carried her to her room, healed her, and explained that Dwyn was not her friend. As much as Ophir loved Dwyn, some piece of her, however small, trusted that Tyr had not been lying.

And so, he was allowed to stay.

But by the goddess, the princess was infuriating. She was stubborn, she wielded untamed powers, she refused to listen to reason, and she’d chosen Dwyn— Dwyn! —of all people as bedmate and confidant. If it had simply been sex, he might have understood. Everyone needed a good hate fucking now and then. But he didn’t miss the way the women’s hands brushed, the way they giggled, their shared jokes, or the easy way their bodies fit together night after night as they fell asleep beside one another. His lip pulled back in a sneer as he thought of what an inferior partner Dwyn was. Ophir would feel safer in his arms. If he held her, it wouldn’t be with lies and bloodstained hands. If it was him in her bed…

“Where’s the dog?”

His head popped up at the way the bitch referred to him. Dwyn continued her forward stride as if she weren’t the most offensive woman alive, but Ophir looked over her shoulder to ensure he was still behind them. She offered an apologetic shrug when they locked eyes, and he hated how his anger deflated at the barest of looks from the princess. His eyes softened, mouth moving to the side to offer the returning shrug that his shoulders refused to do.

“He’s with us, Dwyn,” Ophir chided softly. “We could use the muscle.”

“We can handle ourselves just fine,” Dwyn said. “Especially with the things you’ve made! Everything you create gets better and better, Firi. You’re magnificent. Soon you’ll have a menagerie to do your bidding.”

“We’re on the same side,” Ophir said definitively. She cast another backward glance at Tyr, then one into the deepest part of the woods, as if searching for a trace of her manifestations amidst the brush. “All of us.”

They’d carry on together until they found the first name he’d provided: Guryon, a spice merchant, and the very man who’d provided the surgical tools the men had needed for Caris’s execution. However, if they had to spend another night beside campfires and counting the stars that peeked between rustling, autumn leaves, he might bow out of the blood race and abandon the women just to sleep in a bed without their goddess-damned giggles, their stifled gasps, the quiet moans, and the countless things they did at night thinking he couldn’t hear every single beat of Ophir’s heart.

He’d stay with them.

He’d keep Ophir safe, despite how ardently she tried to dance with death.

He’d learn how Dwyn had circumvented the fatal laws of blood magic.

And then he’d bind Dwyn’s wrists with iron and leave her at the bottom of the sea. Her siren’s proclivity for water would allow her to keep living and breathing, but with any luck, no one would see or hear from the evil bitch for a thousand years.