Page 114 of Sword & Shadow
Returning to their senses, Evylin and Deckard shifted away from one another.
“Do you—?” He paused, took a breath, and then started again. “Do you know where they took your things?”
Evylin shook her head, afraid to look away from him. Her heart still pounded, her magic urging her to return to his embrace. She couldn’t trust either herself or him at the moment.
Finally, Deckard turned away. “See if you can find them,” he told Ethenn. “I’ll take care of Auden.”
“Yes, sir,” Ethenn said, giving Evylin a half-glance before hurrying from the room.
Slowly, Deckard faced Evylin once more, head dipped. He scanned her. “Are you all right?” he asked tenderly.
At first, Evylin thought he was asking about her reaction to the kiss. Then she realized he referred to her capture.
The mixed emotions warring in her disrupted her ability to form words. Was she all right? Abduction and threat weren’t pleasant experiences, but this had been nothing compared to her meeting with Blount in the Water Keep. And it was a jaunty trip across the countryside next to Hewitt’s death.
If Evylin were honest, that kiss had been more traumatic than her time as Nev’s prisoner.
“I’m fine,” she managed to say.
A relieved sigh escaped Deckard, and he reached out. Likely, he’d only meant to brush the hair from her face, but she sidestepped, moving out of his range.
His hand fell, his expression dejected. “Did they hurt you?” he asked cautiously.
Evylin tried to smile, shrugging off her avoidance. “Nothing that Auden can’t patch up.”
Reminded of the Mage, Deckard turned to appraise him. He dropped down to untie his bonds. “What did they do to him?” he asked.
“Nev—their leader—he said that they’d drugged him,” she explained. “I don’t know what they used.”
As Deckard finished freeing Auden, Ethenn returned with their cloaks, purse, and Evylin’s weapons. “I found this too,” the young man said, then proffered a large money pouch.
“Leave it,” Deckard said.
Evylin paused in hiding the daggers about her person once more. “It’s a lot of money,” she said. “Which we’re frightfully low on.”
Deckard shook his head. “We’re not thieves.”
She scoffed. “They’re dead. It’s not like they’re going to use it.”
Deckard turned to her, jaw tight. She saw anger in his glare, and she latched onto it. The anger was good. It would put distance between them and that magically induced hunger. It would protect them, walling off their feelings and desires.
Instead of replying, Deckard turned to Ethenn. “Help me carry Auden.”
Evylin swiped the money pouch from the floor where Ethenn had left it.
Slowly, the men carried the Mage out of the room, down the stairs, and through the tavern. She followed, eyeing each dead body they passed. Eighteen men and one woman, dead. Five had fallen to Ethenn’s blades, and only Nev had died at Evylin’s hand. The other thirteen showed signs of the vicious slashes of Deckard’s magic.
Evylin stared at her husband’s back as they waited in the gore-filled tavern. He stripped off his blood-spattered coat, draping it over the countertop as though to rid himself of this crime. Thirteen people he’d killed by himself. All with magic he’d never touched before. And in some dark fascination, it drew her to him.
Ethenn went off to retrieve the horses—his and Deckard’s as well as Evylin and Auden’s, which he’d discovered in a stable two buildings away during his earlier search. When he returned,they stepped out into the gloomy rain. He and Deckard secured Auden to his horse, draping him across the saddle.
Then Deckard surveyed the tavern. “We should burn it,” he said.
“Why?” Evylin asked.
“Blount can’t learn of this,” he explained. “It’d be best he doesn’t know about my...condition.”
Though Evylin thought it foolish to compare his magic to an illness, she didn’t bother arguing that particular point. “He’ll just assume that it was Auden,” she said.
