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A sob shuddered out of me. I hesitated, and my husband saw it.
“If you do not go willingly,” he hissed, fury returning, “then I will toss you over my shoulder and bring you there myself. I will find a way to lock you in from the outside if I have to.”
He would do it, too. I was wasting time like this. Draining his focus.
It fucking gutted me to do it, but I stumbled backwards towards the house.
“I’ll go,” I told him.
He watched me with piercing eyes until I’d closed the door.
Then, he whistled for Tarion.
28
SILAR
It did not take long to secure the property and close the gate that had been left open. I found the dead man’s ship with ease, and there was only one set of tracks from the vessel. The only places with two fresh sets of tracks came from where he’d held my Cherry.
Killing rage uncoiled inside me. Murdering that man was not enough to quench it. Even now the hatred built and built. Every time I thought I had it conquered, I remembered his hand on Cherry’s arm, his weapon aimed at her head. I remembered the fear in her eyes.
But there were no other men to destroy to soothe that rage. Doing everything I could to quell the writhing, murderous need inside me, I brought Tarion back to the shuldu stalls and stalked back to the house.
The door was locked and I had not brought the key. A mirthless ghost of a smile tugged at my lips. My stubborn little wife had actually listened to me.
“Cherry,” I called through the door, speaking loudly, being mindful of her bad hearing. “It’s me.”
A small cry, rapid footsteps, and then the door was yanked open. Cherry stared at me, one hand on the doorknob, the other wrapped around the handle of her heavy dark pan. When she saw my eye snag on the pan, she lifted a shoulder and simply said, “Well, it worked once before.”
“Worked once before?” I asked as I stepped inside the kitchen.
“Yes. On him, in fact.” She brought it up high, like a shield over her chest. “Is there anyone else?”
“No. He came alone.”
She visibly sagged. I would have caught her up in my arms to support her, but when I raised my hands I saw just how filthy with blood they were. This was the first time I’d ever seen human blood, I realized. It reminded me of the colour of my wife’s scarf. Cherry red.
I could not touch her now.
Even once I washed my hands, they would never be clean.
So I said, “You should sit,” instead of reaching for her. But Cherry’s compliance seemed to have begun and ended with my command to go inside the house. Because she didn’t sit. She started pacing the room, clutching the pan so hard that if her hands had been any larger or stronger the thing might have been in danger of cracking.
“I’m so sorry, Silar. I should have told you before. I wasn’t… I wasn’t honest about what drove me here. I was in debt and I was on the run and… Let’s just say that wasn’t my first encounter with that asshole.”
She stopped her pacing, looking stricken.
“But I never thought he’d have the resources to follow me all the way out here. To Elora Station, sure. But not here. He must have had some seriously high-up contacts on the stations. Maybe he got access to the shipping logs if it was recorded that I left on that shuttle.”
She shivered, then put her pan down on the table.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t believe I’ve dragged you into this mess. And now you’ve had to kill someone because of me and I-”
“He is not the first man I’ve killed.”
She froze, then slowly dragged her gaze up to mine.
“He’s just the first one I’ve killed here.”
