DeliveredIntoHisHands Read Free

deny it!”
    “Then send me to my death and be done with
it!” she shouted. “Incinerate this faithless heart that wishes you had died
years ago in the wreckage of my ancestral home! Scatter what is left of me
there!”
    “The debris at Castle Blackthorn was
removed years ago,” he said, his chin raised. “A new keep was built on the old
foundation. That keep has a very fine dungeon. Guess where you will be spending
eternity, my love.”
    Her mouth dropped open. “A new keep?” she
whispered, shock turning her green eyes almost black.
    “Warwyck Castle,” he said proudly.
    “You built your keep on the backbone of my
family’s fortress?” she asked, astonishment making her face pale even more.
    “I built the keep on my land,” he said. “It
was forfeited when your family were charged with treason. I bought it and I can
do anything with it that I like.” He knew his slow, taunting smile was hateful
for he could see it mirrored in her stricken eyes. “As I can do whatever I like
with my rebel wife.”
    Tears falling down her cheeks, she stared
at him with growing horror then slumped in the chair, her shoulders sagging.
She hung her head—her limp hair covering her smudged cheeks. A hitching sob
left her throat and she put a quaking hand to her lips. The links of the
manacle clanked together.
    “Your tears no longer affect me, Antonia,”
he said, straightening up, crossing his arms over his chest. “They mean nothing
to me.”
    “They never did,” she said in a small,
defeated voice that cracked over the words.
    He looked down at the top of her head and
had a rebellious desire to smooth his palm over it, to soothe her. It was all
he could do not to do just that.
    “Let me die, Garrick,” she whispered.
    “Never.”
    She raised her tear-stained face to him,
pleading with her eyes. “If you ever cared anything at all for me, please just
let me die.”
    “Give me Alyxdair Clay and I will allow you
to die.”
    He watched her chest cease to move. Fear
ran rampant through her eyes though she did not blink. She was watching him as
though he were a ghoret poised to strike. When she did not speak—just continued
to stare at him—he nodded.
    “I thought not,” he said bitterly. “I’ve
always known his life meant more to you than your own.”
    “There was a time when your life meant more
to me than his,” she said.
    He snorted. “Liar.”
    “Believe what you will,” she said in a
tired voice.
    “There might have been a time when you
pretended I meant more to you than him,” he accused. “But that time is long
gone.”
    “With the razed timbers of Castle
Blackthorn,” she said softly.
    “Like the love I once had for you,” he
said.
    “Aye,” she agreed on a long exhalation of
weary breath. “That love is surely gone.”
    He looked down at the Joining band on her
arm. “I’m surprised you didn’t have it lasered off.”
    Tiredly, she lowered her gaze to the band.
“I wouldn’t have done that. I needed a remainder.”
    “A reminder of what?”
    Her smile was fleeing as she turned her
face from him. “Of just how much I hate you.”
    The tent flap opened and Capt. Marcus
Zoltán—Garrick’s second-in-command and his best friend since childhood—rushed
in. He came up short as soon as he saw the profile of the woman sitting in the
chair.
    “By Bastet, it can’t be!” he said. “Tonia?”
He looked down at her manacled wrists and winced.
    “You’d better have a goddess-be-damned good
reason for intruding, Marcus,” Garrick snapped.
    Marcus tore his gaze from Antonia to look
at Garrick. “Oran told me she’d been found but I couldn’t believe my ears. I
had to see her with my own eyes.”
    “Now that you have, you may leave,” Garrick
told him. “And take the rebel whore with you.”
    His 2-I-C shot him a surprised look. “Beg
pardon?”
    “Take her with you as you go and leave her
with the healer. Tell him to clean up her ass. She stinks.”
    Antonia gave Garrick a