DeliveredIntoHisHands (19 page)

“What kind of proof?” Garrick demanded.

“He told me you had taken another woman,”
she said.

Garrick turned his face to the side, eyes
narrowing. “He told you what?”

“He said you had a woman traveling with
you, a Panthera warrioress who was fighting alongside you. He showed me a vid
of you and her together.”

“Kaitara,” Marc said on a long sigh. He
shook his head. “I knew that woman was going to be trouble.”

“Were you sleeping with her?” she asked.

Garrick ignored her question. “What grounds
for the divorce?” he wanted to know.

“Desertion and adultery,” she said.

“Were you sleeping with Clay?” Marc asked.

“No,” she said. “No and the papers didn’t
list Alyx as the man I supposedly cheated with anyway. It named Henry Belvoir.”

“Who the hell is Henry Belvoir?” Marc
questioned.

“The man he killed in front of me,” she
said, looking at Garrick. “An innocent man who had come to thank me for saving
his child’s life.”

“He was kissing you,” Garrick said. His
hands were opening and closing into fists at his side.

“He was happy, Garrick!” she said. “He and
his wife had five girls and the boy child was a goddess-send to him. I don’t
even think he knew what he was doing when he hugged me. He certainly wasn’t
thinking about screwing me!”

Garrick winced at the word. A muscle worked
in his jaw. “How did Clay know about him?”

“I told him,” she said. “I was sick about
what you’d done. I’d never seen anyone die. You murdered a man in front of my
eyes. The blame for that murder fell on me. I was horrified that I’d been the
cause of Henry’s death. Then to have you tell me you were going to destroy my
home and you didn’t care whether I was inside it or not when it fell? I was
devastated.”

“You said that?” Marc asked him.

“I was angry,” Garrick replied. “And hurt.
She had said mayhap she should reserve her touches for the man who wanted
them.”

“I knew you were following me!” she
exclaimed. “It was Henry’s son I had delivered that night!”

“He was kissing you, Antonia!” he shouted.
“Have you any idea how much that must have hurt me? Infuriated me? I saw you in
his arms with his mouth on yours and I went crazy.”

“You told her you didn’t care if she was
inside the keep when you set fire to it?” Marc said. “That’s cruel even for
you, Rick.”

“Shut the fuck up and stay out of this!”
Garrick snarled. “I wasn’t in my right mind that night!”

“You were calm enough when you said it,”
she reminded him.

“Men say things they don’t mean when they
are senseless with jealousy, wench,” he told her. “I had found the woman I
loved locked in the arms of another man. How would you have felt had you seen
me in a similar situation?”

“I did and that is why I signed the bloody
papers!” she yelled at him. “I wouldn’t have signed them otherwise!”

Marc looked at him with horror. “Did you
sleep with Kaitara?”

“Fuck no, I didn’t!” Garrick said.

“Liar,” Antonia accused. “I saw the vid.”

“What vid?” he demanded.

“The one of her in your arms with your
mouth on hers!” she flung at him.

He stared at her—his mouth open—then slowly
closed his eyes. “Oh sweet goddess,” he said, turning away. “Of all the times
for a vid to have been made.”

“You kissed that evil bitch?” Marc said.
“What the hell were you thinking?”

“That’s not what happened,” Garrick said,
threading his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me.”

“Your arms were around her,” Antonia
stated. “Your mouth was on hers!”

“She goddess-be-damned almost knocked me
down,” Garrick defended. “I grabbed her wide load ass to keep from being bowled
over and falling into the mud!”

“Why did she kiss you?” Marc asked, eyes
narrowed with suspicion.

“Because she’d just found out I had
recommended her for the Riezell Guardians,” he answered. “I would have put her
up for sainthood to get her off Volakis and away from me.”

“So that’s why she left in such a hurry,”
Marc said.

“Thanks to the goddess she was accepted,”
Garrick mumbled.

“You weren’t sleeping with her?” Antonia
asked.

“No!” Garrick snapped. “The woman is a
lesbian. Everyone knew that and I am sure Clay did too!”

“Oh,” she said.

“Just one more fucking lie Clay handed to
you!” Garrick told her. “He played you, Antonia. He baited you with lies and
you gobbled them up hook, line and sinker because you were so eager to think me
a monster.”

“You are a monster,” she said. “I realized
that the night you drained poor Henry Belvoir to a husk before my very eyes
then ripped his head off!”

Marc flinched. “By the goddess, you
didn’t,” he moaned.

“I was angry!” Garrick said. “And consumed
with jealousy you can’t even begin to understand, Zoltán. I loved this woman
more than my own life and she betrayed me at every turn!”

“I never betrayed you!” Antonia shouted at
him loud enough to make both men blink. “You were all too willing to believe
the worst of me, Garrick Warwyck.”

“You married that lying rebel prick,”
Garrick said. “You slept with him! Did you have brats by him as well?”

“He couldn’t give me children,” she said.

“Well, thank the goddess for small favors!”
he threw at her. “I could have and I would have had you stuck around long
enough!”

“Aye, well it’s a moot point, isn’t it?”
she said, her bottom lip quivering. “I am Alyxdair Clay’s woman now.”

Something dark and evil and infinitely
lethal moved through Garrick’s blue eyes. “Out,” he told Marc in a low,
rumbling growl.

“Rick…” Marc began.

“Get the fuck out, Zoltán. Now!”

“Don’t do something you will regret,” Marc
warned.

“Leave or by the goddess I will rip you in
half!” Garrick bellowed.

Marc gave Antonia a pleading look then
flung the tent flap aside, mumbling under his breath as he exited.

“Still bullying your friends, I see,” she said
when they were alone.

Garrick leaned his hips against the desk
and folded his arms. He said nothing, just stared at her from beneath his
lashes. He let the silence spin out for he had learned to do so unnerved any
opponent he faced.

But Antonia wasn’t just any opponent. Even
after all their years of being separated, she still knew the man better than
anyone. She held her ground—waiting him out—with a carefully blank look and
steady eyes.

He finally broke the stalemate, his
impatience showing in the darkened depths of his stare.

“I received a missive from your king this
eve,” he said. “He has declared his surrender.”

If he thought the news would surprise her,
it did not. Antonia had been expecting it to come to that. The Volakis army was
all but depleted of arms. Many of the major cities were in ruins from being
bombed by Modarthan war planes. Entire villages had been burned to the ground
and the fields laid to waste so food was a scarcity all over the planet.
Hundreds of thousands of sons, brothers, husbands and lovers had perished in
the fighting. The king was as weary of the war as his people were broken by it.

“I told him I would accept if certain terms
were met.”

Antonia sighed heavily. “One of those terms
being he turn Alyx over to you.”

Garrick nodded.

“He won’t do it,” she said and before he
could argue otherwise, she told him why. “Any more than your father would turn
you over to King Cormac.”

Garrick frowned. “Are you telling me Clay
is his son?”

“By one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting,”
she replied.

“A bastard,” he said.

“Aye, Garrick. A bastard like you.”

“The war will continue until I have him in
hand,” he stated.

She shrugged. “As asinine as that is, I do
not doubt it for a moment. You would rather annihilate an entire planet to
exact your revenge than show even a modicum of mercy or restraint. I would
expect no better from a man like you.”

His eyes widened. “A man like me?” he
questioned. “A man like me?”

“You owe me your life,” she said.

“What?” he asked, puzzled by the sudden
switch in topic.

“That night so long ago I could have left
you staked to the ground,” she reminded him. “Let the Sun take you.”

“As your lover planned,” he said through
clenched teeth.

“But I didn’t,” she said, unmindful of his
interruption. “I showed you mercy. I helped you. I saved you.”

“And now wish you hadn’t,” he snapped.

“No, that’s not true,” she said. “If I had
it to do again—despite everything you have done, everything you have put me and
my people through—I would. You were my Chosen and no matter how much you have
hurt me, I love you still.”

He snorted.

“I don’t respect you,” she said. “I even
hate you as a man, as a warrior, but I can’t abolish my love for you no matter
how hard I try and trust me, I have tried.”

“While lying beneath Clay with his cock in
your adulterous cunt,” he sneered.

“I believed myself divorced from you. I
believed my Joining to him to be legal,” she said.

“Pitiful excuses,” he told her.

“They are not excuses, Garrick. They are
explanations.”

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“In some ways I dislike him almost as
greatly as I dislike you. The two of you are so much alike you might as well
have been cut from the same cloth using the same pattern with the same shears.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“I heard what you asked. What you really
want to know is if I am in love with him. The answer to that is no. I’m not and
never have been.”

“Yet you Joined with him, let him fuck
you!”

“That is part and parcel of marriage,
Garrick,” she said in a tired voice. “He took me in when you cast me aside.”

“I did not cast you aside!” he shouted.
“You fucking left me!”

“After you told me in essence you didn’t
care whether I lived or died,” she retorted. “Where was I to go after that,
Garrick? I had no home—you saw to that. I had no money and only the clothes on
my back. He took care of me and—”

“Oh, I’m sure he did,” he snapped. He
unfolded his arms and braced his palms on the edge of his desk. “And got a
bedmate in the bargain. Did he teach you how to suck his cock in the way he
liked?”

She lashed out and slapped him, rocking his
head to the side, her eyes furious. “How dare you?” she hissed. “He never asked
such a thing from me because he knew I would not do it! My times in his bed
were few and far between. The only nights I went to him was when the loneliness
and the hurt got the better of me and I needed comforting. You can believe that
or not. I don’t give a damn either way!”

Slowly he turned his face toward her. The
truth of her statement was blazing back at him. She was trembling, her bottom
lip quivering and tears had formed in her eyes. He wanted to reach out, take
her into his arms but he doubted she would let him.

“A transport ship will be here tomorrow,”
he said. “It will be taking our severely wounded back to Modartha. You will be
on that ship when it leaves.”

Her eyes flared. “No, I will not!”

“You don’t have a choice,” he stated. “I’m
not giving you one.”

“I will not leave my world!” she said.
“You’ve taken everything else away from me. You can’t take that as well!”

“I am going after Clay,” he said. “And one
way or another one of us is going to die before the end of the week. If I need
to dismantle the entire palace and put every man there to the sword to find
that bastard, I will. But I will have you safe no matter what! I will have you
where he can never put his hands on you again!”

“And what if Alyx kills you? How do you
think your father will feel about me showing up on his doorstep?”

“He knows how I feel about you and that is
all that matters. You are my wife, the Lady Warwyck, and as such entitled to
all I possess. You will never want for anything ever again and can live in
seclusion if that suits you. No one would dare lay a hand to you, Antonia. Not
even my father.”

“And Warwyck Castle?” she asked. “What
becomes of it?”

“It can fall to the ground for all I care,”
he replied.

“Let me stay there,” she said. “This is my
home world. I—”

“When I kill him, I will be returning to my
home world,” he said. “I will have my wife with me.”

She shook her head. “I want to stay here,”
she said, tears beginning to fall from her eyes. “This is my home.”

“You will do what I tell you,” he growled.

And she came at him with her fists. He
barely had time to grab her wrists before she punched him. She was like a wild
thing struggling in his arms and he had to deflect her knee twice as she aimed
it at his crotch. Finally he threw his right leg behind and around her and
snapped her to him so their bodies were jammed tightly together.

“Enough!” he yelled. He was wrestling with
her as she writhed against him, her fingers crooked so she could gouge her
nails into the backs of his hands.

She tried to head-butt him and when that
didn’t work, she bit him in the shoulder.

That was the last straw. He angled his head
and before he knew what he was doing, sank his fangs into her neck.

“No!” she screamed, flailing harder against
him but he was drawing her blood, locked onto her flesh and as he drank,
something strange was beginning to happen to her body.

Garrick hadn’t intended to Mark her for the
Changing during a fit of anger. It had been his resolve to put her through the
Changing, to make her One with the Blood with him, but he had wanted to do it
gently while she was enthralled, glamoured. Now, there would be pain he had not
wanted her to experience and a wild surge of animalistic passion on her part
that he knew would shame her when she remembered it.