Winter's Reach (The Revanche Cycle Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

fireplace, touching his bottom lip and reliving the memory of the pain. “It looks like we both get what we want, in a way.”
    Another man might have stormed out that night, and sometimes Felix wished he’d been that man. Then he’d taken a look at the crumbling villa, the family business on the brink of ruin, and the old man who could be so loving when he wasn’t in one of his rages, and left his bags unpacked. Ever since that night he’d had two goals: to steal every minute with Renata he could, and to find a way to reverse the Banco Rossini’s fall from grace.
    He’d save the business. Save his family. Then he and Renata could disappear.
    Felix padded to his bedroom, wincing at every creak of the floorboards. He undressed in the dark and slipped under the piled quilts. They cocooned him in velvety warmth, the dark stirring memories of his lover’s touch.

Chapter Five
    Mari woke up screaming.
    Werner jumped up from the armchair he’d been sleeping in, feeling a fresh whiplash of pain in his lower back as he loomed over the small rented bed. He knew the routine by heart, keeping a safe distance as she shrieked like a cat with a sliced-off tail and threw wild punches at the air.
    The fit passed as suddenly as it began. Mari sat upright, the sheets and her cotton nightgown soaked and freezing. Icy sweat made her bangs cling to her pale brow as she gasped for breath.
    “You’re awake,” Werner said softly. “It’s all right. You’re awake now.”
    “
I don’t know that
,” she hissed. She closed her eyes and shuddered, forcing herself to take deep breaths.
    “You’re safe,” he said, his voice gentle. He still didn’t dare come closer. “You’re safe, and I’m here, and everything is going to be all right.”
    She nodded once. Hiccupped. Her shoulders slumped.
    “Can I sit down?” Werner asked.
    She nodded again. He sat on the edge of the bed, keeping his hands where she could see them.
    “You want to talk about it?”
    “It was her again,” Mari said, not meeting his gaze.
    “The witch.”
    “The
girl
.”
    “Mari, we’ve talked about this—”
    “That was no witch. That was a child, and we
murdered
her, Werner.”
    “We did nothing of the kind. Mari. Listen,” he said, and now he did take hold of her shoulder. She flinched and yanked away from him. “
Listen
.
We
did not kill that girl. Witch or not, guilty or not, it was those motherless fools in Kettle Sands who denied her a trial. If we had known what they were going to do…we wouldn’t have taken the job. We wouldn’t have.”
    “But we did.”
    He sighed and looked over at the window of their tiny room. A waxing moon hung low in a blanket of stars. Under their feet, he could still hear the faint but lively commotion coming from the inn’s common room. It couldn’t have been much past midnight.
    “Yeah,” he said. “We did. And that was my call to make. My weight to carry, not yours. So let me carry it.”
    “How? How do you deal with it?”
    Werner stretched one of his legs out, leaning forward to rub at his calf. Another sore muscle. He wanted to blame the weather, but that excuse only carried so far.
    “When I was a younger man,” he said, “I took a bounty on a fugitive killer. I tracked him all the way to the Enoli Islands and found him drinking himself blind in a thatched hut. He pulled a blade on me. Got in a good cut across my arm, too. The bounty was the same, dead or alive, so I finished him off and rode back home with his head in a sack. Easier than dragging a live prisoner for a hundred miles, I figured.”
    “That’s different,” Mari said. “He attacked you.”
    “Let me finish. Turned out, while I was on the trail, his wife found proof that the poor bastard was innocent. He’d been pardoned. If I’d been just a little more careful, if I’d put just a little more effort into the job and brought him back alive, he would be a free man today. Instead I turned his wife into a widow, because it