I pressed my face onto the table and closed my eyes, a scream building in my chest. His sticky hands scraped over my skin, pulling my shirt collar down, exposing my scarred back.
“Ah, beautiful,” he murmured, as if admiring a well-threaded tapestry. “My whip leaves such a unique pattern.”
His fingers dug into my scars—the ones he’d lashed into my skin—and I cried out.
“Enough, Korvin!” Renwell’s voice rang out.
Korvin jerked his hand away.
Renwell strode into sight, his features livid. “I forbade you from touching her.” He glared down at me. “She’smine.”
Korvin bared his teeth in a skull’s grin. He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Have fun, princess. I know I will.”
Horror crashed into me. “What do you mean?” I rasped, my voice like claws against my throat. I glanced at my mentor. “Renwell?”
He slashed my ropes with his sunstone knife. “You’re not learning from your own scars, Kiera. Perhaps you’ll learn from someone else’s.”
My heart shattered with terror. “No. No!”
Korvin approached Maz with a thin, curved knife—one I’d seen used in butcher shops. For flaying fish and skinning hides. “I hear these Dags care a great deal for their inked markings,” he murmured.
“No!” I screamed. “Stop!”
I tried to hurl myself off the table, but Renwell caught me. I beat him with my fists and kicked him in the shins.
“Gods damn you, Renwell! Don’t fucking do it!” I struggled to throw him off me, but he held fast, his fingers like shackles on my arms. Korvin set the knife to Maz’s skin, right over the peak of his beloved mountain tattoo—his home—and began to carve.
Maz woke with a shout.
“NO!” I clawed at Renwell’s face as he dragged me away. “Let me go! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill both of you gods-damned lunatics!” My hands sought my knives, but they weren’t there.
Maz’s shouts turned to screams, and I started to sob. Renwell flung me across the hall and into another room. He slammed the door shut, breathing harshly. A scratch bled beneath his eye.
My eyes darted to the knife in Renwell’s belt.
“Try for it,” he whispered, stepping closer to me. “I would love?—”
I lunged forward, but he spun away and seized my throat, crushing it. I gasped and clawed at his hand as I had atThe Crescent Moon.
He sneered at me. “Did you really think?—”
I made myself go limp, the full weight of my body dropping like a stone. Renwell swore, his grip weakening for a moment.
I twisted his arm and jammed my thumbs into the nerves at his wrist and elbow. He grunted in pain. I tore his hand off me and leapt for the knife once more.
He roared and drove his knee into my stomach. All the air gusted from my chest. He crouched and swept my legs out from under me. His boot heel was on my throat before I could catch a single breath.
In all our training sessions, he’d never shown me how to fight likethat.
I stared up at the single, flickering brazier hanging from the ceiling, the fight bleeding out of me. Humiliation and despair poured into me like salt on gaping wounds. Maz’s screams echoed faintly through the door.
Maz. Gods, why Maz? Why did I have to fail him, too?
Renwell must’ve seen the defeat in my eyes because he removed his boot. I scraped myself off the floor and huddled against the back wall.
“Why are you doing this?” I whispered.
“I have to free you of your weaknesses somehow,” Renwell said. “Even if I have to cut them out.”
