She sat in silence as the attendants fussed over her, dressing her up for yet another dinner. She barely noticed when the men tried to speak with her. She didn’t cringe against their leering glances. She couldn’t find it within her to care. Not even as Grim sat beside her as if she wasn’t even there.
Hurt had a limit. And she had reached it.
Isla didn’t think things could get worse, until the meal was interrupted by the doors slamming open and the knights dragging someone into the room.
No.
The woman from the oasis.Jessel. Her eyes found Isla’s immediately and narrowed. She must think Isla was part of this.
Isla stood—and was roughly slammed back into her chair by an invisible force.
Cronan smiled at her as more people of all ages were led inside. The tattered fabrics they wore were a stark contrast to Cronan’s gleaming armor.
Cronan stood. “When I conquered this world,” he said, “I promised the survivors that I would let them live. All those who did not oppose me were able to keep their homes. Theirlives. And look at how they repay me...”
His shadows filled the room and formed images before them. Isla saw groups meeting in secret, plotting attacks, taking down knights. Being captured and dragged away. Isla recognized many of them as the people in the room now.
The illusion shifted to one of Jessel—helping Isla. It was a memory Cronan had stolen from Isla’s mind after Grim brought her back to the castle.
Jessel didn’t even look at her. Isla’s heart was in her throat. She wanted to do something, but she knew Cronan would just stop her.This was almost worse than being held completely still—even though she could move, it was pointless. Next to her, Grim’s face didn’t betray a single emotion.
Cronan tutted his tongue and addressed the room. “Learn from this. Learn that those who you save, those who you let live, will betray you eventually. You must slaughter them first, or become the slaughtered.”
Isla’s stomach sank.
“But I always offer a second chance...an opportunity to show strength.”
One of the knights brought the first person forward. He was hardly more than a boy, and his clothes hung off his gaunt form.Starving. He was starving, while Cronan sat here with a table covered in a half-eaten feast and silverware made from the bones of the gods.
The boy didn’t glance at the food, instead looking squarely at Cronan, bravely staring down his fate.
Cronan took one of his dinner knives and handed it to him. “Here,” he said, his voice magnanimous. “Wound me, and I’ll let you live.”
The boy’s hand trembled as he took the blade. But then his eyes sharpened. He was quick, quicker than he should be, given his starved state, as he lunged toward Cronan—
He didn’t even make it close before the knife was plucked from his grasp and stabbed into his hand. But instead of emerging from the other side, the blade sank fully into his flesh, traveling up his arm, beneath his skin, through tissue and bone, as he shrieked in agony. He was so thin that Isla could see the shape of it clearly, and her mouth parted in horror. The knife moved from his shoulder into his chest, where it finally pierced his heart, the other end sticking out from his ribs in a spurt of blood. The boy collapsed. The room erupted with screams.
“Next,” Cronan said calmly.
Another person was brought forward. Younger. Just a kid—
The men at the dinner table chuckled in amusement. Isla barely heard it over the roaring in her ears. She had to dosomething, even ifit was useless. She glanced frantically at the objects in front of her to decide on the best weapon. A plate? Another knife?
Only a hand on her knee stopped her. She looked down at it, then up at Grim’s face, but his expression revealed nothing. He still appeared bored, watching the events across the room with disinterest.
But those fingers, they curled around her leg andsqueezed. Keeping her from doing something reckless.
Isla’s eyes burned. She couldn’t just—just sit here and let Cronan kill them all. They were children. And Jessel had helped her.
In the next moment, the child was bleeding on the floor, dead, and Isla had never felt so powerless.
“Next.”
A man. Older. Cronan offered the knife, and the man just spat at his feet. He didn’t even take it.
She could only sit and watch as Cronan sliced his blade right across the man’s throat, nearly all the way through to the bone. He crumpled to the ground in a lifeless heap. The knights dragged his body out of the room, blood pouring from his wound, his head hanging off just strips of skin. Isla nearly retched.
The next was forced forward. An elderly woman. Cronan laughed as she threw herself to his feet and begged, but he showed her no mercy.
