The soldier’s startled gaze freezes on me, and the world is gone. The air is sucked out of the small, tidy room. All I see is him—wearing King John’s red and gold, the tabard emblazoned with that bastard’s double lion coat of arms.
But time kicks back into motion when the young soldier opens his mouth to call for reinforcements. I pull free the sword strapped to my left hip and charge him.
I level the tip of the blade at his throat. “Move, and the next death will be yours.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway.” His panicked gaze bounces from the length of the blade to my eyes. “Might as well try to take you with me.”
I lift a single brow. “True, but not all deaths are equal. Do you want to die intact?” I glance at his crotch. “Or a eunuch?” The threat holds weight, with the sword slipping from his fingers. The clang of steel hitting smooth stone doesn’t come close to the volume of the vengeance rampaging through my head. I drag in a deep breath that does nothing to calm my blinding rage. I grit my teeth and spit out, “Why Leeds?”
Because I need to hear the words, I need that confirmation.
He swallows, and the bob of his Adam’s apple forces his throat to push firmer against my sword, drawing a thin line of blood along the sword’s edge. “A girl,” he rushes out. “Our king searches for a girl. He believes she hides here.”
“Why does he want her?”
The question is, how much does John tell his men?
Again, he swallows, with the line of blood growing like a wicked red grin across his neck. Sweat beads on his forehead, following a path along the sides of his face. “I wouldn’t know. I’m a soldier. I do as I’m told. Nothing more.”
Without moving my weapon—or gaze—from this pathetic living corpse, I bare my teeth in a snarl. “And were your orders to slaughter my mother?”
The color drains from his face because he sees his death reflected in my eyes. “I-I was… We were told to s-spare this village if they gave us the witch or the girl.”
Spare the village.
Because of my mother.
Is this John’s idea of mercy? To destroy every town where there’s even a rumor of a witch in his mad hunt for Rapunzel? But spare only Leeds because of his affection for my Mary Kincaid? A living saint, he once called her. And what of my father?
His life was expendable.
I give this useless piece of pig shit a cruel smile. “But they didn’t give you this mysterious girl, did they?”
“No.”
“No,” I repeat. “Because these people know nothing about her.” I lick my lips, already tasting his imminent death. I move the blade across his throat. Just enough to make him bleed a bit more. “But I do.”
“Please don’t kill me.” His plea is pitiful.
“Did my mother beg for her life?”
He pauses for the briefest of moments. “No, she did not.”
“She’s a Kincaid.” Of course she died with her pride preserved. “I won’t allow you that dignity.” I jerk my head, motioning to the floor. “On your fucking knees.”
He drops like a stone next to my mother’s body. “I’m sorry.”
“Aye, you are.”
He bows his head, with his sweat-saturated blonde hair falling over his ashen face. “I didn’t have a choice.”
I step toward him but keep myself out of his striking range. “Sometimes a choice is all we have, you fucking fool. Tell me, where is your king now? Where is he to protect you from me?”
“Oh, God.” The coward empties his bladder. The urine leaks down his thigh to pool at his knees.
“There is no God here,” I say with a bitter laugh. I use the tip of my sword to lift his chin. “There is only the son of the woman you slaughtered. Say her name. Mary Kincaid. Say it.”
“M-Mary Kincaid,” he stutters.
