Gail openly laughed this time. The profound radiance of his chuckle vibrated between the trees. “Are you sure you’re not a Dreamer with such words?”
“My brother—”
“Which one?” he interjected. “The blind one or the drunk?”
The words made her pause.
And Gail knew it. He shifted his attention back to packing his pipe.
“I hear he’s making quite the ass of himself in the mountains,” he added.
Breath hadn’t returned to her lungs. From what she'd noted of Gail so far, eye contact while explaining his greed had been a sign of his honesty. But Gail had blatantly not looked at her when he said it, which made her wonder if he was actually telling the truth.
“You're lying,” she finally managed. "My brother wouldn't squander his time there with mindlessness such as what you're accusing him of."
“Really?"
This time his eyes did meet hers.
"Are you quite sure about that?” he asked.
“NYSSA!”
The noise of someone shouting her name made her heart skip, eyes widen.
Nadir.
“NAD—”
A knife found her throat, and a hand threw around her mouth.
She hadn’t even seen Gail move.
But he was behind her, firm arm wrapped around and pushing her shoulders back into his chest as his elbows clamped her arms down. She struggled against his grasp, but he was too strong.
Water doused the fires.
“Make a sound, and your eagle will fall from the sky,” he hissed in her ear.
The edge of his knife scratched her skin. It pierced her flesh just at the surface when she wriggled against his grasp.
She could hear Nadir’s voice bouncing off the trees from the beach, hear Lex’s shout in the soft breeze.
Nadir and Lex. They were looking for her. Her muscles strained against Gail’s grasp, heart breaking, stomach knotting. She wanted to scream. She wanted the echo of her cries to bounce off the trees and get engulfed by the darkness.
But the voices of her friends became echoes, and her heart once more numbed.
Gail’s grip on her weakened. The hand he had around her mouth moved to clamp her shoulder.
“Pack up,” Gail sounded to his people. “We’re moving west.”
Nyssa was hoisted as dead weight to her feet, and Gail pushed her forward. “Quietly, little Sun,” he growled. “Unless you’d like me to take you for a ride before the Noble does.”
It was the first time one of his threats actually caused a chill to run down her spine. She cringed at the feeling of his breath over the top of her wet head and the touch of his hand still on her shoulder.
And when he stepped around her, a torch was shoved into his grasp, and the firelight reflected back the mocking stare in his shadowed features. A dangerous stare that told her he was serious, that he’d already plotted such a conquest in his mind.
“Careful, Venari,” she drawled, lips pursing at his confidence. “You remember what happened to the last one of your kind to fuck a daughter of Promise.”
