I bite back a wince.
And before I know it, the warrior is towering over me.
I’m not the general.
I don’t stand tall and proud.
I shrink even smaller at the sudden appearance of his thin-soled boots on the frosted, dead earth.
My own boots are tucked so close to myself that the heels press into the curve of my ass, and still, I try to shrink even more.
The cold warrior says nothing as he drops to a knee, then reaches for the hook above me, the slender black rope tethered to it, that same sort of rope that the net was threaded with.
Bee couldn’t cut it, couldn’t saw through it—even with Emily trapped in the net.
I have no delusions of thinking I’ll get my wrists free of the rope. Might as well be iron.
And it’s apparently tied intricately. Seconds pass, and still, the warrior patiently works on the braided knot of the rope.
I lift my chin from the bite of my knees and fix my stare at the dried blood on his black leathers.
That poor steed.
Ghastly, otherworldly, it doesn’t matter.
That death will haunt me to the end of my days.
I’ve seen that before. A throat just ripped out by brute force, a strength so powerful that I didn’t even see the struggle of it, it just… happened.
One second, he was reassuring it. The next, a throat was pulsing in his hand.
I blink, and it’s different, it’s Ramona’s throat, it’s a fiery fae with embers for eyes and a rage stirring in him.
I shake off the memory, forcing my mind back to the twitching, whining steed.
I almost weep for it, the creature.
But the moment my throat thickens, the chest in front of me tenses—and it’s like watching a dark stream run over boulders.
That tension ripples through him.
I don’t dare look up.
Cringed, I wait out his moment of tension, his stillness, his stare burning into my head.
Then, finally, a guttural sound catches in the back of his throat, like a curt scoff, and he starts back on the knot.
The pull on my wrists jangles with his harsh attack on the rope, pulling and grabbing, and my arms are rattled with the motion.
Still, I wait for the braid to be undone, feeling the seconds pass me by in dread.
I don’t know what he’ll do with me once I’m untied, whether he’ll drag me along or deposit me on a cart or throw me in with the other humans down at the bottom of the camp. But I do know he’s going to make me stand up, maybe even walk, and that burns nausea through me.
It’s not the shoulder that worries me, it’s that he slammed my entire fucking body onto the hood of a car, and I’m convinced my back is completely purple and the back of my head is probably cracked, so yeah, I’m not thrilled about walking.
The breath that escapes me is too close to a sigh, too risky, and I turn a rigid look up at the knot.
Slender, pale fingers work and weave through the plaited rope.
