We walked for an hour.
The forest swallowed us, shadows pooling thicker at the base of each trunk. My legs ached, but the executioner’s pace never faltered, those broad shoulders cutting through the biting wind.
We finally stopped at a stagnant pool filmed with green scum. Something had died in it, and it reeked. The smell was worse than the plague pits they'd dug outside Skalgard two winters back.
The executioner studied the pool. Then he looked at me.
“In,” he said.
I blinked. “What?”
“Get in the water.”
I peered into the pool, which was too still and dark.
The executioner sighed. “This is the way out.”
“You’re insane if you think I’m going in there.”
His glove gripped my shoulder, and then he shoved me into the water.
I gasped as I plunged down. I kicked, struggling to find the bottom, but my feet only met more pond scum. Gods, it wasfreezing.
I broke through the surface, gasping.
The executioner knelt at the edge, watching me thrash. Slowly, he slid into the water with barely a ripple. The water came up to his chest, slipping off his steel. His arm curved around my waist.
I screamed as he pulled me underwater.
12
DROWNING
He dragged me down, deep into the pool’s depths.
Cold punched into my body like fists made of ice. My hands scratched his chest, clawing at his armor, searching for anything that’d break his hold, but it only tightened as he hauled us into the dark.
I slammed my elbow into his ribs.
His grip loosened and I twisted away, tumbling into darkness. The water closed over me with the same finality as the throne room’s silence when all those screams had stopped at once. The light above faded to nothing.
Then his hand found my dress. He yanked me back against him, one arm locked around my waist, and we kept sinking through a pond that shouldn’t have been this deep.
I couldn’t breathe.
He’s going to drown me here. In this filthy pool where no one will find my body.
The passage narrowed, rock walls pressing closer, and my head spun with the need for air. Black spots. Blurring edges. My lungs screaming.
Then he kicked up hard. The world flippedas he grabbed my hips and shoved. I shot upward like a cork from a bottle, the water releasing me as suddenly as it had taken me.
I broke through the surface, gasping.
He emerged a moment later, his hair streaming. He caught my waist, dragging us toward the edge. Solid ground. I coughed up water, my lungs on fire.
He crouched beside me. “Still breathing. Good.”
Mist curled from his body in lazy tendrils. He looked like a death-god with his glistening armor.
