"To Lady Lamas!" another shouts. "She always was a slippery bitch!"
A wave of crude, braying laughter follows. I keep my head down, my gaze fixed on the steel under my hands. So that's it. I knew it the moment I saw the guards outside her bathhouse, their faces too pale, their lies too practiced. He’s not just a raider. He’s a wife-killer.
"Heard she 'slipped' on a bar of K'sheng soap," Krell guffaws, his voice loud enough for the whole room to hear. "Right into the bath's drain! Tragic! Snapped her neck like a dry twig."
More laughter. They are drunk on cheap zhisk and the spoils of the raid. They are animals, and I am kenneled with them. My stomach churns, the stew I ate this morning threatening to rise. I am paid by the same hand. I am no different.
"Wonder how long before he pulls that little human doll into his bed?" another voice slurs. "Now that the lady's gone..."
My hand stops. The whetstone screeches on the blade, a high, thin sound that cuts through the laughter.
Krell’s head snaps toward me. "Got something to say, Tusk?"
I look at the blood-red stain in the grain of the whetstone. I say nothing. I am a tool. A stone. I go back to sharpening my axe. Shing-shing-shing.
"Tusk! Front hall post! Privis wants his 'mourners' to see the beast he keeps."
Krell’s order is a sharp bark, and I am glad for it. I rise from the barracks, the stench of sweat and zhisk clinging to me. I need air, even if it’s the suffocating, perfumed air of the main hall.
I sheath my axe. The blade is clean now, its edge wicked and sharp. I stalk through the corridors, my heavy boots silent on the marble. The house is quiet again, plunged back into its false grief. The rirzed blossoms are everywhere, their cloying sweetness a lie to cover the reek of murder.
My disgust is a physical, burning bile in my throat. I serve a worm who kills women and hires butchers to do his dirty work. I am the chief butcher.
I round the corner into the main hall and freeze.
She is there.
Aurora. His "Lady Doll."
She’s on her hands and knees by the study door, scrubbing the floor. My stomach clenches. She’s not just cleaning. She’s scrubbing the dark, dried bloodstains left by Dareksword’s corpse. My work. The filth I left behind.
She has no idea. She is just a maid, cleaning up another mess.
The fated bond, the one I have been crushing with ipia and self-loathing for weeks, yanks at me. It’s a physical hook behind my ribs, sharp and hot. Mine. The word explodes in my skull, a primal roar. Mine to protect.
I just stand there, hidden in the archway, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped beast.
She’s cleaning up my filth.
The hypocrisy of the bond is a blade in my gut. My soul is screaming at me to protect her, but I am the very thing she needs protection from.
I just returned from a raid where I murdered a servant boy for sobbing. I stood by and watched as other women, servants just like her, were dragged onto wagons to be used and discarded. I am a monster. I am complicit.
She scrubs at a stubborn stain, her small shoulders trembling. She’s afraid. She’s probably heard the whispers about Lady Lamas. She’s scrubbing the blood of her master's last rival, and she has to know she’s next on his list.
And here I stand, her fated mate, reeking of the slaughter I just committed.
A savage, protective rage floods my veins, so potent it makes me dizzy. It’s not directed at her. It’s for her. I want to kill Privis. I want to tear this house down, marble block by marble block. I want to rip Krell’s laughing tongue from his skull.
But I am a coward. I am The Tusk, bought and paid for.
She doesn't see me. She is trying to be invisible, her head bowed. I can smell her—soap and fialon berries and the sharp, clean scent of her fear.
I clench my jaw so hard a molar groans. If I speak to her, if I even breathe her name, I will betray us both. I force my legs to move, my boots thudding heavy on the marble.
She flinches at the sound, her whole body seizing, but she doesn't look up. She just presses herself smaller, scrubbing harder, trying to erase herself from the world.
I stalk past her, the air around me vibrating with the effort it takes not to stop, not to kill every guard in this hall and carry her out. I leave her there, on her knees, cleaning up the proof of my monstrosity.
