Thud.
My breath seizes.
Thud.
Heavy. Deliberate. Not the quick, sharp steps of the elf guards. Orc footsteps.Hisfootsteps.The Tusk.
He's walking down the servant's passage, his tread so heavy I can feel the vibration through the floor. He's coming for me.Oh gods, oh gods...
The footsteps stop. Right outside my door.
The silence that follows is worse than the sound. It's absolute, suffocating. I can hear thethump-thump-thumpof my own pulse in my ears, so loud I'm sure he can hear it too. He's just... standing out there. Waiting. He knows I'm in here. He knows I'm terrified.He's here.
I brace myself for thecrash, for the door to explode inward, for my pathetic chair to be tossed aside like kindling. I squeeze the knife hilt, my knuckles white, and press myself back against the wall, making myself small.
It doesn't happen.
A sound, low and rough, rumbles through the wood.A knock.
My mind stops. He... knocked?
"Girl." His voice becomes a low vibration, like stones grinding together, barely audible. "Open the door."
I can't move. I'm paralyzed. My fingers are locked around the knife hilt.This is a trick. A cruel game. He wants me to open it.
The silence stretches, thick and agonizing. Then I hear a soft, metallicclick. The master key.
The door swings open slowly, pushing my flimsy chair, which scrapes uselessly across the stone floor.
He is there.
He fills the entire doorway, a seven-foot mountain of gray-green shadow. His sheer size sucks the air from my tiny room. I press myself back against the wall, my throat closed tight, the knife held up in a trembling, useless defense.
But... he's not in his raid-gear. He's not spattered in blood like he was this afternoon when he returned. He wears a simple, dark tunic and leathers. His axe is sheathed on his back, not held in his hands. He isn't snarling. He just... stands there.
He looks at me, cowering on the cot. He looks at the useless chair. He looks at the pathetic, shaking knife in my hand. Hisamber eyes aren't dead and flat like they were in the hall. They'reburning.
He should be grabbing me. He should be dragging me to Privis's bed. That is hisjob. He is the monster who obeys the bigger monster. He is the axe.
He takes a heavy breath, the sound rasping in the small room. His gaze is fixed on me, and it’s... agonizing. He looks like he's at war with himself, his massive hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
"He sent me for you," he rumbles, and his voice is a curse.
I flinch.This is it.My knuckles are white.
"Toget you ready." He says the words with such profound, guttural disgust it rocks me back. He knows exactly what it means. He takes a heavy stepback, out of my doorway, clearing the path into the hall. He isn't trapping me. He's... giving me an exit?
He looks at me, this massive, scarred, tusked creature—Privis's ultimate weapon. His amber eyes are burning with a pain I don't understand, a pain that mirrors my own terror.
"What. Do. You. Want?"
My mind shatters. The question is impossible. It's alien. No one has asked me whatIwant since before my family was killed, before I was sold to Lord Tull's estate. Andhe—The Tusk, the butcher, the monster—he is the one asking? My world tilts.
I stare at him, my heart hammering so hard it hurts. My entire life, my survival, has depended on being invisible, on anticipating the desires of monsters and obeying.He is a monster. Obey.
But my eyes are locked on his. He isn't just a tool. He isn't just an axe. He is... in pain. The realization wounds me with the blunt force of a physical blow.He hates this. He hates Privis. He hates himself.The way he's standing there, his whole body vibrating with a tension that has nothing to do with me...
He's a prisoner, too.A different cage, yes. A much more terrifying one. But still a cage.
