There’s only a nest of shadows in the cell beside me, an enormous shape tucked up on the far bench wearing what seems to be a black cloak. A hood shields his head, and only the curve of his mouth and the stubbled cut of his jaw are visible. He tosses a coin in the air and catches it again nonchalantly.
I don’t know why, but a sudden prickle of unease trails talons down my spine. The air feels like the moment before lightning strikes.
The men outside the cell aren’t the danger here. Every instinct I’ve ever ownedscreamsit.
And only thin bars separate me from the true predator.
“This one’s not merchandise,” spits the prick I bloodied, pinching his broken nose and glaring at me. “Rhykus isn’t going to put a bitch like this on the auction block.” His smile spreads wide, teeth dark with blood as his gaze slides down over my body so slowly I can almost feel his oily touch. “No. This one’s meat. Once we serve up Rhykus’s pound of flesh, this one’s his. And then mine. And then every fucking guard in this place, until she can barely gasp for mercy.”
The stranger stills and even though it’s me who was threatened, I swear the shadows press closer around him.
“There are rules to the game,” he growls slowly, capturing the coin in his hand and vanishing it. He uncurls from his nest of darkness slowly, straightening to a staggering height. “The women are not to be harmed.”
My feet take a step back before I can stop them.
Leather creaks behind me as if the two guards feel that exuding menace too, and shift uneasily.
“Who’s gonna stop us?” demands Broken Nose. “Kasaros? Rhykus paid him his tithe. He won’t bother us.”
Each step brings the stranger closer to the torchlight, the warmth of its touch cutting harsh lines across his chiseled face, the bands of shadow from the bars rippling over him. It feels like a tiger prowls toward me, powerful and dangerous.
He looks like he could guard a castle drawbridge all by himself armed only with a broadsword. A warrior marked by the kiss of battle, scars paint across his knuckles, his upper lip, and there’s a hint of claw marks sunk deep into the bare swathe of throat I can see. There’s a bronze torc around his throat, etched with symbols in molten gold.
“Who’s going to stop you?” he repeats in a voice soft with the promise of violence. “Me.”
I search for a weakness and find none.
Dusty leather breeches clad thick thighs, and his boots cup the curve of his calves. Suddenly, all those jokes Aylin used to make about a man’s thighs make sense. He towers over me by at least a foot, his shoulders broad enough to strain the canvas of his shirt. Pure, brute strength exudes from him.
Those hands… If he got within reach of me, I’d never escape him.
Would you want to?
I squelch that little whisper. I’ve never met a man I wanted to bed. Never met one I trusted enough to allow into my blankets, though men have tried. A sharp knife often took care of that.
But there’s something inexplicable about him. Ancient, brutal, and somehow regal. A fallen king perhaps. I don’t know why the mere sight of him impacts me so much.
I don’t like it.
His hands curl around the bars, even as he stares through them at my captors with dangerous, amber eyes. “You lay one finger on her and I’ll feed them to you.”
“You ain’t hurtin’ us this time, you bastard,” sneers my old friend, Broken Nose, though his laughter sounds strained. “Notbehind these.” He raps on the bars with his knuckles. “And not with that on.”
The stranger lifts his right hand, touching the ancient torc at his throat. “This?”
He smiles and somehow the shadows behind him seem to lengthen, to distort, stretching across the floor. Undoing the button at his throat unleashes the cloak and it slithers to the floor around his boots, leaving him wearing a simple, sleeveless charcoal tunic that’s open at the throat. “Do you feel safe now that I’m wearing this, my powers bound?”
The Mouse swallows visibly. “Come on,” he whispers, tugging on Broken Nose’s sleeve. “We’re going to miss all the fun of the auction.”
Broken Nose stares back at the stranger, perhaps emboldened by the bars and the collar. But everything in me tenses as I see the stranger’s thighs flexing, movement starting to?—
“Boo,” he suddenly snarls, lunging forward and grabbing through the bars.
Broken Nose and the Mouse scramble back, both slamming into the wall behind them with loud screams.
Metal shrieks as the warlord sets all of his strength into his task, shifting the bars apart, inch by slow inch, his biceps gilded and straining in the torchlight…
Until he lets them go with a rough laugh.
