My heart races, blood pulsing through my veins as I stare at those bent bars.
Iron won’t stop him if he wants to take a tilt at me.
“It would be too easy,” the regal stranger mocks. “Go. Go run to your lord. Tell him I’m locked away, broken, chained, a prisoner of his.” His laughter is so deep it shivers over my skin. “Tell him how safe you feel with me down here, behind these bars.”
The Mouse pisses himself. Broken Nose draws his knife, but the way he’s shaking shows he couldn’t stab a barn door with it right now.
The laughter cuts off. The stranger turns those dangerous eyes upon Broken Nose, almost daring him to come closer with that knife, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous whisper. “Run.”
The pair of them flee up the stairs with a clatter.
And then the stranger turns to me, all of that predatorial focus stealing the breath from my lungs. He stares at me for long seconds and I realize I’m standing in a defensive position, for all the good that would do me.
The stranger’s gaze drops to my stance and it seems to break some sort of stalemate within him.
He bows his head regally. “You’re welcome,” he says, turning and melting back into the shadows as he resumes his place on the bench.
He curls up there in the dark, draping his cloak over himself, and yet, even though I release a breath, I don’t feel any safer.
Hours pass. The stranger doesn’t move, doesn’t even speak. Instead, he lies down on the bench, hands cupped behind his head as he closes his eyes in a mockery of sleep. His silky dark hair, cut to his shoulders, spills around him.
I know it’s not real. The fine muscles in his jaw tense every time I circle the cell, but at least the fear lessens.
He hasn’t made a single move toward me.
“I’m not going to hurt you, my little lioness,” the stranger muses as if he senses my gaze lingering upon his skin.
I stare at his closed eyes, rubbing a tongue over my teeth. “Something about you being on that side of the bars, and not here in the cell with me?”
His lips flicker, the faintest sign of a smile, and then he turns his head, blinking amber eyes open to look at me.
I’ve never seen their like before. Not mere hazel, though hints of it flicker there. But a rich, predatorial gold. The intensity of his stare locks upon me and doesn’t shift, but it’s not like the way the men above us stared at me, licking their lips and ogling my body as if I was a mere object.
This stare seeks to see right through me as if he’s searching my very soul.
I stare back, because I’ll burn in the Knight Protectors’ fires before I ever lower my gaze to a man again.
Monsters don’t scare me. I’ve hunted and killed my fair share of them, preparing myself for this final, desperate hunt I’m engaged in now.
And while I don’t know exactly what I’m dealing with here, nothing will stop me from avenging my sister.
“What brings you to my humble abode?” He raps his knuckles against the bars as he sits up, and as his cloak shifts I catch the hint of a knife sheathed at his side.
I’m not the only one who managed to smuggle in a weapon, though I can’t help wondering how he managed to keephis.
“My friend and I were hunted down and dragged back here by eight burly men in armor.”
“I mean, down here.” His gaze slides over me, liquid as a caress. “They don’t usually put the women down here, so you must have made a personal impression upon Rhykus.”
“I have a friend named Kari. Three of Rhykus’s men thought they’d enjoy her before they presented her to Rhykus, so Ikilled them. Several others restrained us and dragged us before Rhykus’s throne. I took exception to his plans to auction us to all and sundry, and then dared to throw a knife between his legs when he insisted that was to be our fate.” I shrug, circling the small cell and examining the stone walls. “He didn’t take too kindly to it. Especially since I wasn’t supposed to have a knife on me at the time.”
The faintest quirk of a smile touches the stranger’s mouth. “I daresay.”
“And you?”
“Apparently I’m a threat.” He touches the torc at his throat almost unconsciously. “Rhykus has a plan to capture and auction off as many females as he can, but to do so he needs to take some of the bigger players off the board first. And I’m not too fond of Rhykus. The last time we met, I told him I’d gut him, rip his entrails out and then feed them to the crows while he slowly stopped kicking. He said he’s spent the last year working out a way to entrap me. I walked right into it. And now I’m here, to be auctioned off like a bride. Or the means of my death anyway.”
My heart is all aflutter with sympathy… or it would be if he wasn’t just another bride hunter, seeking to stalk and claim some poor innocent woman.
