CHAPTERTWELVE
A banging erupted inside my head, waking me from the deepest sleep I’d ever had.
Pound-pound. Pound-pound.In time to my heartbeat.
The worst headache in existence resided inside my skull. I moaned in pain, but the sound was muffled. My brows pinched as my tongue caught on a piece of cloth pressed between my teeth and over my tongue. My blue eyes gradually opened to the piercing light that awaited them.
I squinted against the sunlight, trying to make sense of…everything.
I had my back shoved up against a thick black pole, and my arms pulled back around it with a form of restraint locking my wrists together, trapping the pole against me. Cuffs bound my feet, tugged tight with a black, long chain tying them to the pole. A piece of material had been shoved into my mouth and tied around the back of my head to hold it in place.
The pole was stuck down into the lushest brown sand.
I struggled to test the cuffs. And it was a struggle, my entire body weak. It was as if I had been awake for a full month and running a marathon the entire time. I could hardly shuffle my feet enough to kick up the plentiful sand.
I groaned and managed to lift my head to evaluate the rest of my surroundings.
It didn’t get any better.
In a large circle, black poles were erected in the sand.
And against each one of them was a furious captive attached to it, trying to free themselves.
Theron. Finn. Mina. Wolfe. Alaric. Cassander.
Rune’s pole was directly to my right but more than four body lengths away. His golden eyes were on me, grunting and growling while he jerked on the binds holding him captive. The gag in his mouth stretched his lips, but he hissed around it, “You took forever to wake up.”
I blinked gritty, dry eyes. “What is happening?”
“Nothing good,” he spat. More struggling, banging his body against the pole, though his head teetered with it. He repeatedly blinked through the drugs in his system. “Beautiful?”
I think I accomplished lifting my brows in silent question.
He understood. “You should have taken that other fucking train.”
I nodded. Or I was pretty sure I did. “Where are we?”
“Still in King Central Province.” His eyes looked to the concrete structure towering over and around us—half of it crumbling and broken—his head tipping to the side beyond his control. He swallowed slowly before he slurred, “An ancient coliseum. Gladiators used to fight here.”
I slowly looked back to the center of our circle. What I had been trying to ignore.
There was a sword.
There was a sleeping Poppy, not attached to any structure.
And there was a flat rock where a man sat with his hands peacefully on his lap. His eyes were closed as if he were in deep slumber sitting ramrod straight. He only wore a pair of black pajama bottoms, the rest of his considerable, muscled body bare to the eyes.
It was Godric King.
“Fuck,” I groaned. And tried to pull at my bonds.
Then Poppy stirred. Her fingers twitched in the sand.
Cassander went crazy, bashing back and forth on his pole, trying to rock it loose.
It was no use. The pole had to be attached to something below the sand. It wasn’t moving.
I squinted when his eyes…turned completely white. Then flashed back to normal.
