Worry squeezed my chest. “Khouri, who will look for you?”
“My father.” Barely a whisper.
“Your father …” My gaze traveled briefly to the blood on her thighs.
Her cheeks flushed as if his sins were her shame. “You don’t believe me.”
“I do believe you.” I’d seen too much and cared for too many broken girls to doubt her. A father raping his daughter no longer surprised me. But it did sicken me. Bile burned the back of my throat. “What’s his name?”
She bit her lower lip and squeezed her eyes shut. “Wolgen Smit.”
My heart skipped a beat. Two beats. Ten beats. Panic prickled up the back of my neck. Wolgen Smit held a seat on the king’s council and had the power to destroy us with the snap of his meaty fingers.
The boom of the front door being thrown open shook the building, and next to me, Khouri shrieked.
The sound of her fear drew the intruder to the room’s entrance. A man loomed in the doorway. He stood taller than six feet, with a barrel chest and salt-and-pepper hair. The pictures I’d seen of Wolgen Smit depicted a powerful, handsome male, one who controlled everything around him—including his emotions. Now, as he glared at his daughter, his face wasn’t remotely attractive. Instead, his features were twisted, wild, suffused with rage. “Get up. We’re going home.”
If Khouri was brave enough to escape him, I was brave enough to stand up to him. “She’s not going anywhere.”
He barely glanced at me. Instead, he focused on Khouri as his thick lips curled into a vicious smile. “You think you can stop me?”
“You hurt her.”
He licked his lips. “She deserved it.”
No girl deserved abuse or rape.
He strode toward us. “She’s coming with me.”
Khouri cringed as if anticipating all the ways he’d punish her for running away.
Something like pleasure flashed across Smit’s heavy features. He enjoyed his daughter’s fear.
“She’s staying here.”
Smit’s revolting gaze slid from his daughter to me. He took me in, then dismissed me with a slow blink. A mere female. If Ihad power, it would be no match for his. “Get out of my way. I’m taking her.”
I took a deep breath—quite possibly my last breath. “No. You’re not.”
“Do you know who I am, girl?” He made the wordgirlsound like an insult.
“Wolgen Smit.”
His eyes crinkled with satisfaction, and he advanced a step. “People who cross me end up dead.”
I reminded myself he couldn’t hurt me, not with magic. “She stays.”
“She’s my daughter. Mine. I’ll take what’s mine.”
Khouri mewled in terror.
“She’s not going with you.” I shifted so my body blocked his view of his daughter.
“Get out of my way.”
“Get out of my house.” Not exactly a snappy comeback, but it got my point across.
He lifted his hands. Lights—lurid reds, violent purples, and inky black—played across his fingertips. “Last warning. Give me my daughter.”
