I let out a sob, covering my face and trembling wildly. “No, no! Don’t take me back to him! Please!”
The soldiers, three of them, slide to a stop in front of me. They glance at one another uncertainly. They are young, around Shaw’s age, and I wonder if Shaw learned to fight somewhere like this camp. If his familiarity with blood and savagery was honed in a place just like this. The thought unsettles me. There’s no way I will survive a camp full of soldiers like Shaw.
“Take you back to who?” one soldier barks, a man with overlarge teeth and a swath of yellow hair.
I let out an incoherent babble of sobs, angling my body. The soldiers move their bodies as well, determined to keep me in their line of sight. I glance surreptitiously behind them. Asa herds the group into the trees and they disappear one by one. Only a few more moments. I just need to keep the soldiers from looking to the forest for a few more moments.
And then what?
The soldiers shift uncomfortably as I drop to my knees and cry. A ruthless satisfaction rises within me. They’re unwilling to look closely at someone’s pain, which means they won’t see my dry eyes. Or the dagger poking out of my pocket. Or the line of people I just freed from their grasp.
Another soldier appears from behind one of the tents and my eyes narrow in disgust. Dumi. The woman who brought me here and delivered me to Shivhai. There’s no question she knew exactly the kind of things that happen inside that tent and gave me to that man anyway. There should be a special curse for the kind of woman that would deliver another to a fate like that.
“She is Shivhai’s,” Dumi snarls. “What did you do to him, girl?”
The blonde soldier eyes me skeptically. “You think this wisp of a girl could really do something to thelegatus,Dumi?”
I cry louder, but Dumi isn’t fooled. The last of Asa’s people disappears into the tree line and something like relief settles in my stomach. Not for myself. I’m far from safe. But Asa, and that little boy, and the hundred others like him, are and that’s worth something.
Dumi’s eyes narrow and she withdraws her sword as she stalks toward me.
She stops less than an arm’s distance from me. “Tell me where ourlegatusis, girl,” she says, her voice low and threatening.
I scream as she slices the sword across my chest.
* * *
Shaw
Shaw.
I wish to tear my name from Shivhai’s tongue and then carve it from his memory until he can never speak it again. When I charged into camp after Mirren, I knew the risk of being recognized. The Praeceptor, after all, has an appreciation for those willing to get their hands dirty and who do so efficiently. He keeps his loyal followers close; he’s pragmatic, among other things.
I was relying on the changes manhood had shaped in my face and body since the last time I was here to cloak my features. That, and the sheer stupidity of coming back into this camp. No one who knew me before would expect me to be dense enough to cross paths with the Praeceptor again.
You.
Shivhai’s eyes had gone wide, and he’d spoken the word before I knocked him out and I knew he had guessed the truth. He was only a foot soldier the last time I was here, one known as much for his cunning as for his cruelty. It’s the cunning that plagues me now; his uncanny way of noticing things that others deem unimportant and wielding them accordingly. I hardly knew him then, but apparently, he knew enough of me to put the pieces together now.
You should have killed him.
The thought rattles through me, but I know it isn’t my own. It’s the voice of the Praeceptor.You left him alive because of a silly vow and now you and the girl will both die.
I close my eyes tightly, willing away the voice that haunts me in waking dreams and terrifying nightmares. I focus instead on another voice. One that belongs to a man with green eyes that have never held judgement and gentle hands that have never been coated in blood. Denver’s. My adopted father and the man whose disappearance was the catalyst to this journey.Your vow will protect you, Shaw. Protect you from a fate worse than death. It is not weak to want that.
Neither of those voices will save me now. It is only the abyss that can do that, the killing calm that burns from the inside out, so that is the one I choose to abide by. The voice that tells me to move. To cut Shivhai down before he can kill me. And then to hack my way through everyone else in this camp who stands between me and Mirren.
“I didn’t think you’d ever come back here,” Shivhai growls from somewhere over my shoulder. I mark where his voice is. Close. But close enough? “I thought you’d crawled in some hole and died, like the cowardly vermin you are. Buthealways knew.”
I squirm, testing the strength of his hold. The blade is pressed so solidly into my throat that if I move forward at all, I’ll cut my own windpipe. The revolver is shoved so firmly into the base of my skull the barrel feels as if it’s branded there. Patience has saved me from as many situations as brute force and though my body screams at me to move, to get to Mirren, I command it still.
“I see you’ve finally worked your way up the Praeceptor’s ladder. How’d you do that? Licking his boots clean?”
Shivhai growls and I mark his location again. Closer. “The only thing I licked on my way here were sweet smelling Similians, just like your girl’s pu—"
His words falter as my boot collides with his kneecap. Shivhai roars and a shot cracks from his revolver, but I’m already moving. I roll to the ground, collecting my dagger. A paltry defense against a gun, but better than nothing. Before he can haul off another shot, I throw the knife at his hand, knocking the gun to the ground.
I hesitate for only a moment, warring with the need to leave Shivhai here and run to Mirren’s aid. But Shivhai will follow, and I can’t allow that.
