“Why bother?” he growled softly. “There will be more soon.”
More wounds? I remembered what Benn had said about keeping him weakened. Was this what he meant?
“Then I will clean those too,” I informed him.
His hand tightened on my wrist briefly, a thunderous expression on his darkly handsome face.
For a single moment, I was struck by that expression and the whispered words escaped me before I could stop them, “We have heard tales of horde kings all our lives. And I can see why they portrayed you as gods in your own way. Monstrous, powerful gods.”
It struck me a moment later that I hadn’t stumbled over my speech once. The words flowed from me freely. Effortlessly. My throat hadn’t tightened and the words didn’t get trapped as a result.
“Monsters?” he murmured, his fingers sliding along my wrist, prickling my flesh. “I see only one monster here.”
I felt the words like a slap across the face. I jerked with them, the shame in my belly bubbling up because of them.
“Is that why you’re here?” he questioned. “Why you think tending to my wounds somehow assuages your own guilt? Because I can see it. In all your stories of the horde kings, did they ever tell you that we are vengeful beasts most of all?”
I pulled away from him and he let me go. I didn’t have illusions of my own strength when it came to him. He released my wrist because he no longer wished to touch me.
Was I a monster to him? I wondered. Why did the thought make my belly roil?
“What did you do to me in the fog,sarkia?” he demanded next and I bit my lip, looking towards the door. If Taylor woke and heard a single noise, he would come investigate. He would report it to Benn and I would be punished. Then again, I’d known I would be regardless, coming here. “What spell did you place over me?”
My brow furrowed.
“Spell?” I whispered, shaking my head.
“You shielded me from seeing who you truly are,” he said. “But I see you now.”
We stared at one another. His was a thunderous glare. Mine was, no doubt, wary.
“And what is it that you see?” I couldn’t help but ask.
His tone was cold, his face impassive as he listed out, “Cowardice. Weakness. The fact that I ever desired you in the fog is proof in itself that there was sorcery in play. Because who would ever desire you otherwise?”
I wanted to laugh in his face. Or cry. I wasn’t certain which.
He thought the only way he would have possibly desired me was if I bewitched him?
Was he trying to anger me? If he was, I couldn’t see his purpose in doing so. I was here to help him, not wound him further.
“Your wound needs cleaning,” I told him, feeling a strange sensation come over me.
One of…invulnerability. Detachment.
I had heard it all already. Everyone underneath the Dead Mountain—with the exception of Tess—considered me a nuisance. Like a stray animal. They fed me the scraps, they ordered me about, they laughed when I stumbled over my words until I grew so flustered that I simply couldn’t speak.
Ugly. Half-witted. Weak. Spineless.
The horde king’s insults were nothing new.
Only now, I could addundesirableto that long, ever-growing list.
If I surprised him with my steely words, he didn’t show it. The only clue that he’d even heard me was that his jaw tightened subtly and I caught a short flick of his otherwise limp tail.
Perhaps hehadbeen trying to get a rise out of me. Had he goaded Benn the same way? Was that why he was now adorned with a long wound from his own sword? Unlike Benn, the horde king would find that I couldn’t be stoked to rage. I was mild-tempered, which I considered a blessing after all the shit I’d dealt with in my lifetime.
The horde king looked away from me and I took that as his answer. If he didn’t want to look at me, fine. I would be quick about it.
