I bit my tongue. All afternoon, there’d been a strange tension between us. Mostly because of me. Because I was still disturbed by our conversation earlier, after she found me outside. When we ate dinner that night, when Benn was dragged into conversation with Taylor, she snuck over to speak with me but I’d been quiet and she’d given up shortly after.
“I only want you to be safe.”
And yet, she looked the other way whenever Benn struck me or spit vile words at me or ordered me around like a servant when he was angry. When I worked myself to the bone, to utter exhaustion. Didn’t I deserve to besafethen too?
“He doesn’t frighten me,” I told her, anger steeling my spine.
Her gaze narrowed. “What’sgotten into you lately, Mina? You’ve been so, so…combative. It’s not like you. You would really risk being near him?Why?”
“He’s been kind to me,” I told her, my voice soft and quiet. “I can’t say the sa-sa-same for others here.”
Tess scoffed in disbelief. When she saw I was serious, her expression sobered.
“Do notmistake his kindness for anything else but manipulation, Mina,” she said, her voice carefully clipped and measured. “Don’t make a fool of yourself. He isourprisoner here. He will doanythingto gain an advantage while he’s in those chains.”
“The chains I helped put him in.”
I wasn’t a fool. Of course it had crossed my mind that he was purposefully being kind to me. It didn’t change the fact that our brief exchanges still felt…genuine. It didn’t change the fact that I liked speaking with him, even when he was being a little surly.
I didn’t fear him. Just like I didn’t fear the fog.
Tess blew out a long breath. She took my shoulders again and bent low as she said, “I know your heart, Mina. I’ve known it nearly all our lives. And I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want you interfering with this. It’s much too big now. Even for us.”
Something dark was blooming across Tess’ arm. I tipped my head down to regard it. And my lips pressed when I saw it was a bruise. There were three of them, the width of fingers.
When she saw me looking at them, she lowered her arms back down to her sides. For a moment, I caught a flash of shame flitting across her features. I blinked and it was gone.
“Promise me,” she whispered. “Promise me you’ll stay away from him.”
Her eyes were beseeching. In the past, I would’ve given her my promise. I would have given her any promise she asked of me.
But she hadn’t felt what I felt today in the fog. She hadn’t felt that bone-chilling realization that we would be descending into something that we would not be able to come back from.
I knew what I had to do. I’d come to the conclusion shortly after I returned to the Dead Mountain. And that decision was only bolstered by what the horde king had just revealed to me.
I would need to help the horde king escape. Somehow. Some way.
His death would be meaningless. The priestesses from the north alreadyknewhow to eradicate the fog and were on their way here, no doubt led by hordes to see to their protection. The witches were wrong.
I will free him from this place, I vowed.
And it very well could cost my life in the process because Benn’s wrath would be cataclysmic.
“I cannot give you that promise,” I told Tess softly.
My words shocked her. I saw her gaze flash and her expression momentarily freeze.
“What?”
“I won’t stay away from him. I won’t stop trying to help him, in whatever way I can.”
Her nostrils flared. She went silent, those eyes flickering back and forth between mine.
“If you continue coming to him,” she said, “Iwilltell Benn what you’re doing.”
The words hit me like a punch in the gut, nearly snatching my breath from my lungs. What hurt the most was not the threat of Benn’s punishment…but rather that Tess would betray me in that way.
When sheknewwhat that monster was capable of.
