I swallowed, my nostrils flaring, panic rising though I tried to keep it from showing. I tried tothink,willing my sluggish mind to churn.
How could I stop this?
“Ah, ah,” Ryak murmured, taking my chin between his fingers, pinching hard enough that I winced. “None of that.”
His hand smelled metallic, like blood. When the moonlight flitted over his knuckles, I saw they were raw.
“And don’t you dare think of waking your friends,” Ryak said.He looked at Nevin, who grabbed me by my arm and pulled me—roughly—over to the half wall. “Because if you do, we’ll finish the job and kill him.”
Nevin had me look over the wall. Behind the hatchery, there was nothing to see. No road that led anywhere, only the mountain. And there, half-slumped against the wall I peered over was a dark mass. A familiar figure.
“Brune,” I breathed, though it sounded like a whimper in my throat.
His face was bloodied and beaten, some of his clothing torn, like he’d tried to fight back. Maybe the bruise on Ryak’s face hadn’t been from the guards.
Anger and horror and desperation rose.
“What did you do?” I demanded. Nevin jerked me back around so that I glared at Ryak. “What did you do? Is he okay?”
Ryak’s eyes narrowed. “For now. We’ll let him return to his little Karag whore if you do what we say without a fight.”
I peered back over the wall at Brune and could only feel a spiral of relief fill me when I saw the rise and fall of his chest.
Ryak’s tight grip tugged my back, and I gasped.
“Don’t waste our time,” he growled in my face. “Go get the eggs.”
Desperation was rising. “You…you know I can’t… It’s…”
Ryak let out a sharp exhale.
“They’ll die away from the hatchery,” I insisted, though it was a half lie. They needed the heat from the starstone, yes, but I knew that they could be transported in the satchels Syris had used during the Elthika attack. “They won’t survive the journey.”
I assumed that was what this wasallabout.
From the moment that the seed had been planted about the hatchery? When Kiron had mentioned me to theDothikkar?
Had it all been planned, from the very beginning? Had Kironknown?
This had always been about theeggs. TheDothikkarwanted tosteal Elthika eggs. And that was what he’d sent his guardsmen here to do.
Ryak’s grip on my arm tightened, pulling me more firmly against him. “Go get thefuckingeggs.”
“Just listen to me?—”
A sharp crack of pain exploded against my temple, and the breath whistled from my lungs. I registered the cool blood that was already covering Ryak’s fists, now smeared against my face.
I whimpered, cradling my face with one hand, hot and throbbing, as I stared at Ryak in shock.
As if he hadn’t just punched me—hard enough that my vision blurred—he said, “Go get the eggs, Amaia. If you say another word, I’ll tell theDothikkarmyself that you’re a traitor to your own people. Kiron will be thrown into the dungeons. Your father, your mother…well, they’ll be turned from their home, everything stripped from them. They’ll be banished to the Dead Lands like the Market District filth they are.”
My breath rattled from my throat.
“Don’t dishonor your family,” Ryak murmured, brushing his thumb against my throbbing face. “Because if you do what theDothikkarwants, he will instead reward them greatly, for raising such an outstanding citizen as yourself.”
Hatred burned deep in my gut. Ryak nearly grinned, splitting his deceptively handsome face wide, when he saw it.
I had a choice to make.
