Koerlyn hmphed, and I held my breath, the woman’s sniffling the only sound in the room.She’ll live. She has to live. I told him. Please, let her live.
“Now, you wouldn’t just make that up, would you? Because if you did, I’ll cut your Merelda into a hundred little pieces when I find her.”
I slowly shook my head. Koerlyn shifted his arm, as if moving to sheath his dagger. At the last second, he stepped toward the woman, and with a violent thrust, shoved the blade into her eye instead. She didn’t even have the chance to make a sound. My lungs compressed as I watched her body slide to the blood-stained stone, horror making me lightheaded.
Koerlyn wiped the blood from the dagger on a guard’s sleeve and calmly returned it to its sheath.
“Why did you kill her? I told you the path,” I choked out, watching blood pool on the floor. Three lives, gone, just like that.
Koerlyn’s lips curled as he looked to me. “You never used my title to address me, and I couldn’t let that go unpunished, could I?”
Chapter 29
Hours later, my shoulders finally went numb. I tugged at the restraints, wishing the cramping and pain would return.
It was my only distraction from the three bodies still strewn across the floor, a lake of blood around them.
Some naïve part of me had thought Koerlyn would remove the bodies when he left the room. Instead, he’d locked them in with me, a stark reminder of what any disobedience would accomplish. I’d made the mistake of looking over at them once and nearly vomited.
I hadn’t made that mistake again, choosing to stare at the ceiling instead.
But now, the metallic scent of blood was beginning to thicken in the air. Whether it was born of my imagination or not, evidence of the deaths I’d caused was now in every choking breath. There was no escaping it.
I yanked at my wrists again, needing something, anything else to focus on, but felt nothing in my shoulders. Despair threatened to seize my chest for the hundredth time.
There was no way out of the room. I’d searched for ways to free myself, but the straps on my wrists might as well have been iron manacles. Unless I was willing to crush the bones in my hands, I was stuck here. And I wasn’t desperate enough to take such extrememeasures. At least, not yet. So I would be trapped here with the bodies until Koerlyn decided to move either me or them.
Or until Harthon came for me.
And he would. I knew he would. He would probably throttle me for delivering myself to Koerlyn, and things would never be the same between us, but he would come and keep me safe. Physically, anyway.
Hope mixed with something sour at the thought, and I welcomed the muddied emotions. It was far better than thinking about the corpses.
Footsteps sounded outside my door, and the heavy wood suddenly swung open. I craned my neck toward the entrance and froze.
Moss green eyes. Short, cropped hair. A vein that stretched against the skin of his forehead.
It was the tree man. The one I’d stabbed so many weeks ago. Only now, his face wasn’t covered in mud, revealing strong angles and lines that reminded me a little of Harthon. The man’s skin was a shade darker than Harthon’s, though, and texture by his eyes made him seem slightly older. A simple black tunic sat draped across wide, muscled shoulders, giving him a clean appearance that was so at odds with the barbaric image of him in the woods.
His face a blank slate, he stared at me for a moment before glancing down at the bodies before him. He frowned, looking somewhat disgusted, and began to skirt the pool of blood. When he stopped beside the bed, his eyes roamed over me from hands to feet. My legs tensed under his watch. If he was planning on exacting revenge for what I did with my knife, I would kick him in the throat before he could do a thing.
I would try, anyway.
He finished his perusal, and the corner of his lips lifted. “No daggers,” he said in that low, guttural voice.
“Unfortunately.”
He shifted. I prepared to kick out, but all he did was reach for my wrists. With efficient movements, he released the cords from the bed frame. Still bound together, my hands fell to the bed above my head. I couldn’t move my arms.
“This will hurt for a minute,” he said frankly, and then he grabbed my forearms and unceremoniously moved my hands to my stomach.
I clenched my teeth through the pain in my shoulders, eyes watering as fire licked through the frozen joints. Then he produced a small burlap sack from his pocket, and I scrambled to a seat. A second later, the sack was over my head, encasing me in darkness. Immediately, my hands flew to the fabric, ready to tear it off.
A big, warm hand snatched mine, shoving them back down. “I didn’t just put that on so you can take it off.”
I considered fighting him for a moment, but it would be useless. I couldn’t overpower him with my hands tied. I wouldn’t have many opportunities to make a move, and I couldn’t afford to waste one.
“What’s going on?” I bristled as he pulled me to my feet.
