“Well, I’d prefer words to this awkward silence from someone who has something to tell me,” he remarked, the edge in his voice replaced by something like mockery.
It shoved at the fear locking my throat. “You twisted my words into a trick question. Answering questions like that doesn’t end well.”
“As I said before, no harm will come to you.”
“A man who asks trick questions is the same man who will strike me and say that harm didn’t come to me, but that I brought it uponmyself,” I said, meeting his gaze. This close, I could see that the dark brown of his irises held small flecks of gold.
He was silent for a moment. “Despite what you may have heard of me, I’m not Koerlyn.”
Heardof him?
I’d only known of him for a few hours. He was a leader of some sort, and he was a ferocious fighter—
Realization dawned. “What Territory are we in?” I asked with bated breath.
“Fourth.”
“And you’re a leader.”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
Those lips quirked into a sardonic smile. “You know the answer to that.”
Air shot from my lungs. I forced an inhale as I searched his eyes. Maybe it was the tiny swirls of gold, but there was…there was some humanity there. I’d come to know heartless, cruel eyes over the past several days. They were frigid. These were not those.
Though over the course of his fairly recent reign, he’d earned a reputation that was worse than Koerlyn’s. If village gossip was correct, he was a mercenary who murdered Fourth’s previous Princeps and took his seat. In the few years since, he’s invaded Fifth and Third, razing villages and cities to the ground, mercilessly slaying soldiers and commoners alike with his own hands. And now, I was being held in those very hands.
“Harthon,” I whispered, waiting for denial but only receiving silence.
The confirmation was a slap in the face.
“PrincepsHarthon,” I corrected quickly, preparing for retaliation.
His lips dropped into a hard line. “I’m insulted, but only becauseyou think I care so much for titles that I’ll strike you.”
“You don’t?”
“To be sure, you’re asking if I’m positive that I don’t want to strike you, yes?”
“I…no,” I stumbled through my response, floundering for common sense.
The hand that wasn’t on my waist gestured to my hands. “My goal isn’t to bring you more pain.”
I hadn’t been able to move my hands earlier because they were bound, but not the way I assumed. Fabric strapped my forearms together, not my wrists that had been so heavily abused by Koerlyn’s rope. Instead, strips of white were tucked around the raw skin of my arms.
Someone had bandaged my wrists.
Sure, the restraints were firm, but they didn’t eat into my skin, and my shoulders were far more comfortable with my hands in front. But I was still bound, and he expected…what, exactly? “Do you want me to thank you for restraining me nicely?”
“Did you prefer Koerlyn’s methods?”
“Of course not.”
“Then, yes, I expect some gratitude for the amount of care I’ve taken,” he answered seriously, and my jaw dropped.
“Amount of care? Yousuffocatedme back in those woods.”
