Dread settled in my gut as her words struck true. She had what we wanted, and we had nothing to give.
Hope soared as Harthon challenged her. “Do you not remember how we met?”
Giving me whiplash, her face became a smooth mask of pleasantry. “Oh, I remember. I will help. But it will just be me and the girl. That is all.”
Harthon could threaten to kill her, but something told me she was the type to laugh in the face of death…and then haunt you afterward. We either left with no information, or I faced her on my own.
I wished for the former.
Of course, Harthon opted for the latter. “You have three minutes,” he warned lowly.
I stared at him with wide, pleading eyes as he simply touched my shoulder and walked out of the cottage. As if touching my shoulder made thisokay.
I was going to take a knife and stab him for it—if this woman didn’t strip my flesh from my bones first.
At least the door was still open.
“Sit,” Josenne snapped, and I plopped right into a chair across from her. It teetered under my weight.
A scalpel appeared in her hand, and in one brutal motion, she sliced a thin line on her upper arm. Horror held me still as she brought the bleeding wound over the pile of bones to her left, dripping her blood onto them. She closed her eyes, mumbling nonsense under her breath.
All those scars…how many times had she done this?
When the bleeding had slowed, she opened her eyes and settled her hands in her lap, as if there was no open wound staining her clothes.
“How did Harthon find such a special little creature?” she purred, and I shifted in the seat.
The corners of her lips lifted. She knew how she unsettled me, reveled in my discomfort.
I steeled my shoulders. Harthon was outside. She couldn’t hurt me, and I’d be damned if I became her entertainment. “He found me with Koerlyn’s men,” I replied.
“He took you against your will.”
“He did.”
“Are you here against your will?”
I lifted my chin. “I don’t want to be here.”
“Where do you want to be?”
“Home.” If she asked where home was, I would give her nothing. I didn’t think I would ever sleep soundly if she knew where I lived.
“So you are here against your will, but you did not want to say yes when I asked,” she stated.
Had I consciously not wanted to say yes? I didn’t know what to say.
Again, she cocked her head. “You are not his prisoner. Part of you wants to be here.”
I couldn’t return home. It was clear that, if I ran, Harthon would pursue me. I was far too valuable to his cause. But Josenne was right: I didn’t feel like a prisoner. It was difficult to do so when I was treated as an equal, invited into cabinet meetings and elite parties and trained to defend myself.
“No part of me wants to be here,” I denied.
“That may have been true before. Now it is not.”
Her assumptions were aggravating. “Nothing has changed between before and now.”
She snorted. “Your breath falters. You don’t believe those words even as you say them.”
