I marched outside, now welcoming the fog. Anything was better than the stifling cottage with those creepy bones. A snort pulled me to the side of the home, where Harthon’s stallion stood.
“Wish I could have run away too,” I told the animal, mounting it just as Harthon appeared.
As he steered us back into the fog, he finally asked, “Well?”
I shook my head, staring at the trees as they slowly appeared in the gloom, their bare, haggard limbs so drained of life. When I answered the implied question, it was with honesty. “This was a waste. She couldn’t help you.”
Chapter 19
My father, his skin pallid with panic, stuffed me into the chest.
My mother spoke those rushed words, demanding I stay quiet, and then there was the darkness.
Shuffling. My mother’s voice, brutally cut short.
From the darkness where I hid, I heard my father ask, “Why are you doing this?”
I slowly lifted the lid of the chest. My parents were dead on the floor. The scar on the enormous man’s back was stark against tanned skin and blood that wasn’t his.
He turned.
And I was staring into Koerlyn’s ice cold eyes.
I jolted back and the lid slammed shut. Koerlyn wasn’t supposed to be here. He was never here.
But he was here, and I was trapped in this chest, with nowhere to go.
“There you are,” he cooed, the sickly sweet tone pulling raw fear to the surface. The floor creaked with footsteps, each one closer and closer to where I was trapped until they came to an abrupt stop. “I’ve been waiting to put those lovely eyes to use,” he said pleasantly.
Then the chest was sliding across the floor, and all I could do was brace my hands and feet against the walls—
My hands and feet that were no longer small, but full-grown.Mine.
I rammed my shoulder up into the lid, but it didn’t budge. Not an inch.
I was locked in.
Bile rose as I shoved into the lid again.
His voice stopped me short. “Now, now, Etarla, you won’t be leaving me so easily again. We have a city to conquer. And then a world.”
No. Oh, skies, please no.
Koerlyn couldn’t be the one to enter Centralis. He would be a tyrant. He would hold every resource and morsel of food over our heads until we swore fealty, and then he would destroy us as he did every villager we came across.
Trembling overtook my limbs. They shook violently as I kicked into the lid again, meeting solid wood but accomplishing nothing. He couldn’t take me. I struck out again, and then my leg was shackled and it couldn’t kick, couldn’t free my—
The wooden walls disappeared, and I became aware of my arms and legs pressed into the ground by heavy, warm weights that were far more restrictive than that box. I waschainedto the ground. Koerlyn had found me. He wasn’t only in my dream. I struggled, not finding an inch of leeway in the shackles.
“Wake up. Come on,carella.” The low, urgent voice yanked me to reality, and I opened my eyes to see—
My breath stuttered.
Harthon’s face was inches from mine, a frown creasing his features. The whiskers along that square jaw appeared black amidst the night’s shadows, and hair tumbled around his face in loose waves, nearly brushing my cheeks.
“You’re here, with me,” he murmured, and I fell limp against the ground.
There were no shackles. Only Harthon’s hands firmly around my wrists, and his legs planted on mine. Around his head, the dark sky was spotted with dull stars, and the chirps of night insects buzzedthrough the air. It wasn’t even close to morning. He should have been sleeping, but he was here, waking me from my nightmare.
