The way I was at the justice hearing—it’s going to be the same today.
His warning from earlier pressed against my belly, worsening the anxiety coiling it tight. This couldn’t be anything good.
“But thereareconsequences,” Harthon said, his voice deathly quiet, the line of his shoulders hardening. The breath stalled in my chest. “It seems we are in need of a reminder.”
One moment, Jonathan was a fragile man cowering in Harthon’s shadow, trying to maintain a semblance of composure. The next, his hands were flying to his head, to where his ear…no longer was. He screamed, blood spurting between his fingers as he crumpled, falling to one side.
That quick, Harthon had drawn a blade and sliced his ear away.
Chapter 11
“H-h-how—I h-haven’t d-done anything!” Jonathan gasped, shouting between shocked breaths.
Harthon watched him with indifference from above. The blade rested easily in his hand, crimson coating the metal. The same crimson that was running in rivers down Jonathan’s arm, soaking his expensive sleeves, which trembled with his body.
“Jonathan Vessel, you are guilty of conspiring with our enemy to give him ourmagvisin exchange for power,” Harthon declared to the room, though his eyes never left his prey. “Your plot, though a failure, ultimately resulted in battle. Good men lost their lives. And for your crime, you will be punished.”
Confusion had me sitting straighter. It’d been Jac, not Jonathan, who’d sent me to Koerlyn. Jac hadn’t mentioned a word about the Lord. This made no sense.
Jonathan was an insect—an annoyance and a constant thorn in Harthon’s side. But Harthon wouldn’t frame him for a crime he didn’t commit, just to spite him.
Would he?
“Your ear, for listening to our enemy,” Harthon explained. He began to circle the Lord, who was struggling back to his feet.
“It’s not true! I did no such thing,” Jonathan wheezed.
Harthon ignored him. “For communicating with him—” he paused, his predatory gaze running over Jonathan’s body. Thenhe grinned, more snarl than smile, and fear tripped my pulse, even though the threat wasn’t to me. “Well, of course, your tongue.”
Harthon sent a brutal kick into Jonathan’s knee, sending him to the floor once more.
“N-n-no! Please! You c-cannot let himdothis!” Jonathan’s voice was the embodiment of raw, unadulterated panic.
But he’d forgotten: no one in this roomletHarthon do anything. He did as he wished. He would not be stopped. And from the terrified whites of Jonathan’s eyes, he knew it as well as I and every person here.
A punch to the jaw stunned the Lord enough for Harthon to yank his mouth open and grab the appendage within.
I didn’t watch, staring at the floor beside him instead. But I knew it was done quickly, because between one breath and the next, Jonathan was screaming, crying, balled up on the floor as blood streamed from his mouth. They were noises I knew, noises I remembered from my first time in Koerlyn’s captivity, when he’d slaughtered villagers just because he could.
This is different. He’s guilty. Of something.
Just not what Harthon accused him of.
Harthon tossed something pink and fleshy aside, his hand gleaming in blood, that wicked grin still pasted on his face. Bile rose, and I realized it was a strategic decision to do this before dinner.
The room would be coated in vomit otherwise.
“I should let you lay here, dying a slow death,” Harthon said conversationally, tossing the knife in his hand. “But I’m hungry. Our guests are hungry. And no one wants to see you, pathetic and powerless and bleeding life as we eat.”
He crouched and gripped the frail wisps of hair on Jonathan’s head to expose his neck. “For the suffering and deaths you caused, your life.”
One brutal swipe across Jonathan’s neck ended the screams and cries.
Silence reigned. A sea of pale faces stared back at me. Fear was a heady presence in the room. I didn’t know whether I contributed to it.
Harthon released his hold. The body slumped to the floor with a thud as he straightened to his full height. “Remember where power comes from.”
He didn’t need to raise his voice for his threat to land. The threat had been made abundantly, startlingly clear.
