Bellamy holds his breath, waiting for the final blow, his heart hammering against his ribs as he watches something shift in Ivah's fierce expression.
But the blow doesn't fall.
Then steel bites deep between Ivah's shoulder blades.
The Barbarian King's eyes widen in shock and pain as Harwick's blade punches through his back, the point emerging just below his collarbone. Blood spills from the wound, spattering across Bellamy's armor.
"Now!" Harwick roars.
Chaos erupts around them. Mirn soldiers swarm from all sides, taking advantage of Ivah's moment of vulnerability. Nets fly through the air, weighted ropes tangle around his ankles, and suddenly there are a dozen men wrestling the wounded Barbarian King to the ground.
Ivah roars his fury, throwing off attackers like a bear surrounded by hounds despite the blade still protruding from his back. His axes swing in deadly arcs, and two soldiers fall screaming, but more keep coming. Harwick twists his sword deeper, using his weight to drive Ivah down, while other men grab at the Barbarian King's arms.
Bellamy rolls away, gasping, his vision swimming. Through the haze of pain and exhaustion, he sees his soldiers falling on their enemy with desperate courage. Chains appear from somewhere—heavy iron links that even Ivah's considerable strength can't break, especially weakened as he is by Harwick's blade.
The general finally yanks his sword free in a spray of blood, and Ivah staggers, one hand pressed to his wound. But even injured, even surrounded, he fights like a demon. It takes eight men to finally wrestle him to the ground, and even then he nearly breaks free twice before the chains secure him properly.
When the dust settles, the Barbarian King kneels in the mud, bound with enough chain to anchor a ship. Blood runs from the wound in his back, staining his dark leathers crimson, and more blood trickles from cuts on his arms and face where his captors have finally subdued him. But his eyes blaze with undiminished fury.
Harwick appears at Bellamy's side, his face tight with concern and his sword still slick with the Barbarian King's blood. "Can you stand?"
Bellamy nods, though his legs feel like water. Harwick helps him to his feet, steadying him as the world tilts dangerously. Everymovement sends fresh waves of pain through his battered body—ribs that might be cracked, cuts that sting with each breath, muscles that scream in protest.
"What happened?" Bellamy asks, his voice hoarse from Ivah's grip on his throat. "Why didn't he...?"
"I don't know, lad." Harwick's voice is troubled as he glances toward their chained prisoner. "I've never seen anything like it. He had you dead to rights, and then he just... stopped. Stared at you like he'd seen a ghost."
Bellamy looks across the battlefield to where the Barbarian King kneels in chains. Even bound, even wounded and defeated, Ivah radiates a dangerous power that makes lesser men step back. His dark eyes find Bellamy's across the distance, and for a moment, that strange intensity returns—as if he's trying to solve a puzzle written in Bellamy's face.
Then Ivah's lips curve in a slow, predatory smile that makes heat flood Bellamy's cheeks for reasons he can't understand. There's something in that expression that suggests the Barbarian King doesn't see himself as truly defeated. As if this capture is merely another move in a game only he understands.
"Get him back to the dungeons," Harwick orders, never taking his eyes off their dangerous prisoner. "Full guard, triple chains. And get a healer to tend that wound—we need him alive. Someone also tend to the wounded—we've got a long march home."
As his men begin the grim task of collecting their dead and wounded, Bellamy finds himself unable to look away from their captive. The Barbarian King allows himself to be hauled to his feet with regal dignity, the chains clanking with each movement, nevertaking his eyes off Bellamy. Even wounded, even in shackles, there's something magnetic about him—a raw power that draws the eye and holds it.
Why had he hesitated? What had he seen in that crucial moment that had stayed his hand?
Bellamy doesn't have answers, but as they begin the long journey back to Mirn, he can't shake the feeling that his life has just changed in ways he's only beginning to understand. The way Ivah continues to watch him, the way that knowing smile lingers at the corners of the Barbarian King's mouth—it all speaks to something larger than simple defeat and capture.
The Barbarian King is their prisoner now, bound in chains and wounded by Harwick's blade, but somehow Bellamy feels like the one who has been captured.
Chapter 3
Three days have passed since the battle at Silverbrook crossing, and Bellamy cannot sleep.
He lies in his bed, staring at the canopy above him, his bandaged sword arm throbbing in time with his heartbeat. The castle physician has done his work well—the gash is clean, stitched neat as embroidery, and already beginning to heal. The bruises on his throat have faded from purple to yellow-green, and his ribs no longer scream when he draws breath.
But his body's recovery only makes the restlessness worse.
Why didn't he kill me?
The question has been circling in his mind like a vulture for three days, picking at his thoughts until he can focus on nothing else. He's replayed that moment a thousand times—the weight of the Barbarian King above him, the gleam of the axe blade, those dark eyes studying his face with such strange intensity.
Bellamy had been certain he was about to die. He had made peace with it, and had even felt a kind of grim satisfaction that he would die fighting for his people rather than cowering behind castle walls. But then Ivah has simply... stopped. Gone still as stone, as if something in Bellamy's face has caught him completely off guard.
What did he see? What made him hesitate?
The castle bells chime midnight, their bronze voices carrying through the corridors. Bellamy sits up with a frustrated sigh, pushing the covers aside. Sleep is impossible. It has been impossible for threenights running, ever since they've returned with their infamous prisoner.
