“How?” The question slipped out before Val could stop it.
“You couldn’t go north with the army behind you, or south to the homes you’d already fled. So… east and over the sea, or west. And she wanted to go to the assizes, your princess.” He grinned nastily. “Begged, even, to see the Nephilim.”
Dornar shrugged. “It was obvious that you’d make a run for Eshcol, but it took me a couple of days to convince the king. If we’d waited even two hours longer, we would have been too late.”
Fuck. Sometimes Val thought the gods must truly loathe him.
“And in return for betraying an innocent woman, you got to be captain?” Val spat the words.
Dornar laughed, a cold and arrogant sound. “Don’t be stupid. She’s never been innocent. And I didn’t betray her, you did. But, if you must know, I didn’t get to be captain; I got to be Lord High Chancellor, as Grendel was before me.”
Val closed his eyes against the ferocious pounding in his head. High fucking Chancellor.
It didn’t make sense. Dornar was intelligent, skilled, and ruthless, but how did he go from almost captain to the second-highest position in the entire kingdom?
However he’d achieved it, there would be nothing Dornar wouldn’t do to keep that position.
“I won’t tell you anything. I don’t care what you do to me.” It was a rough whisper, but Dornar heard him.
The new Lord High Chancellor laughed again before sighing and shaking his head as if he was talking to an idiotic schoolboy. “I’m not going to do anything to you.”
He waved a group of soldiers forward, and they moved to stand behind their small group, two soldiers to a captive.
On Dornar’s nod, they grabbed their prisoners’ hair and hauled their heads back, exposing their throats and pressing wicked blades against the tender flesh over their jugulars.
Then, when the men were absolutely helpless, he gave another brisk nod and gestured to the soldiers standing behind Nim. “Open her wings.”
Val flung himself to his feet, only to be beaten back down and ruthlessly pinned by four soldiers.
Across from him, Tristan fought off the blade against his neck and staggered up under the weight of both the soldiers behind him, roaring with furious horror.
“Hold them!” Dornar bellowed, and more soldiers flooded onto the road, forcing Tristan to his knees still growling and fully battle scaled as Val flung himself helplessly at his captors again and again.
Three soldiers forced open Nim’s wings as she fought frantically against them, whimpering and sobbing with fear.
Dornar’s voice was glacial. “Take it off at the joint.”
“No! Anything, I’ll do anything. Please!” Val’s scream was as tortured as Tristan’s as both men flung themselves against the brutal grips that held them.
“Hold.”
The soldier gripping Nim’s wing turned to Dornar, his blade still raised. “Lord High Chancellor, sir?”
“Put her down.”
They let Nim go, and she collapsed onto her side where she immediately curled into a ball, wings wrapped around her body, weeping quietly.
“Anything?” Dornar asked with a triumphant glance at the king.
Gods help him.
Dornar expected him to choose. Let them brutalize Nim, his baby sister, or betray the woman he loved.
Val shook his head, riddled with hopeless despair and guilt as his throat burned with acid, half wishing that he had died on Ballanor’s wall. How could he allow them to take Nim’s wing? And even if he did, he knew that all Dornar wanted was Alanna. As soon as he had her, Dornar would kill them all anyway.
He had to think. Past the agony in his head. Past the horror crawling up and down his spine. He had to find a solution. In the meantime, the best he could do was to make Dornar think he would consider his exchange, and try to buy some time.
His voice cracked as he forced the words out. “What do you want?”
