“No,” I rasped. “I will not kneel. Not for you, nor for your government.”
“Or, in other words, you need some extra motivation.” Ezra nodded to the soldier obediently lingering at his side, and the puppet marched away. “You see, I have something you want.” He erased the short distance between us, threw an arm over my shoulders, and twisted us around. “Or shall I say, someones?”
The sight unraveling before me struck like a blow to my solar plexus. Air stalled in my esophagus, and I stopped feeling the abhorrent weight of Ezra’s limb on my nape.
Cold born from horror had paralyzed me.
77
KALI
Needles pricked my arms from the bruising grip of the two soldiers hauling me down the street, toward a crossroad brimming with military trucks and handcuffed people.
Even my broken pinkie had grown numb, the accidental bumps against my captors failing to call out a hint of pain. My whole body sizzled from various aches and cramps and throbbing and gashes and bruises.
But I contained the cries seeking to spill out of me. A rule had ingrained itself deep inside me: never give the enemy what they wanted, whether that’d be a sound of pain, information, or anything else that could be used against you.
Only after Sadira and I’d gotten separated in the heat of a battle, I’d been too exhausted to defend myself against a group of Ardaton’s soldiers. Although my adrenaline levels had been going through the roof, the four men had wrangled me into submission in less than three minutes.
“I swear I will shove my boots up your asses,” I muttered.
My feet dragged against the asphalt as I hung suspended between two brutes. I didn’t have the energy to match my pacewith theirs, especially when they seemed to purposefully move quicker than I could.
One tired-to-her-soul and smarting fighter couldn’t do much against multiple rested and well-organized fellows.
“Shut up and walk, bitch,” the short and bulky soldier hovering at my back spat out. “You don’t?—”
“Remember your orders.” Marching in front of us, the sharp-featured man with a red circular patch on his uniform—a squadron leader—glanced over his shoulder at us. “No speaking with our prisoner.”
That weariness stopped me from rolling my eyes. It wasn’t like I could talk my way out of this. My tongue tended to bring me trouble, not something that’d make my dreams come true.
But my body… That was a different case.
So I relaxed, becoming deadweight in their grasp.
The soldiers grunted, scrambling to catch me before I sagged onto the road. Their disgusting hands slipped all over me, from my hips to my waist and then back to my arms, but in the end, they hoisted me back up.
But not without curses and grunts as they strained to hold me. A laugh bubbled up inside me from such a simple tactic having almost taken down two trained men.
The squadron leader paused in the middle of the street. Daylight bounced off the severeness of his look. “Halt our work again, and I will personally introduce you to Lenus.” At my frown, he added, “He’s a fan of studying the layout of nerves in a human body.”
I blew upward in hopes of removing the sweaty and bloody hair obstructing my vision. “I doubt he can come up with worse things than I’ve already endured.”
The leader’s pale lips retracted, exposing straight teeth sitting in two perfect rows.
His smile raised my hackles. If it was possible, I would’ve curved my back like Shadow did whenever we’d accidentally slam our bedroom’s door.
“We’ll see,” he said. A hunch he knew something I didn’t drenched me in cold. “We’re almost at the designated location.” With a short nod to his subordinates, they half-carried, half-towed me to the intersection buzzing with action.
Lines of people stood before the open backs of black matte trucks without any windows. Ardaton’s military was packing everyone inside like animals?—
No. Not everyone.
Either green or no bands at all adorned countless wrists, and the lack of black bands made me strain as I tried to spot a single non-fertile person.
“Move.” The soldier at my back gave me a shove.
The slap of his palms against my shoulder blades caused me to stumble. For the first time since they’d captured me, I was glad someone was holding me up. I would’ve face-planted into the asphalt otherwise.
