The last thing Bink wanted to confess was the real reason he was here. He didn’t want the stupid weasel to rat him out. To be honest, he was amazed Fort hadn’t already broken under the torture that evil bitch had put him through.
He wouldn’t have suffered it for Fort. He’d have broken the first day and led them straight to Fort’s whereabouts. “Why didn’t you betray me?”
Fort stopped wiping the blood from his face to give him a hard stare. “You stupid? If I’d told her where you were, she’d have killed us both. Only hope I’ve had of surviving her was keeping my mouth shut and praying you’d rescue me.”
So, he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Bink was impressed. Maybe he’d judged Fort a little prematurely.
He motioned for the human to duck as one of the queen’s sentries went by. Getting into the dungeon had been relatively easy as he’d been alone.
Beautiful part about being an imp, they could shrink in size and scurry around in places centaurs didn’t look. Bad thing about humans, they were locked in their annoyingly large bodies that tended to draw attention.
Bump into things.
“What are you doing?” a soft voice asked beside him.
Bink had to bite back a shriek at the unexpected voice that sounded right in his ear.
Dreama.
“Not scaring the shite out of people. Dammit, Brownie! What are you trying to do? And why aren’t you where I told you to be?”
Dreama scowled at him. The size of an average human man’s hand, she was pretty for a brownie. Long dark hair and eyes that glistened like dew. “Because there’s a bunch of... things there already.”
Bink scowled. “What do you mean?”
“I went to the hunting lodge to wait on you, like you said. But there’s already a group hiding there.”
Was she serious? “What kind of group?”
She shrugged. “The kind that’s just waiting around. How should I know?”
He wanted to throttle her.
Why do I bother with accomplices?They were so annoying. But then again, they had their uses. Without her, he’d had no one to leave behind and send the king off in the wrong direction after they’d killed Princess Renata.
Still...
Fort had cost him the dragon skull.
Now, he had to get to the lodge and see for himself what she was talking about. See who the creatures were she was talking about.
Why they were there.
As carefully as he could, he led them through the palace grounds and out to the back garden. He was lucky that Keryna had trusted him enough to show him all the secret ways in and out of the palace.
Her reasoning then was to get him to help her assassinate the king. Until they’d learned that you couldn’t just cut the throat of a black horn.
They were a special breed and required special means for execution.
Even cutting off their horn required a special blade.
And thinking of Keryna, he almost felt bad for her fate.
He still didn’t know if she was alive or dead. If she had managed to survive the queen’s torture, she had to be wishing herself dead. Especially if she looked anything like Fort. His face was swollen to where he barely looked human. He’d lost a few teeth, too.
Poor bugger.
Whatever Bink did, he had to make sure to stay out of Meara’s hands. She was lethal in a way he’d never seen before. And here, he’d thought he’d seen them all and done most of them.
