She takes a cautious step toward me.
Another.
Then, her hesitance evaporates, and she’s bolting toward me, pure need brimming in her eyes.
She’s almost reached me when it happens.
One of the warriors concealed in a tree flings an iron chain toward me.
I was waiting for it—my fingers wedge beneath the chain just before it wraps around my neck, keeping my airways unrestricted. Immediately my power dims, like a flickering candle just before it’s extinguished.
Six men leap out from behind the dense underbrush. Two grab my arms while the other four anchor my legs.
I could fight—we train extensively in iron to master fighting without our powers. But I don’t so much as raise a finger as they shackle my wrists with thick iron cuffs. No, I keep my gaze fixed on the waterwielder. Her eyes are unfocused, flicking between my face, chest, and hips.
My lips twitch.
Poor little waterwielder wants to fuck the very enemy she went through great lengths to deceive.
“The Dark Commander himself,” an older man drawls, emerging from behind a thick tree trunk. He stands close beside the waterwielder with an easy familiarity that makes me grit my teeth. “I can’t tell you how often I’ve thought about this day.”
I know exactly who he is—I’d be a shit commander if I didn’t keep track of my enemy’s top general. But more than that, there’s something strikingly familiar about his face, in the sharp angles and the dark blue eyes.
It hits me like a thunderclap. This is the captain’s father.
It’s all I can do to keep a grin plastered on my face. “I haven’t thought about you at all. You are?”
The captain’s father scowls. “Sorka. General of the Tundrayni army.”
“Ah. Then, it’s my honor. I’d bow but”—I shrug as much as the firm grip of the warriors allows—“I can’t move.” My gaze cuts to the waterwielder. Her face has grown even pinker, her teeth digging into her plump lower lip. “Are you feeling all right,wife? You look a little … flushed.”
Her hands are clenched into tight fists, breathing ragged.
Sorka looks at her with knit brows. “Princess?”
Her throat bobs. “I—I need a tent. Alone. He … he channeled his power into me. A lot of it.”
Sorka’s mouth drops open, then snaps shut. His cold blue gaze flits to me. “Tidesdamned bastard,” he hisses. “String him up in camp.”
The warriors drag me through the trees, toward a large rectangular platform in the center of camp. Tents encircle the area in a misshapen circle.
Every man we pass glares at me with fierce hatred, some spitting at the ground as they drag me past.
The warriors are silent as they bind me to two tall posts nailed into the center of the platform. I keep my attention fixed on the waterwielder, not sparing a single glance for the Tundrayni men, not even when they snap a heavy iron collar around my neck.
Her chest rises and falls rapidly, thighs clenched together. The surrounding warriors watch her closely, and a low growl builds in my chest, hands clenching into fists around the iron chains.
Do they know what’s happening to her?
Do they know how easy it would be to—
The general brings a young woman over to the waterwielder—the same one I’d observed earlier, before this night went to hell—and the tightness in my chest eases just slightly.
“Princess,” Sorka says to the panting waterwielder. “That one”—he gestures to a small tent—“is yours. Vykiss will stay with you. I’m assigning two guards to stand watch.”
Two guards are nowhere near enough, not for the amount of power I channeled into her.
And it’s far more likely for two men to decide that they’d rather do the unthinkable.
