Page 334 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was next.

Four weeks, according to the tally I kept in a journal that had materialized one morning. I’d been in the betrayer’s chambers for four weeks.

Guards were posted at all hours of the day and night, as far as I could tell.

Usually Bartholomew or Smith, but there’d been a few others. Their snide sneers and rough voices had me nearly hyperventilating by the time the devil walked back through those doors, and I found myself partial to even his company.

He’d scowled at me curled into a ball in his armchair beside the fire, then glared at his door as if the sound of it snicking shut offended him personally.

They hadn’t been back since.

Clothes were provided. Meals delivered. My confinement remained maddening.

How Ally survived that cell all those months, I did not know. A month cooped up like a little bird in a gilded cage, and I was ready to hang myself from the window with his ornate comforter.

The thought cut off as the door flew open behind me, my ears straining for the familiar cadence of his deliberate footfalls. My shoulders eased when I found them.

He didn’t say a word.

He’d barely spoken to me since the ball.

He checked on me the morning after and held my stare when I slapped his hand away from my still-healing cheekbone.

About a week later, he inquired about my health. The week after that, he asked if I was well. Which, of course, made me choke on a laugh and tell him I assumed he was loving having his pet at his mercy.

He didn’t seem to find it funny, judging by the glare he leveled at me before slamming his bathroom door closed behind him.

Today was different, though.

His breathing was rough, his final step clipping the bar cart.

I glanced sidelong to find him braced against it, broad hands gripping the gold handles, shoulders hunched against the strain of his shirt, head bowed and hair a mess.

With a long-suffering sigh, he straightened. A cork popped from a bottle, followed by the glug of liquid being poured. I jerked my eyes back to the cliffside as he turned, drink in hand, but still caught him knocking it back in one swallow.

Clearing his throat, Adrastos breathed, “A captive General returned to us today. He’s been held by Commander Porter for the last nine weeks and came back missing four fingers, alongside a myriad of other wounds inflicted at the hands of Grayshell and Paladin. Crudely healed torture aside, he was dehydrated and malnourished but remarkably intact.”

“Was?” I croaked, my voice weak with disuse.

A long beat of silence settled between us, but I could feel him watching me from where he leaned against the bar cart, keeping as much distance between us as humanly possible. It had been that way since the day after the ball. I’d woken to his armchair repositioned by the door, his black jacket tossed over the back.

In the weeks since, I’d peeled my eyes open to him sleeping there twice, but otherwise saw little of him unless he came back to wash the blood from his hands. Metaphorically or literally, it seemed.

“Despite General Everhart’s insistence that he didn’t break, Moros put him on a boat for execution for his failures.”

To a monster like the Balaskas, being compromised at all was failure enough. Failing to escape a young leader like August or Freya would be humiliation. I couldn’t help wondering why the poor bastard had bothered to come back.

“A boat? I thought all prisoners died publicly.”

“It’s considered an honor to be laid to rest at sea. He will be given the option of claiming his own death. As he should’ve done without compromising the estate.”

“I’m sure a bullet through his heart will have much the same effect.” A quiet huff was his only response. “Why are you telling me this?” I rasped.

“We have a bargain.”

“One I’m clearly no longer capable of fulfilling.”

“And yet I am a man beholden to my word.”