A Dawn of Onyx (The Sacred Stones, #1)(30)

I took a step forward and a tin cup clanged beneath my foot. I silently cursed men and their inability to pick up after themselves and looked around for any sign that someone had heard. When nobody came for me, I puffed out a breath and turned to make my sprint for the wagon, and ran face-first into a large, sweaty body.

Bert.

Just as surprised to see me in his camp as I was to see him.

My heart thumped loudly in my eardrums as his disbelief warped into sinister delight.

“Look what I found. Little magic girl out here all on her own,” he hissed. “All the coin in Evendell says you aren’t supposed to be out of your cell in the middle of the night.”

My throat constricted with a silent scream. I wouldn’t be able to reach the shears in my pack in time. Even if I could, I wasn’t sure I had the strength—mentally or physically—to plunge them into his heart, his neck. But I could outrun him. He was inebriated and wearing a heavy suit of armor, and I was fast.

Even faster with fear on my side.

But if I ran, would he call after me and alert all the other sleeping soldiers? I didn’t like my odds of outrunning hundreds of Onyx’s men.

“You’re wrong,” I said, mustering false courage. “The King knows I’m here.”

Bert let loose a low rumble of a laugh, but his smile didn’t reach his eyes. Something in my gut shifted, souring my stomach. I suddenly knew with absolute certainty that I should run. I turned on my heel just as I felt his rough hand grip around my elbow.

“Then I’ll take you right to him,” he said more to himself, hauling me backward.

My entire body shook so hard I thought I’d vomit.

I had to get away from him. Before he brought me into his tent. I had to—

“Let go of me!” I hated how shrill my voice sounded, how scared. I tried to pry his fingers off my arm, but he only grasped tighter, his nails digging into my skin and drawing blood. “I am a prisoner of the king’s!”

A sinister laugh slithered out of him. “Exactly. Prisoner. What is it you think that means?”

“Let me go right now,” I demanded, but my words were a strangled wheeze, and tears pricked at my eyes. “Let me go or I’ll scream.”

“Be my guest,” he whispered up against my ear, his breath hot and stale. “You think you’d be the first?”

I didn’t let my shock keep me silent for long. I would have rather been caught and spend the rest of my life in that dungeon than experience whatever it was Bert had planned for me. I sucked in a deep breath to call for help but Bert clamped his meaty hand over my mouth and held it tight. I tried to shove him away, off of me, gagging with fear and disgust and nausea—but he was so much stronger than me. I thrashed and bit, straining for breath, but he dragged me further toward his tent.

“If your mouth feels this good on my palm, I can’t wait until you’re on your knees. Magic girl with the magic mouth.”

Tears had begun to pour down my cheeks in earnest.

I choked on a single, mangled sob.

He took us to the opening of his tent, and I could see the pallet and pelts inside. My stomach roiled.

No, no, no.

I struggled, pushed, and writhed, anything to get away—

I couldn’t go in there.

He couldn’t make me do this. I wouldn’t let him. I—

“What the fuck is going on here?” growled a low voice behind us. Cold as death and just as violent.

Bert spun us to face the man, but I already knew who would be standing there.

I knew his voice like my own by now.

“No,” The word fell from my mouth. Bert would surely kill him.

The prisoner’s familiar, towering frame, blazing silver eyes, and a more mercenary expression than I had ever seen stared back at us. Fury simmered in his gaze—fury and the promise of death.

But he didn’t move to draw a sword or rush the lieutenant.

Instead, for no reason at all, Bert released me and I fell unceremoniously to the ground.

Confusion rang through my chest alongside my relief, my heartbeat still pounding with residual adrenaline.

Bert stumbled and arched a bow before the stranger.

My hammering heart stopped cold.

Why would—

“My King,” Bert sputtered, face aimed at the dirt beneath him.

My vision tunneled until all I could see was the prisoner standing before me. The weight of realization like a boulder on my chest, crushing, horrifying—

No air.

I had no air. I wasn’t breathing. I—

His grey eyes didn’t meet my gaping stare. They were too busy, too focused flickering with white-hot rage, like burning liquid silver, directed at the hunched lieutenant.

I could feel Bert wobble beside me, trying in vain to hold his bow.

A cold rush of humiliation flooded my veins as I took one small inhale.

“You?” The words came out far too hoarse. I cleared my throat. “You’re the… you’re King Kane Ravenwood? How?”

“Questions later,” the king bit out, but his seething tone was directed at Bert.

I watched from the mud as he stalked forward, like shadowed death incarnate, and put both his hands on Bert’s still bowed shoulders, kneeing him with so much force it reverberated through the ground beneath me.

With a wet crunch, Bert flew backward and landed with a sickening thud. He moaned in agony, his nose clearly shattered at a hideous angle, lip busted, and one eye already swelling shut. I thought I might have even seen the moonlight glint off a few teeth in the wet grass.