Robin turned toward them only to note their eyes zeroing in on the lamp he’d tied to his belt, and when he looked back at John, so were his.
Undoing the knot, he shoved the lamp beneath his shirt. “I’ll not be tossing her back, and you’ll do well to leave her be. All of you. She is the key to bringing about Crispin’s ruin, now I believe her when she says she didn’t—”
John snorted. “You’ve been enthralled, my prince. And if you can’t see it…” He stepped toward the genie.
“Stop!” Robin snapped, and shoved John aside.
For reasons he couldn’t fathom, the thought of seeing John manhandle her again made him feel murderous. If he were being manipulated by the genie, he’d figure that out, but for now, she was his.
Giving all his men a final withering glare, he bit out, “Step away from her immediately.”
Only years worth of following his every order made them reluctantly step back.
Never taking his eyes off them, he knelt by her side, overcome by the very sudden and desperate desire to trace the length of her cheek with his thumb.
She moaned softly, finally coming to.
“Genie, get up,” he said roughly, curling his hands into his pant legs.
Scarlet crawled up her neck, and settled in her cheeks. This time he didn’t help her up. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he wanted to too much.
Resting on his heels, he studied the creature; there was a wild look to her eyes, and her pupils were dilated.
The dark genie was a trickster, a creature never to be trusted—it was why she’d been banished as she’d been, or so went the stories. But there was a look in her eyes, one of fear and uncertainty that pulled at his heartstrings despite his misgivings.
But it was those misgivings that lent an edge of steel to his words. “Do not think to escape from me. I am your master now. Get up.”
Then standing, he turned on his heel and walked away from her, needing to put some distance between them, needing a moment to breathe, to try and understand what in the world had just happened.
*
Every step he took away from her carried her lamp farther and farther away, squeezing the air from her lungs, making her gasp and cry out in pain. Forcing her body to stand, she stumbled blindly forward. The light of the world almost blinding her after such a long period of absolute darkness.
One of the men she didn’t know—a big, burly one with a wild mane of black on his head and a beard that trailed down to his oversized belly—glanced back at her.
“Are ye all right, miss?”
Hanging on to her midsection, she nodded several times. “I…I think so. The sun’s so bright, though.” She squinted, shielding her eyes as best she could.
Nixie wasn’t sure whether to trust the man or not; she’d never encountered a master with friends. All of her masters had been secretive, keeping her locked up and away from the prying eyes of others. But she’d been without company for so long she felt almost mad for want of it now. Anything to keep the intense loneliness of solitude away, even if she was also terrified of what they’d do to her.
Everything was still crazy hazy, and as much as she wanted time to try and understand just what in the hell was going on, Robin was determined not to give her any. He was moving at a frantic speed, as if he were running away from the hounds of Hell nipping at his feet. Maybe that’s what he saw her as.
She rubbed her head.
The big man licked his front teeth, one of which was badly chipped. “You don’t look so evil.”
“What?” She frowned, wincing when her left foot struck a protruding bit of rock. Her thoughts were so muddy and disjointed right now. To go from believing herself cursed to that lamp for the next one hundred years to suddenly seeing faces, smelling the god awful stench of sulfur on the breeze, and seeing colors so intense they made her retinas want to bleed, Nixie’s senses were overwhelmed.
“She don’t look evil,” the other man with the long vertical scar and skin that resembled cured leather sneered, “‘cause that’s what she wants you to believe. Why are you talking to this witch, Thrane?”
“I’m not evil.” She denied it, jogging a little quicker to try and catch up to the blond-haired man who’d declared himself her master—hypnotizing her as he walked with a briskness of pace that let her know he had no intention of staying any longer than necessary in this wasteland of Kingdom.
“So says you. But I sees you, I do. You with your pretty, pretty charms. Charms that hide a wicked soul. Everyone kens what ye did, lassie, and make no bones about it.” Scar face said, moving so close into her side, that she could smell the sourness of his breath.
Cringing, she turned her head to the side.
“Although”—he trailed a finger up her bicep, breaking her out in a wash of goosebumps—“there be ways to tame even the wildest of beasts.”
“If there’s to be any taming”—Thrane shoved his brother aside roughly—“then it is to be me.”