Adan rubs his cheek where I clocked him with my foot while we were wrestling. His green eyes lock onto me. “Goddammit, Sabine!”
I spit at him, “You lied to me! You always planned to abduct me! You said—you said the king . . . ” My voice falls off, because I don’t know how to finish my thought. None of it makes any sense. I can’t fit together the pieces into any sort of coherent picture. According to Adan and Maks, King Joruun is behind this? He’s a frail old man who hasn’t left Old Coros in a decade. He has a reputation for monotonous speeches about taxation, not kidnapping girls.
“You can’t get out of the cottage,” Adan says evenly, rubbing the bruise forming on his cheek. There’s ice in his eyes. He’s dropped the act now, and there’s no doubt that he was playing me the entire time. “The door and all the windows lock from the outside. The rest of our men are standing guard.” He must notice that my attention shifts to the chimney, because he gives a mirthless laugh. “We blocked the chimney, too, so if you’re thinking of calling to any creatures to swoop down and save you, you can forget that idea.”
My mouth goes dry as my greatest fear comes true—I’m entirely alone. I have no one to help me. No birds. No rodents. No wildcats. No Myst. My heart squeezes to think of my brave girl, who tried to warn me in Blackwater not to go with Adan. There was a reason she didn’t like him from the start. She could sense his nefarious intent, even if she couldn’t put it into words that I’d understand.
But wait.
Adan and his brothers—who don’t seem to be his brothers at all—plugged any entrances large enough for a mouse, but this is an old cottage made of rough-hewn logs and crumbling mortar. There have to be tiny cracks.
I tap into my godkiss to send a silent signal out into the nearby forest. It isn’t long before I feel the buzz of many answering voices, who close in toward my call. I can feel each of their presences as though we’re connected by an invisible tether, as they crawl and shimmy and slip between cracks in the cabin’s logs barely big enough for a breath.
A honeybee alights from a crack in the wall to land on my cheek. Its tiny feet patter over my skin, its wings vibrating against my eyelashes as it crests the hill of my cheekbone. Another one zips across the cottage to land on my forehead. One by one, more honeybees join them until I have hundreds swarming my face and hair.
We help, the bees buzz in one collective voice.
Adan and Maks stumble backward like they’re looking at Immortal Solene herself, the Goddess of Nature, cursed to suffer a thousand bee stings after betraying Immortal Vale by sleeping with his rival. It would be useless to use the bees against my captors—the honeybees could sting them a hundred times and still not kill them, but I have other ideas.
Adan shouts sharply, “Bertine! Iskander!”
The other two men storm in through the door. It isn’t lost on me that if they heard Adan just now, then they must have been close enough to hear my screams when Maks tried to rape me. Anger drips down the back of my throat, setting my belly on fire, prodding my rage until it’s buzzing like the bees.
My four abductors stare at me, covered in bees, in shocked bewilderment.
Moving my lips slowly so I don’t unintentionally harm the bees crawling around my mouth, I say in measured words, “I have a reaction to bee venom—a single sting almost killed me once. Whatever King Joruun is paying you, if you lay one finger on me, I’ll be dead in minutes, and you’ll lose every last coin he promised.”
Chapter 20
Wolf
Dusk chews up the forest as Myst and I stand on the edge of a clearing, facing a cottage that’s seen better days. We’ve been pursuing Sabine and her captors since daylight. We followed the river from Blackwater for half a day to the Old Innis Mill, where a fishing sloop was docked. Buried under waves of briny stink was the delicate scent of violets. We tracked five sets of horse prints into the woods about twenty miles south of the Blackened Forest—and now we’re here.
They’re inside. Sabine and four men. I’m sure it’s her—I’d recognize the swift patter of her heartbeat as surely as my own. For the last five minutes, Myst and I have been waiting as I listen for details of their conversation and movements, so I can track how best to attack.
But now they’ve been strangely quiet. They’ve used each other’s names—Adan, Maks, Bertine, and Iskander—but only to pass around a bottle. I hear their glugs of booze, their boots scuffing, a rocking chair’s creak, but barely more than a few spoken words, like all five of them are just sitting around staring at one another. I shift on Myst’s back, fingers tightening in her mane.
“I don’t like this. Something’s wrong.”
The buzz of a bees nest somewhere close dulls my ability to pick up on smaller sounds. I’m about ready to dismount, say fuck it, and simply kick the door down, but then one of the men speaks.
“You can’t stay like this forever, girl,” he snaps in frustration. “It’s been hours.”
Sabine’s voice, gravely with exhaustion, replies firmly, “Then do what I told you. Leave. Go back to the river. Once a bird confirms that you’re on your boat, we go our separate ways.”
She’s negotiating with her captors? With what fucking leverage? What could possibly be the source of this stand-off?
Myst blows steam into the cool night air. She’s getting impatient. So am I. Night darkens the forest, and the growing shadows ignite my desire to slit each one of their throats and listen to them choke on their own blood. It’s a sound I’m going to fucking relish.
“I’m not giving up the bounty!” another man barks.
I still can’t be certain of the scenario in that cottage, which is a major disadvantage. There’s one of me and four of them. I’d confidently take those odds if I knew what kind of fighters they were, so I could play to their weaknesses. But I don’t know if they’re soldiers or farmers, fishermen or spies. They could be godkissed, like their speedy friend back in Blackwater.
But there’s one thing I do know: Sabine is, at the moment, alive. And I can’t say how long that state will last.
I pat Myst’s shoulder like we’re old comrades. “Have we heard enough, my friend?”
Her muscles bunch under me, ready for action even after our long ride. It brings a grim smile to my lips. This crazy mare might just have won me over. Besides, she’s not the only one antsy for a fight. The familiar prickle of anticipation shoots up my spine until I’m licking my lips, squeezing my calves around the horse, flexing my hands into fists and straightening them again. Fantasies play out in my head of kicking open the door, sinking my knife blade into every last one of them. The cottage is too tight to use my bow, or else I’d shoot them each through the eye first to prolong the pain.
The ache to fight them is visceral, arousing.
Is Sabine frightened? Does she believe I’ll come for her? I can hear her body’s clues, but that doesn’t mean I can read her mind.