“Let’s have some fun,” I murmur in dark delight as I dig my heels into Myst’s sides.
The horse surges forward like she’s been anxiously awaiting my signal. Her hooves pound over the hardpacked ground as she stampedes toward the cottage with thrilling speed, not showing any signs of slowing. She thunders up the porch stairs. The whole cottage rattles.
Then she rears up, a bloodcurdling whinny on her lips, and brings down her front hooves to break down the door.
The door splinters around its meager bolt. I ride Myst straight into the cottage, ducking to get through the doorframe, greedily drinking in the chaos our arrival causes.
The four men jump to their feet. They’re blonde. Burly. Volkish raiders for sure. But they’re unarmed and half-drunk; their guard was down. The sudden appearance of a mounted rider inside their kitchen has them scrambling for weapons. One of them snatches an axe. Another grabs a heavy cast iron pan. Another moves to block Sabine.
Sabine. She’s in a chair, her hands bound. Garbed in a peasant’s dress. Her long hair is gone—cut to her chin. Bees crawl all over her face. It’s a horrific scene, straight out of the Book of the Immortals.
There’s something else. Some people’s bodies emit a spoiled-fruit scent when around bees if they’re highly susceptible to bee venom, and Sabine reeks of it.
If she gets stung . . .
She starts to scream to me, but the man clamps a meaty hand over her mouth to muffle her cries, flinching as bees sting his palm. My heart shoots to my throat, afraid she’s stung, too. But she controls the bees—so why is she putting herself at risk?
She’s doing this on purpose. Her insurance policy. Clever fucking girl.
“Who the hell are you?” the man with the axe roars.
He’s the youngest. Maybe twenty years old. The bland kind of good looks that would make him a prize in a village of a hundred people and utterly insignificant anywhere with a larger population. The perfect type of unintimidating boy to appeal to a skittish, naive girl who’s been locked away for twelve years with old women.
“Adan, I take it?” I growl low. “Yeah. I always knew you’d turn out to be a motherfucking bastard.”
With a cry, Adan draws his arm back to swing the axe at my thigh. Myst sidesteps to dodge before I even have to signal her. I swing my left leg over her back so I can dismount in a slide, which sends me slamming into Adan and knocks us both to the floor. His head glances off the kitchen table as he falls, which makes him drop the axe. I land in a crouch with one knee pinning his arm.
My nerves burn from the pleasure of his scream.
It’s fucking on.
I love this—love the fight. It’s fucked up, but that’s what happens when you raise a boy on a diet of violence and starve him for anything else. My only reward in Jocki’s fight ring came when I drew blood. So when it appears on Adan’s temple, dripping onto the floor, I lick my lips.
Two of the raiders try to corral Myst into the bedroom, but she turns a tight circle, knocking over chairs, and snaps a kick at them with her hind legs.
The fourth man, with a scar on his upper lip, still has his hand on Sabine’s mouth. He tries to drag her toward the bedroom, but she struggles against him. All at once, the bees leave her skin. There’s a second when they’re suspended in the air, ghost-like, and then they zero in on her captor.
“Fuck!” he yells.
Good fucking girl.
The scarred man—his voice gives him away as the one named Maks—trips backward over the rug as he flails to try to wave away the bee swarm. He crashes against a cabinet near the corner, writhing.
Sabine pushes to her feet, her heartbeat like a chugging engine, as she spins toward me. “Basten—”
While my attention is on her, Adan scrambles out from under my knee and crawls under the table to the other side. He snatches up the axe with a flush of triumph.
I chuckle darkly. I’m enjoying this way too much, and I haven’t even taken my knife out.
I straighten to stalk after him, but then one of the other men grabs Sabine by the arm and drags her toward the busted-down door. My jaw clamps.
I whistle for Myst. The horse takes up most of the kitchen area, wreaking chaos by knocking over dishes and trampling their belongings. She clocks the man’s trajectory toward the doorway and beats him to it. Her hooves clatter over the shattered wood, and she doubles back, blocking the open doorway. The man freezes, clutching Sabine, as he realizes there’s no way he can get past the horse.
Hell yes, crazy mare.
I hear an intake of air a second before Adan runs at me with the axe. It gives me enough time to duck, then straighten, tug the axe out of his slackened fist, and kick him squarely in the chest, sending him crashing back against the fireplace.
My fingers tighten over the axe handle, relishing its heft. My tongue snakes out to wet my lips. As much as I’m itching to smash the handle into Adan’s nose, I can’t let that other bastard keep putting his hands all over Sabine.
I pivot sharply toward the man holding her, and raise the axe. His eyes go round, but he doesn’t release her. He dances back and forth, trying to anticipate where I will strike. But all he’s accomplishing is giving away his own future movements.
I see his nearly imperceptible glance toward the bedroom and swing the axe down just as he lurches toward it. The flat part of the blade clips his arm. He cries out and releases Sabine roughly, knocking her toward the stove.
“Iskander!” one of the other men cries.
I catch Sabine in my arms, half-dragging and half-carrying her negligible weight to the furthest corner, away from the action. There’s a space about two feet wide and two feet deep between the corner and the kitchen cabinet—I shove her into the nook.
“Stay here.” I spare a second to cup her cheek, verifying there are no sting marks on her. “Don’t move. Don’t watch.”
Her giant round eyes swallow me whole, drenching me in her fear, but also a low blaze of righteous, sizzling, bloodthirsty thrill that’s as wicked as my own.
She says evenly, “I want to watch.”
Fucking gods. This woman. She gets my heartbeat pounding and my blood throbbing. She’s going to be the death of me.
I have to tear myself away from her when one of the lugs—who must be Bertine—hurtles the cast iron pan across the room at me. I throw open the cabinet door to block it, and it clatters to the floor. Bertine runs at me, but I dive under the table to dodge him, crawl beneath it, and then snatch up a chair on my way up from the other side. Swinging it by the back, I smash it into Bertine’s head. It clips him in the skull, sending him to the ground, unconscious.
My blood sizzles in delight to see him fall.