“Ash!” Ami’s voice grated harshly, no music in it, and she pulled the blade from my hand. “Glorianna take you, sit down before you pass out.”
She began sawing at the tendons in the beast’s jaw, cutting the magically animated muscles that gave it strength. Black ichor and my bright red blood fountained over her white and gold gown, no doubt ruining it forever. Ami shouldn’t be covered in gore like this.
“Your dress,” I managed and she threw me a ferocious glare.
“Shut up, you stupid, stupid man. I don’t care about the fucking dress!” The lower jaw fell away and the head, losing its hold, dropped to the floor of the sleigh. The twins shrieked, popping tousled heads—one bright, one dark—from beneath the furry blanket where Ami had indeed been sitting on them. They screamed again when the beast’s remaining eye blinked at them, the upper lip lifting over fangs in a snarl.
I grabbed it by the ear with my good hand and flung the head as far away from them as I could. For good measure, I sent the lower jaw after it. As if that sapped the last of my strength, my legs gave out, and I sat heavily.
Ami was cursing me steadily, tearing strips from her gown to bandage my arm. “If you don’t die, I’m going to kill you,” she muttered. Blood and ichor streaked her face, making her look like Glorianna as warrior.
“I’m all right,” I told her. “Don’t worry. I need to—”
“You need to shut up and sit. You’ve already lost too much blood.”
“Are you hurt?” I tried to sit up, suddenly seized with the fear that the blood might not be all mine. “The twins?”
“We are fine,” she bit out. “It’s you who’s hurt, which is thriced inconvenient since you can heal anyone but yourself. Why would you be so contrary? Just to make me crazy, I’m sure.”
I watched her, bemused by her ferocity. The twins had pulled the blanket back over their heads and held on to each other. They’d have bad dreams now. So young for their first nightmares. I’d failed to save them from that.
Ami might have been right about the blood loss, because lightning-streaked black edged around the corners of my vision, which had gone blurry.
“Tell Graves he needs to burn the pieces, too.”
“I will. Stay with me. You’ll be fine.”
“I love you, Ami. You’ve been the one bright spot in my life.”
“Now he gets verbose,” she muttered, tying a knot in the bandages viciously tight. “Too tight. Too tight,” she was saying, “but I’d rather he lose the arm than bleed out, right? I don’t know how in Glorianna we’re going to heal him.”
“Leave me here,” I managed.
She rolled her gorgeous eyes at me and seized my jaw in a surprisingly firm grip. Staring fiercely into my eyes, she spoke slowly and clearly. “No one is leaving you. Let me handle things for once. I’m not some fragile moonflower who can’t survive the cold, okay?”
I smiled at that image. No, my Ami was no moonflower. She was a rose: lush, lovely, and full of lethal thorns.
The blackness swamped me and I went under.
7
The prisoners roared. Rioting again. I clamped my hands over my ears, terrified that they’d find me. The guards always vanished themselves during the riots. They didn’t care what the men did to each other. If we killed each other off, beat each other down, and exhausted ourselves doing it, all the better.
Just not better for the weak. The law of nature is that the weak shall be crushed by the strong.
“Come on, boy, dinnertime.” Vork grinned at me through bloodied and broken teeth.
“Vork?” I asked. I’d thought he was dead. He’d died a long time ago, hadn’t he?
“You’ll never get strong if you don’t eat.” He held up my mangled arm, cheerfully taking a bite and chewing. Then offered it to me. “Want some?”
I took it, knowing he was right. I was weak and needed to be strong. I bit into my own arm, blood filling my mouth and hitting my aching stomach. It hurt and I wanted to vomit, but I took another bite, Vork grinning and nodding at me. In the distance, the prisoners roared and howled.
“Ash.” Ami stood there, gowned in Glorianna pink, roses woven in her long hair. She held out her hands. “Ash, my love.”
I tried to speak, but my mouth was full of blood and flesh. Vork grabbed her, kissing her and pulling up her skirts. Ami writhed in pleasure, wanton and sensual. Moaning with abandon, she was naked, and Vork was fucking her. I tried to throw my arm aside, but I couldn’t. I kept chewing, trying to swallow.
“Isn’t this what you always wanted to do?” Vork asked. He sprouted claws and raked them down Ami’s slim white body, parting the flesh so that black ichor poured out. She screamed in ecstasy. “Defile and corrupt.”
“Drink this,” Ami said. “Ash, you need to drink this.”
I spit the bloody flesh out of my mouth. “Please, Ami,” I begged her. “Don’t.”
“I’m right here. Drink this.”
“No!” I flung the bloodied, ruined arm away from me. “I won’t! I’d rather starve.”
“You don’t mean that.” Ami sounded so stern. Angry with me. What had I done? I’d left her, and the undead wolves came.
“Ami!” I yelled. “Oh no, the wolves…” I couldn’t yell loud enough, the words mush in my mouth.
Sharp pain cracked across my face, and I opened my eyes. Firelight. Roaring and howling resolved into a storm-tossed surf crashing outside, the wind howling through the turrets. Ami, her hair tied back, hollows in her lovely face, cradled one hand in the other. I blinked at her.
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
She made a sound, part laugh, part sob. “Who knew slapping you would mostly hurt my hand? And it wasn’t nearly as fun as all those times I imagined doing it.”
“I’m sorry.” I tried to sit up and she easily pressed me back. So weak. But I wasn’t fourteen and in the prison, easy meat for the bigger, stronger men. My arm throbbed and I lifted it so I could see. Covered in bandages. I tore at them, needing to look.
“Ash. Don’t, please don’t.” Ami threw herself over my arm, pinning it against my body with hers. “Leave the bandages alone. Your arm was wounded—remember?”
I stared at her, not remembering anything. Why was she here in the prison? The animal need to tear off the bandages snarled inside me and I tried to push her off. She clung, stubborn as a leech.
“Leave. It. Alone.” She said through gritted teeth.
I couldn’t fight her. I should be able to pick her up with one hand, to be the one pinning her to the bed. With my free hand, I found her ass, naked under her nightgown. “Ami,” I murmured, the animal need changing direction. “Give us a kiss.”
“Oh no, you don’t.” She wriggled free and fetched something from the floor. A mug, which she refilled from a water jug. “You’re lucid enough to drink this.” She sat beside me on the bed, holding the mug to my lips.
“I don’t want to drink more blood. Don’t make me.” I sounded so weak and whiny.
Ami’s face crumpled and she smoothed back my hair. “It’s just water, love. You have a fever and it’s confusing you. Just water. You need to drink it.”
“Don’t let the men get you,” I urged her. They roared outside. Howling to get in.