Menak laughed lightly, unperturbed and unhurried. He wiped his cheek on the back of his sleeve. “Now, now, you’ll have a sword to play with soon enough.” He ground his hips against hers. She struggled harder and a scream of fury tore from her throat.
It mingled with Devon’s cry of pain. Menak turned and Selena could see Sebastian kicking at the fire, sending small flaming embers airborne. The bearded man, Devon, pawed frantically at the back of his neck, and danced around the camp, scrabbling to loosen his shirt where a burning ember had fallen down his back.
Menak sighed, annoyed. “Stop playing, Devon,” he said, and turned back to Selena. “No more interruptions.”
Over his shoulder, Selena watched as Devon unsheathed his sword and strode toward Sebastian.
Then Accora rose to her feet.
The Bazira men were on opposite sides of the small clearing and distracted. Accora pulled down her gag and held out her hands that none had noticed weren’t tied, one to each man. She closed her fists and then opened them again.
“Krystak!” she screamed and shards of ice, one after another, lanced out of her open palms.
Menak was struck in the back, Devon in the chest. He dropped his sword just before he could club Sebastian with its pommel. His mouth hung open as if on a broken hinge and he pitched forward. His last breath wheezed out of him on a cold draft.
Menak jerked against Selena and grunted in pain. “Old bitch,” he seethed, turning to draw his sword, and then screamed as Accora sent daggers of ice between his legs. He curled to the ground, holding his nether regions and writhing.
Selena took a deep breath. Menak’s weight was off her and she no longer felt as if she were being buried alive. But she could hear voices at the edge of their clearing. Other Bazira, hearing the commotion.
“Run now, girl,” Accora said, a smile touched her lips. “I told you we weren’t done. No, not even the assassin gets his comeuppance today.”
“Go,” Sebastian told her weakly. His exertions had left him drained. “Run, Selena,” he told her. Begged her. The Bazira were coming. “Run!”
Selena ran.
Sebastian watched Selena slip out of the clearing. Her hands were still bound but she had escaped those men. He thought he might weep with relief. The man who’d had Selena against the tree was clutching his cock and screaming.
Sebastian smiled grimly and then snapped at Accora. “You waited long enough.”
“And you did nothing,” she replied. “Die, Sebastian Vaas. That’s the best thing you can do for Selena now,” she said, and then turned to face Jude who was striding out of her tent.
Bazira flooded the clearing with her, swords drawn. Jude’s gaze flickered to the place where Selena had been, then to Devon’s corpse, then to Menak who had ceased writhing, but whimpered like a beaten dog.
“You thought you suffered before?” Jude screamed at Accora.
Bazira surrounded the old woman. One man struck her across the face.
Bastards. She’s nearly seventy years, Sebastian thought.
She crumpled to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut. But she wouldn’t go under.
“You…are no woman,” she seethed at Jude, “…to allow such…atrocities… on other women.”
Godsdamn bloody right.
Jude snarled and kicked Accora in the stomach. The old woman gasped and curled around Jude’s boot.
Jude barked orders at the Bazira, sending almost one hundred men after Selena.
“She can’t get far,” Jude muttered to the small group of men she’d kept near her. “This island is too small.”
“Then why do you look so bloody scared?” Sebastian asked.
Jude sneered. “If only you knew what awaited you, Sebastian Vaas. Bacchus is eager to meet you.”
“Bacchus doesn’t give a shit about me,” Sebastian said. “It’s Selena he wants and you let her get away.” He cocked a smile. “Your priest doesn’t sound like a very forgiving sort of fellow.”
Even in the dark of night, the red on Jude’s cheeks was apparent. She shifted, acutely conscious of the Bazira listening.
“Your glib tongue will be the first to go if you are insolent to Bacchus,” she said, and then smiled, catlike. “But let us not bicker. More important is settling the debt you owe our Vicar.” Her breath plumed in the air that had grown suddenly cold. “Zolin suspected you would betray him. Does that surprise you?”
“No,” Sebastian said. “He told me as much but sent me out anyway. Seems you Bazira are very good at wasting time on fruitless endeavors.”
Jude took a step forward, towering over him. Above and beyond her, the sky thickened with storm clouds and air became heavy with water.
“You’re special, Vaas, and you can’t perceive the favor I’m doing you. You would have tried to create a pathetic life for yourself, following your Paladin lover around Lunos, picking up the pieces of her as the days passed and still her nasty little wound remained. You must be quite smitten to risk our wrath for such an empty, fruitless existence. But Selena is going to be with Bacchus now. Menak and Devon? What they were going to do to her was merciful compared to the violations Bacchus has in mind.”
Sebastian snarled. “Shut up.”
“He will hurt her,” Jude said. “He will hurt her in ways you cannot conceive, and in witnessing such, you will be punished before you can be welcomed into the fold.”
“I said, shut up,” he said through clenched teeth. His head was murderous in its pain. “I won’t… join you. I am not Bazira.”
“Not Bazira. You have forgotten your true nature, tried to discard it as easily as you did your name. The High Vicar, in his wisdom, suspected you had, and now leaves it to Bacchus to reacquaint you with all that made you the subject of minstrels’ songs and children’s rhymes.”
“You’re too late,” Sebastian said, reeling as the world tried to spin away from him. “Vaas is already dead.”
“Is he?” Her lips brushed his ear and her breath was hot on his skin. “Then why do you look so bloody scared?”
The sky tore open then and the rain came down.
The Coin that Cannot Be Spent
Selena stumbled and nearly fell for the fifth time in twice as many steps. She struggled hard against the rope that bound her wrists behind her back and was rewarded with the feeling of her skin scraping off until she felt the blood pool in her palms. She didn’t dare use her light weaving as Accora had used ice to sever the bonds. Without control, she could disintegrate her own hands. She ran on.
Hundreds of booted footsteps thundered behind Selena, trampling dead leaves and breaking branches in their pursuit. The men’s voices, loud and brash and ugly, were like cracking whips, spurring her on. She leaped over fallen trees and ducked low branches. The birches were like pale sentries as she passed them. The moon—a tiny sliver of a waxing crescent—kept ducking behind fat rain clouds so that she could hardly see three spans in front of her face. A twig scratched her cheek and she flinched at how close it had come to her eye. She lost her balance and tumbled down, only just managing to twist so that her right shoulder took the brunt of the fall.
The Bazira were getting closer.
I have to break free or I’m dead.