Page 82 of Throne of Ice and Blood
Sliding out of my chair, I discreetly try to slink away. But I’m trapped between them and the wall. I flick my gaze from side to side as two more humans close in on the shifters.
“You heard him,” one of them says.
Keeping my head down, I hurry past behind him while the shifters are focused on the humans.
“Back off!” the silver-haired shifter bellows right as I dart past.
Something heavy hits me in the side.
I gasp and stumble sideways as one of the humans suddenly slams into me from the side after he was shoved back by the dragon shifter. The shove catches him so off guard that he doesn’t even try to stay on his feet. He topples backwards, crashing into me and making us both hit the floor.
Steel rings as the four shifters grab the swords that they had kept leaning against their table.
Panic pulses through me. Pushing against the human’s weight, I try to free myself from his body. He finally rolls off me and jumps to his feet. I suck in a deep breath to refill my lungs and sit up as well.
A collective gasp echoes across the tavern.
I whip my head up, expecting to find that the shifters have started killing the human men who confronted them. But instead, I find something worse.
They’re all staring at me.
Yanking a hand up, I reach for the hood of my cloak. Terror washes through me like ice when I don’t find it. It was knocked down when I hit the ground, and now, my head is fully visible.
And so are my ears.
“You,” the brown-haired shifter with orange eyes says, sounding both shocked and furious at the same time. His gaze is locked on me.
I swallow.
“Everybody out!” Blondie bellows, and swings his sword through the air until it’s pointed towards the door. “Now!”
For a moment, everything is dead silent and still.
My heart pounds in my chest where I still remain on the floor. And for one single second, I’m convinced that the humans in this tavern will come to my aid.
But they don’t.
Even with the rage I have built up inside them with my magic, they still decide that trying to fight four dragon shifters with swords while they themselves are unarmed, just to help a fae woman who they don’t even know, would be stupid.
Boots thud against the pale wooden floorboards as they all run out the door instead, leaving me alone with four dragon shifters. Firelight from the burning hearth glints against the swords they’re pointing at me.
I scramble to my feet.
“Don’t even think about it,” Silver Hair says when I flick a glance towards the still open door to the tavern.
And with one step to the side, he has put himself firmly between me and the only exit.
Fear spreads through my body like poison as I back across the room instead.
These people have spent a good portion of their night talking about how much they hate me and what they would do to me if I was their slave, and now they have me cornered and alone.
Whipping my head from side to side, I try to find a stray knife on one of the tables around me. But only mugs and spoons and bowls stare back at me uselessly.
The rage that I unwittingly increased in their chests earlier burns in their eyes as they advance on me.
Calling up my magic, I push at those pale red flames of anger in their chests and decrease them until they’re only tiny sparks.
But to my horror, all that does is to sharpen their expressions into something cold and ruthless instead. Without the burning anger making them uncoordinated and lost in blind rage, they instead start thinking tactically and spread out so that they are coming at me from all sides.
