He pulls Hale to a stop outside the cottage that imprisoned me. Anger seizes me as he dismounts first, then yanks me from Hale’s back. I cringe the moment he throws me over his shoulder and walks into the cottage where I killed his men.
His footsteps echo across the stone floor as he crosses the room and drops me in the middle of the mattress. My soiled surcoat billows around my legs as I land in a disgraceful heap.
I glare at him as he rotates to observe the blood left by the men I murdered. Someone already removed the bodies, but I don’t need to see their faces to remember what I did. Guilt threads around my chest like a thorny vine and squeezes.
“You owe me two warriors, Sol.” Anger lashes from Hector’s words.
A sneer curls at my lips. “You owe me a friend.”
“Do you mean a lover?” Hector asks as he finally settles his gaze on me.
I shrink from the hostility glinting behind his silver-blue eyes. Where’s the warmth? The compassion? The man I wed myself to? He’s not there.
I rub my blood-stained fist across my mouth. “Malachi wasn’t my lover, and you know it. You’re just a monster who enjoys murdering people.”
“I’m the monster?” Hector scoffs. “You murdered my guards in a foolish attempt to escape.”
Anger blinds me as I glower at him. “I will escape. Maybe not tonight or tomorrow or even next week, but I will leave this place.”
He stares down at the broken pottery and kneels to pick up the larger pieces. I swallow through the ash in my throat as he rises with them in hand.
“I thought I was being generous by giving you something to bathe with, but you have turned even that into a weapon.”
“Hector...” His name against my lips stings my tongue, burns through everything I thought I knew about him. Everything was a lie. He was never Gabriel. Gabriel was an illusion. “It’s foolish to keep me here.”
Instead of responding to me, he turns and leaves the room with the broken pottery.
A frustrated groan escapes me. I didn’t even make it to the gates of Astarobane. Nobody even tried to kill me.
The truth stabs me in the gut. They want magic more than my death.
Hector returns and pulls me from the mattress. “Change of plans. Come with me.”
I yank against his hold, but he only tightens his iron grip.
“I don’t want to go anywhere with you. Release me,” I say through my clenched teeth.
“I will let release you when I choose to.” How calmly he says that. How irritatingly.
Why didn’t I realize how frustrating he was before? Maybe I was too busy trying to get him to bed me.
Now, I’ll be damned before I allow him to bed me!
He leads me from the room, out of the cottage, and down the street. His grip on my wrist strengthens, as if to remind me I am at his mercy, and he is in complete control of the situation.
I try to walk with grace, but it’s impossible when an angry barbarian is practically dragging me through his city. As we approach the square where he killed Malachi, my chest clenches. It’s impossible to not look, to not remember, to not see Malachi.
I exhale through the sorrow and will my heart to beat evenly again, to not hurt so badly.
Hector keeps walking past the square. I drop my focus to my feet, watching them shuffle against the sandstone. It’s far easier than looking at the man next to me.
He is a cold-blooded murderer.
Sadness clutches my stomach. The man I wed myself to is nothing more than a Bloodstone barbarian. I knew it when I agreed to marry him. Over time, I lied to myself. I told myself he was different.
He’s not.
He doesn’t care who he hurts or who he uses. He will throw me away when he’s done with me.
