A crack opens up in his dogged determination. He grunts, releasing his hold on my hair. He jerks his head toward the bedroom. Slowly, I sit up. I can’t believe it, but Basten was right. Men will believe whatever they want to believe when their cock is involved.
He barks, “Go on, then, get in the bedroom—”
I knee him in the groin immediately, using the momentum from sliding off the table for extra oomph. His eyes go round as he clamps his hands over his cock and balls. With a cry, I hurl my weight at him to knock him down. He doesn’t fall over, but he stumbles back a few steps. As soon as a path opens to the door, I lunge for it. Go, go, go.
I throw open the door—
And stare into Adan’s startled face as he clutches firewood in one arm, with an axe in his other hand. For a breathless second, time stops, as we both struggle to make sense of the situation. He’s blocking the door—I can’t get past him.
His eyes shift to look at his brother behind me, and there’s a moment when understanding snaps in them. He dumps the clattering firewood on the floor as he storms into the cottage. His shirt is sweatstained from chopping wood, buttons open halfway down his chest. His hair, normally tamed, hangs wild.
Before I can rush out the door, he slams it shut and fastens the latch.
“Maks, what the fuck are you doing?” he demands, the axe tight in his fist.
The elder brother is still hunched over from the pain in his groin. “She fucking kneed me!”
“Yeah—she should have rammed your balls all the way into your brain, you idiot!”
My body is still swimming in adrenaline, unable to float back to solid ground. Clinging to the back of a chair to keep myself upright, I fight to calm down. It was so close to . . . He was going to . . . But it’s all right now. Adan is back. And even though I’ve known Adan only a few hours more than his brother, I pour all my trust into him.
I have to. He’s all I have now.
Adan sets the axe down by the stove, then paces tightly, muttering curses under his breath. With each passing second, my heartbeat slows as my body attempts to register that the danger is over. My whole body shakes from the final purge of adrenaline, and I sink into the chair before my legs give out.
“No one would have known,” Maks huffs defensively.
Adan thrusts a finger in my direction while he yells at his brother. “You know they would! What did you expect me to tell the king, eh? That she slipped and fell on your cock? She’s supposed to be untouched!”
“His court doesn’t give a shit about chastity.”
“He’s the king, you idiot. He said he wanted the girls unharmed and untouched. What part of that don’t you understand? Don’t you think, if it were allowed, I would have fucked her myself? If anyone deserves to, it’s me. I found her in the first place!”
Fear finds a crack in my numb bones and works its way back in. It sifts through my body until my skin slithers with it, and something unlocks in my brain. This. This. This. My gut was right all along. I should never have taken Adan’s hand in that Blackwater stables . . .
A small exclamation slips from my lips. I feel gutted from throat to bowels.
Then, as my panic crests, my eyes fall to the axe.
Adan must realize where he left it at the same time that I do, because as soon as I scramble out of the chair and dive for it, he does the same.
“Sabine, stop. Don’t, goddammit!”
We wrestle on the floor as we both try to grab the axe. Maks snakes his hand behind the woodstove from the opposite direction to grab it, but his arm doesn’t reach. I kick and claw blindly until my fingers slide over its smooth handle. The axe falls, clattering to the stone floor.
“No!” I cry. Gathering my strength, I lunge for the handle again—
But Maks stomps his boot down on my hand. I scream as I feel my bones crunch. Pain radiates in lightning bolts down my arm.
Maks snatches up the axe. Adan ensnares me around the waist and drags me away from the stove. My hand hurts so bad that I feel like I might black out. It’s all I can do to flail and kick, but between the two of them, they make quick work of picking me up, shoving me into a kitchen chair, and binding my wrists with thick coils of rope.
Fighting against the rope, I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain in my hand. It’s sprained, if not broken. But pain is nothing new. Pain I can deal with. It’s the ropes that frighten me. The axe. The terrible things Adan said.
Think.
Think.
If an animal is close . . .
Adan rubs his cheek where I clocked him with my foot while we were wrestling. His green eyes lock onto me. “Goddammit, Sabine!”
I spit at him, “You lied to me! You always planned to abduct me! You said—you said the king . . . ” My voice falls off, because I don’t know how to finish my thought. None of it makes any sense. I can’t fit together the pieces into any sort of coherent picture. According to Adan and Maks, King Joruun is behind this? He’s a frail old man who hasn’t left Old Coros in a decade. He has a reputation for monotonous speeches about taxation, not kidnapping girls.
“You can’t get out of the cottage,” Adan says evenly, rubbing the bruise forming on his cheek. There’s ice in his eyes. He’s dropped the act now, and there’s no doubt that he was playing me the entire time. “The door and all the windows lock from the outside. The rest of our men are standing guard.” He must notice that my attention shifts to the chimney, because he gives a mirthless laugh. “We blocked the chimney, too, so if you’re thinking of calling to any creatures to swoop down and save you, you can forget that idea.”
My mouth goes dry as my greatest fear comes true—I’m entirely alone. I have no one to help me. No birds. No rodents. No wildcats. No Myst. My heart squeezes to think of my brave girl, who tried to warn me in Blackwater not to go with Adan. There was a reason she didn’t like him from the start. She could sense his nefarious intent, even if she couldn’t put it into words that I’d understand.
But wait.
Adan and his brothers—who don’t seem to be his brothers at all—plugged any entrances large enough for a mouse, but this is an old cottage made of rough-hewn logs and crumbling mortar. There have to be tiny cracks.
I tap into my godkiss to send a silent signal out into the nearby forest. It isn’t long before I feel the buzz of many answering voices, who close in toward my call. I can feel each of their presences as though we’re connected by an invisible tether, as they crawl and shimmy and slip between cracks in the cabin’s logs barely big enough for a breath.
A honeybee alights from a crack in the wall to land on my cheek. Its tiny feet patter over my skin, its wings vibrating against my eyelashes as it crests the hill of my cheekbone. Another one zips across the cottage to land on my forehead. One by one, more honeybees join them until I have hundreds swarming my face and hair.
We help, the bees buzz in one collective voice.
Adan and Maks stumble backward like they’re looking at Immortal Solene herself, the Goddess of Nature, cursed to suffer a thousand bee stings after betraying Immortal Vale by sleeping with his rival. It would be useless to use the bees against my captors—the honeybees could sting them a hundred times and still not kill them, but I have other ideas.