I can’t help but keep moving toward her. I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want her. Not just the sex—though fuck, the sex is mind-boggling—but to have her love. To know that she thinks about me first thing when she wakes up and last thing when she falls asleep. To possess her smiles, her kind touches. To have my ring on her finger.
Stop it, Wolf.
What I want is impossible. She’s engaged to Rian, who can keep her safe. So I’m just going to have to swallow my feral possessiveness and watch them be together, knowing I’ll never have what I want.
“Wolf?” a masculine voice says, tearing me out of my thoughts. “Were you just coming out of Lady Sabine’s room?”
I jolt upright. Rian and two Golden Sentinels stand at the end of the hall, looking at me strangely. I was wallowing in my feelings so fucking hard that I didn’t hear footsteps approach. That isn’t like me. Not good. I’m losing my edge.
I straighten, one hand going to my baldric belt to ensure it’s properly fastened. “The lady wasn’t feeling well. I was checking on her.”
Rian comes closer with slow footsteps. “She said she was going to get some air on the balcony, but then no one could find her.”
I clear my throat, trying to hide my jumping pulse. “As her guard, I had eyes on her the whole time. I—I think she drank too much wine. I was about to call for Brigit to come attend to her, to help her out of her costume.”
Rian smoothly turns to one of the soldiers. “Send for Brigit. And you.” He points to the other. “Stand guard at Lady Sabine’s door for the remainder of the night.”
My heart starts slamming in my chest. Casually, I say, “I assure you, my lord, I am capable of—”
“I need to speak with you,” Rian cuts me off, rubbing his hands distractedly. “Maximan can fill your post for the time being.”
My lip curls at Maximan. I know him from my training days. He’s a mean old bugger, but a highly capable guard. If I had to pick anyone else to watch over Sabine, he’d be my choice—and not just because he’s ugly as a coyote. Still, I hesitate.
A few minutes earlier, Rian would have caught me fucking his bride. Is there a chance he suspects something?
“As you wish, my lord,” I say gruffly, though I have to force my feet away from Sabine’s door. I hope like hell she cleans up the evidence of our tryst before her lady servant arrives.
Rian says nothing as I follow him down the long hall. I keep my face stony, trying not to reveal my scrambling nerves. If he knows about me and Sabine, I’d deserve the dungeon, but that doesn’t mean I want to go there. Fuck me. People have a habit of disappearing into Sorsha Hall’s dungeon and never coming out—I know, because I put half of them there.
My fears only increase as Rian leads me to the stairs to the lower level. Our feet clunk heavily as we descend. Oh, fuck, he really is going to lock me in a cell. Like I told Sabine, there’s nothing of note in the lower levels except cold storage for foodstuffs and the dungeon. It’s always made my skin crawl down here. So dark, lit only by a few cobweb-covered lanterns. And damp enough to grow mold in my lungs.
Then again, there are also old tunnels down here connecting Sorsha Hall to other parts of Duren. They haven’t been used in years, but maybe Rian plans to take me somewhere in the city in secret. Other than the primary tunnel that goes beyond the city walls, I’ve never explored the rest of them. Most are collapsed. The castle’s original stable was housed here, underground, but it’s been in ruins for decades.
At the bottom of the stairs, Rian takes a sharp left, and I curse inwardly.
The fucking dungeon, I knew it!
My nerves jangling, I start, “My lord—”
He holds up a hand to silence me. “I don’t appreciate having my engagement party interrupted, Wolf. But if there’s any good reason for it, it’s this one. Now, I must return to my guests before they sense anything is amiss, so I’ll leave you to deal with . . . this.”
Confusion snaps in my chest until we turn the corner, where Folke Bladeborn and another man slumped to the floor appear in the light of a flickering wall sconce.
Everything I feared about Rian’s suspicion and my future in the dungeon vanishes.
“Folke?” I ask, surprised.
The last I saw him, he was unconscious outside the Manywaters Inn while the townspeople of Blackwater attempted to put out the fire. Now, he leans heavily on a new cane. He doesn’t look good—his face ashen and deeply lined—but it would take a lot more than a fire to bring his bones down.
“He arrived an hour ago,” Rian says evenly. “Through the old tunnels.”
As a former Golden Sentinel, Folke is familiar with Sorsha Hall’s secrets. He jabs his cane in the slumped man’s direction. “I brought you a present, Wolf. For saving my hide.” His grim tone is anything but festive, and it curdles something in my stomach.
I glance at Rian, but his face betrays nothing. So, crouching, I pull the hood off the man’s face. It reveals blood-matted fair hair and a face that, while hard to make out with all the bruises, is so familiar it stabs me with rage.
The man wheezes, his eyes fluttering as he mumbles something in pain.
I shoot to my feet. “One of the fucking raiders?”
This broken and bloodied man is familiar to me because I was the one who broke and bled him. It’s the raider who tried to rape Sabine. Maks—that’s what the others called him. Myst trampled him, and I can’t fathom that anyone could survive the bone-shattering beneath her hoofs, but apparently, I should have checked the bodies better. I was in such a damn rush to get Sabine out of there to safety.
Folke digs the end of his cane into an oozing wound in the man’s side, eliciting a pained moan. Folke smiles in dark delight. “When I woke up in Blackwater, I followed your trail. Enough people saw you riding a white horse to point me in the direction of the river. And the Old Innis Mill is a known haven for raiders. Eventually, I found the cottage. Your mark was all over the carnage. This one was still barely alive.”
My muscles quake with fury that this scum still lives.
“Folke thought we might be interested in questioning him,” Rian explains, though I’m sure Folke is collecting a handsome bounty for bringing him here, too. “There’s a chance the raider can tell us why they targeted Sabine. What business King Rachillon has with her and the other godkissed he’s abducting.”
A vein ticks in my neck. It’s a challenge to tame my temper, when all I want to do is borrow Folke’s cane to stab it deeper into every one of Maks’s oozing wounds until he’s screaming, but I need to be smart. I don’t need Maks to reveal why King Rachillon wants Sabine. I know why he does. And if Maks does know Sabine’s secret, then it isn’t his answers I need, but his silence.
Still, I have to play along for now.
I give a hard nod. “Good.”
Rian pulls me a few feet aside. His eyes have the dark gleam they get when he’s plotting something. “You wanted back in the business, Wolf? Here’s your chance. Use those fists like you used to.”
Torture him, Rian means. Interrogate him. Beat the answers out of him.
I flinch, then try to mask the reaction by smoothing a hand down my jaw. “You made it pretty clear that out meant out.”