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A low growl escaped my lips as I turned her away from them, trying to put myself between her and the men that surrounded us. Laughter filled the warehouse as one of the males lunged for her.
Kole hesitated, enough that I thought he would say no, but then, “I guess Sie wouldn’t mind us using his nix for a little bit.” His men didn’t wait. They swarmed us and ripped her away from me. I fought like hell as she screamed my name.
This was worse. This was worse than any damn torture Kole did to me. I couldn’t stand seeing her scared, pleading for me when I couldn’t do a fucking thing to stop it. And what they were going to do to her…
The male named Fern pulled Scottie by her gown, ripping it further, leaving her back completely exposed. Everything stopped. The males halted and gaped as she attempted to turn her back away from them, but it was too late. With the water glistening down her spine, the black markings on her were as clear as day.
“What the hell is this?” the male holding her said. Kole pushed him out of the way and threw Scottie face first against the wall to get a better view of her back.
“She’s Luxian,” Kole whispered to himself as he processed what he saw.
“Doesheknow?” Fern asked Kole. “What should we do?”
Kole ran a hand over his mouth, trying to think everything over. “I don’t know,” he said as he started to pace. “He just said to kill them both once morning came. That it didn’t matter how we did it as long as the job was done. But she’s not a fucking nix.”
He ran his hands down her back. Scottie was shaking so hard as he pressed her further into the wall. “This kind of information… Send word to him now. He needs to know this. And put Vir Alluse chains on her too. We don’t know what Lux powers she possesses. Throw them both into the cell until we hear back from him.” His touch on her was possessive. I fought against my chains and the males holding me down as Kole ran his fingers over her exposed skin.
Then someone exchanged her previous chains for Alluse ones. Scottie winced as the metal clamped over her skin, no doubt feeling her powers leave her body. The Vir Alluse felt like someone was taking a part of you away, like it was bleeding you of life.
They threw us both into a cell. One that didn’t have bars but concrete walls. The door slammed shut, leaving us in the dark, waiting to find out what Kole’smasterwanted to do with this new information and us.
My knees scraped against the stone as I slid over to her. The cell was damp and cold, and I could barely make out her silhouette. “Scottie, are you okay?”
She crawled toward me and sagged in my arms. I let out a sigh of relief, thankful that she was alive. I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her into me.
“What is going to happen now?” she whimpered. Her skin was frozen from the water. Her body was overtaken by shaking.
I couldn’t bear to give her an honest answer. “It’s going to be okay.” She didn’t call me out for lying because the truth was I didn’t think either of us would make it out of here alive. She knew it too. Instead, she leaned further into me, sinking into my chest—our blood, dirt, and sweat mixing as one.
She let out a small sigh as her head tilted back into my neck, and I savored her warmth.
I didn’t knowhow much time had passed as I held Scottie in the dark, waiting for our end. We both jumped up to our feet as a loud thud echoed off our cell.
The clang of metal against metal sounded. I heard bow strings pulling back and then releasing. Then the screams came one after another after another. I glanced over at Scottie, but I couldn’t see her face in the darkened cell.
She was standing next to me, ready to fight. Even with the chains on her wrists, the Alluse seeping into her skin, she stood steady. I couldn’t help but admire her after the living hell we’d been through in the past twenty-four hours. The fact that she was even standing right now was beyond me.
I grabbed her hand in mine as we waited together, listening to the fighting and the screams. Then silence.
Our cell door creaked open on a phantom wind. A telekinesis user probably. Scottie went to leap out, but I held my hand in front of her, keeping her back. I wasn’t about to let her walk out first into danger.
I had a sinking feeling that whatever just happened was worse. I crept quietly out of the cell, scanning the surroundings. The smell of death filled my nostrils as I saw the masked males lying in pools of their own blood. Fern was facedown outside our cell with an axe through his back.
They were dead—all of them.
I scanned one more time, making sure there wasn’t a threat before I nodded to Scottie. We silently collected whatever fallen weapons we could hold. I grabbed two swords and a crossbow. Scottie grabbed a dagger. I crouched down and picked up a thick set of keys before placing them in my pocket. I didn’t want to stay in this warehouse for a second longer than we had to. We would unchain ourselves later. For now, I needed to get Scottie far away from this place. I grabbed her chained hand in mine and ran toward the door.
We had been runningfor hours and hadn’t come across a single village yet. Whatever warehouse they’d brought us to was deep in the forest.
Feeling confident that we had put enough space between us and that hell, I finally let her rest under a thick tree. I surveyed her body through one eye—my right eye was bruised and swollen shut. She was covered in blood and bruises and too many cuts to count. Her thigh was reopened from Kole’s knife and was still slowly dripping blood, but it luckily wasn’t as deep as the first time he cut her. I tore off the sleeve of my shirt and wrapped her thigh as best as I could. Then I tended to some of her smaller cuts. Neither of us spoke.
When I was finished, Scottie sank to the ground. I squatted next to her and reached in my pocket for the keys. She stared into my eyes as I tried each one into her shackles until it finally clicked and unlocked.
I did the same to mine before sitting down next to her. She was shivering, despite her panting and sweat glistening off her forehead. I shrugged what remained of my shirt off and wrapped it around her. She opened her mouth to protest, but I stopped her. “You can’t stand the cold as well as I can, and you’ve been beaten for hours and submerged in water. Take it, Scottie.”
She nodded weakly and sunk into the warmth of my shirt as she rubbed her raw wrists over her zeroes. The cold wind ripped at my bare chest, but I managed. My only concern was keeping her alive. We were both in terrible shape and wouldn’t make it long at this rate. I could feel the Vir Alluse still in my veins from the serum, so teleporting us back was out of the question.
I glanced around the woods, scanning for anything that could help us. Addler was known to have the most greenery, but that was too far away. The area between Kitlarn and Palm was also known for their forests, so that was my best guess as to where we were. We couldn’t be more than half a day from the castle, but I couldn’t tell if we were even running in the right direction.
