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“How… how’d you find me?” He backed himself against the wall, though I hadn’t moved an inch.
“Even you aren’t daft enough to forget the Huntress’s power. Did you think you were safe?”
“Stay away from me.”
I tsked, reaching for my blade. Old habits died hard. I’d half-expected a word from Hollis at my back, but he remained quiet, steady, calm.
“We need to have a little chat, and since I’m feeling generous today, I’ll let you decide if we do that here, or we take a walk outside.”
His bloodshot eyes tracked my hand as he stumbled sideways. “I’m not fucking following you anywhere. Do I look like some kind of godsdamned fool?”
“I’m going to assume that’s a rhetorical question.”
I stepped closer, placing the flat of the blade beneath his scruffy beard. The tavern took a singular breath, and I didn’t need to look to know all eyes remained on us as I pinned myself as the villain they’d all known me to be.
Regulas, my father’s hand and the enemy of my childhood, gritted his teeth, turning red as he glanced over the room, looking for a single person with enough balls to stop me. He paused in the far-right corner, where Drexel’s henchmen had gathered around a table, their leather gloves and nice coats a dead giveaway the second we’d entered.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know of the Life Maiden, Regulas.”
He scoffed, eyes snapping back to me. “What makes you think I know anything at all?”
I stepped in closer, keeping my voice down. “My father was a wise man. He was hunting for her my entire life, and you were so, so desperate for answers. Do you mean to tell me, with every resource available to you and years of hunting, you didn’t find a single clue? Yet my father kept your sniveling ass around, and for what? Entertainment?”
“I’d rather take my secrets to an early grave than help you, King Slayer.”
Hollis cleared his throat, peeling the hood of his cloak down to reveal his aged face. Regulas gasped, glancing between us.
I hitched a brow, confused at his recognition of my companion.
“Don’t you see? She isn’t trying to help herself. She’s trying to help everyone else. Why would Death’s Maiden care about her counterpart, if not for the good of the realm? You took an oath, Regulas Carstark. I stood in that audience and watched you do it.”
Of course. Hollis had been born in Perth. I’d nearly forgotten. I’d come with force, but he’d come with logic. As always.
“You can take my oath and shove it up your ass, Hollis Bennet, you fucking maggot.”
Twenty-seven years of pent-up rage exploded from me. I dropped the blade, more interested in the blood of the man than his soul. I snatched him by the neck in a single strike and slammed his head against the wall. Not once, not twice, but three times, until his eyes rolled back, and his fat hands no longer clawed at mine. Chaos erupted. People began screaming that Death would come soon. Most scrambled for the door.
I saw nothing but red as I dropped Regulas to the floor and placed a boot over his thick neck, feeling Death’s magic stir within me as I imagined the crunch of his windpipe. He blinked up at me, likely grasping to stay conscious.
“You can say all the disgusting things you want about me. You can tell the world how you tortured me when I was a child. How mean you were and just how far your head fit up my father’s ass, but don’t you speak a word against that man again.”
“Kill me now, Maiden,” he rasped over the blade. “End this misery.”
I smiled, shaking my head with a glare. “I don’t think so, Reg. I’d rather watch you stew in it.”
“If I tell you—” His words were interrupted by a cough. “If I tell you what I know?”
“Deyanira,” Hollis warned, pressing his back to mine, the pummel of his ornamental sword driving into my spine.
I ignored him. “You have three seconds, Regulas.”
Another cough.
I lifted my boot a fraction of an inch. “One.”
“Dey,” Hollis warned.
“Two.”
