“Alive,” I snapped. “I need him alive.”
The mercenary stared up at me, eyes wide, lips bloody. And then, recognition flickered.
He knew me.
And I knew now without a doubt, this wasn’t simply a hired ambush.
This was the beginning of something worse.
Alaric muttered a curse and tossed me a coil of rope.
I personally took charge of the captured mercenary and tied the rope across his hands myself.
My fingers weren't steady, and that was how I knew I was angry. It wasn't the shouting kind of anger or the kind that quickly passed. It was the kind that simmered and boiled.
The kind I learned in blood-soaked camps long before anyone called me a protector.
The others gathered slowly, remaining silent. Even Gideon said nothing. Jasira clutched her arm. Wyn, a silent figure a stepbehind, gave nothing away with her expression, but her eyes burned into mine.
The only sounds were Bran’s low growl and the drip of blood from the temple stones.
The man I had caught was young, barely out of boyhood. His breathing was hard, and blood soaked his ribs. But he was smirking.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
He spat at my feet.
I struck him with a closed-fist strike to the side of his face. His head snapped back against the stone. A tooth flung across the floor.
He grinned through broken teeth, red leaking from his mouth.
Wyn flinched from behind me.
“You’re not a mercenary,” I said, voice flat. “You’re a maggot. A leftover from a place that fed boys to blades and called it training.”
He sneered, lips split. “You’re one to talk.”
I slowly crouched in front of him, deliberately, drawing my smaller knife.
“I was never in Blackreach,” I said softly. “But I trained with people who belonged there.”
I pressed the knife into the soft meat beneath his knee. “One chance. Who sent you?”
He smiled.
“The one who’s coming.”
I pressed down. Skin split. He hissed through his teeth but didn’t cry out.
“Name.” The word cut through the air like a sliver of ice.
“Riven,” he whispered.
The name hammered into me, a blaze erupting where the sound landed. My lungs seized, and the edges of sight blurred to a void.
Stone walls. Firelight. Chains rattling. A boy on his knees with a knife in his hand and a voice in his ear:
“Earn it.”
