Gael tips to the side, her wild, frightened eyes pleading with me as she jerks at her bound wrists, moaning muffled words through the blue material stuffed between her teeth.
I rip my blade from the soil and charge to the tune of crackling thunder.
Dropping low, I slide between the men and dodge their flailing hands, slashing my blade through the back of an ankle. Reaching Gael, I saw through the bonds wrapped around her ankles, then slice my blade through the rope binding her wrists, a muffled squeal dragging my attention to her wide, wild eyes.
The hairs on the back of my neck lift.
I kick my foot out and whip it around, swiping the legs out from beneath the man who was just about to swing at me, clambering atop him when he falls. Knees straddling his chest, rage tunnels my vision and scrunches my fist into stone.
I crack at his face, feeling his nose crunch beneath the brutal force. I swing again and again andagain—knuckles splitting as I release my wrath on his skull.
He stops trying to shield his face. Goes limp between my legs.
Still, my knuckles collide with his cheek, his mouth, his temple—blood splashing up at my face with every crushing collision.
“Orlaith!”
Gael’s distant voice niggles at me, and I look up through the veil of my bloodlust, fist halting mid-swing. Lungs halting mid-draw.
She’s standing atop the hill, dress torn, kohl blurred across her bruised cheek, knees so skinned they’re bleeding down her shins.
Something hard and cold clouts my temple.
I drop.
Drift.
My body lightens … loosens … my limbs shifted for me. Lifted. My head flops forward, something tight binding my wrists, my chest, leaning me back against something hard and rough.
A boom of thunder rattles the ground and electrifies the air, cutting a gasp through my lips.
Someone fists my hair, ripping the weight of my head off my shoulder, settling a cool sharpness upon my bared throat.
My eyes pop open, a deep throb pecking at my temple as I take in a pair of pale blue orbs and a face slashed with wrath.
I’m certain it’s my own dagger poised at my throat.
A surging pressure bloats my brain, and I feel a warmth leak from my nose, dripping off the tip of my chin. My vision splits, feet threatening to slip out from under me, but there’s something bound around my chest, keeping my back against the tree.
Rope.
A slow, lazy blink, and my gaze drags past the male hissing his rancid breath at me to the man on the ground with a gory face.
Unmoving.
Another is crouched over him, hand wrapped around the back of his bloody ankle.
My focus shifts, sharpening on Gael—on her knees at the tip of the rise, hands gripping her face as she screams.
My mouth falls open, a single word rasping free. “R-run …”
I’m backhanded so hard my head whips to the side, teeth rattling, eyes rolling back.
I barely feel a thing, my flesh and muscles nothing more than a numb tomb that houses whipping, scolding lashes of causticfiregrubbing at the underside of my skin. Blood whooshes through my veins, the hissing drum morphing into a slither of noxious voices that chant a deadly tune …
Kill.
Kill.
