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“Let me out! I didn’t do anything!” I yell through the small opening in the door.
The guard looks at me through the hole and narrows his eyes. “Your language is despicable.”
I make a face. “So are you for doing this to me!”
I jerk the door a few more times, but of course, he locked it from the outside. Panic washes over me. “What’s going to happen to me? And what about Soren?”
“The Elders will decide over his fate as well as yours.”
Chapter 43
Soren
Hours, maybe days, pass without any news. My wrists hurt from the tightened shackles that cling to my skin. The bolt cutter is still out of reach, barely, a stark reminder of what could have been … and a way for the people to remind me of my place.
But what eats me up the most is that April is in their clutches.
I haven’t seen her since she found me, and I don’t know what the fuck they’re planning to do with her.
They won’t take it lightly that she tried to free me, let alone the fact she snuck onto this island with ease. The guards are pissed at their own failings. The extra-deep whip lashes tell me as much.
Pain is nothing new to me. I was born to accept it with honor. But every bone inside my body screams to fight, to get up and revolt.
Because of her.
Because she is here, and she needs me.
But every movement I make is hampered by the chains on my body and this fucking pole keeping me in place like a dog.
After a while, a guard steps inside, then another, and another. They all look at me like they want something from me … the violent kind. I sigh out loud and groan. “Here to beat me up again?”
I know my mother tongue, but the filthy looks on their faces are worth speaking English for.
The three of them approach me with ropes and knives, keeping a keen eye on my movements as they get closer and closer. They tie the ropes around my waist and another one around my arms, securing them tight before unlocking the chains around my wrists.
With my strength and size, I would easily fight them off and beat them to the ground even with these ropes around me. But after spending days in this cell enduring nothing but pain, I’m spent. And I need to save whatever energy I have left to find her.
Find my woman … April.
So I let them drag me up from the ground and unlock the shackles around my ankles, freeing me from the bonds. It’s been a long time since I’ve last not felt iron around my skin, the feeling bringing me power and hunger for a fight.
But I remain calm and steady as they wrap their ropes tightly around my body to secure me in place before dragging me outside the barracks and straight into the people’s gathering. I’m pushed down onto my knees along the sidelines of the cleared circle in the middle where the bonfire usually stands.
Everyone is looking at me like I’m a filthy animal worthy of nothing but disdain, but then they all turn their heads at something else. I look up at the guards dragging someone else to the forefront. When I spot her face, a fire ignites inside my body.
“Let her go!” I growl in my native tongue, which makes her eyes jolt up to meet mine in an intense flurry of fear that splits me in half.
They shove her down to the ground too, and the people look at her with even more disgust than they did to me. But she committed no sin. She only tried to save me to return the favor I granted her. And now they want to punish her for it?
The Elder Agata, the one with the snarl, steps forward. “This woman came to our lands uninvited,” she says in our native tongue. “She sullied one of our own, took off his metal, and brought him dishonor.”
The crowd murmurs in agreement.
“Those who take from us without permission will be punished,” Elder Elin says. “To protect us. And to give back honor where it was stolen.”
Is she talking about me?
Elder Saga slams her cane into the ground. “Our judgment will be carried out now.”
Suddenly, one of the fellow men I trained with steps forward with an ax in his hands.
April begins to cry at the sight, and she throws me a look, the same one I saw in the car when she was begging me to save her. Her lips quiver while she whispers some words into the wind. “Soren.”
I don’t need to hear it to know she’s saying my name.
With her last words, she chooses to say my name.
Fury rages in my body.
The man with the ax pushes her forward onto a log, her head shoved onto the wood.
