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I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for impact. This was going to kill me. I just knew it.
But a male voice yelled, “Wait.”
Releasing a breath, I cracked open an eye as someone else with an air of authority about him approached. He didn’t even bother to remove his sword from its scabbard at his side, as if battling was beneath him.
“The reward will be larger if we keep her alive.”
Grumbling, my henchman lowered the club so he could reach down with his other hand to grab a handful of my hair. Then he lifted me.
I cried out when chunks of tresses tore free from my scalp, while others held firm as he pulled me up, far enough off the ground to leave my legs dangling and kicking out to find some kind of footing. Tears of pain filled my eyes as my handler answered, “But I thought they’d already caught one for the procedure. We don’t need to keep two alive.”
Another one?
Were they talking about Indigo?
Had they caught Indigo?
No!
“I haven’t heard confirmation yet that the other is honestly a Graykey,” the older man answered, stopping in front of me, and narrowing his eyes with disgust as he peered into mine that had to be pure black right now. Then he sneered and grabbed my arm, flipping it over to reveal my mark. “But you’re definitely a Graykey. Aren’t you, my pretty one?”
I didn’t answer.
He stepped closer. “You were probably the very monster who murdered my boy? Did you kill my son—my Axel—you little whore?”
Axel?
Oh dear God. This was Indigo’s uncle Everett, wasn’t it? The one who’d degraded him for being a High Clifter and turned him into a servant in his own family’s home? Who’d beaten him for trying to go to Warren to find me and threw him in a dungeon for days on end afterward?
Already hating the pompous windbag, I narrow
ed my eyes and growled, “Go to hell.”
He smacked me. High. Right across the temple, which seemed to break open a blood vessel at the top of my cheekbone and the corner of my eye.
“Answer me!” he roared. “What happened to Axel? Who killed him?”
I’d die before I let him know who truly took his son’s life. Trying to see him clearly with one eye swelling and blood dripping down my chin, I worked my mouth as I gathered saliva, and then I spit, nailing him right in the face.
With a roar, he walloped me on the side of the head again, causing more hair to pull free from my scalp and fresh pain to bloom across the length of my cheek as my neck creaked from the unnatural angle he cranked it.
My brain blinked off and then back on, filling my vision with stars as I came back to myself.
“Fucking bitch,” my captor was snarling as he wiped my spittle out of his eye. “You’ll pay for that. I may not be able to kill you now, but I can make you suffer nice and long before I do. You’ll scream until you wished you were dead.”
“Your son screamed,” I shot back, my voice hoarse. “When he died, he screamed for mercy and begged for his daddy. But you never came, so I slaughtered his pathetic ass.”
I’m not sure why I told him that. Maybe I didn’t want him to ever know Indigo had been in any way involved. Maybe I wanted to enrage him enough to simply kill me now, so I wouldn’t suffer through what would certainly happen to me if I was imprisoned. Or maybe I just didn’t like this guy, and I relished that pained look of horror that crossed his face as I lied.
In any case, he totally believed me.
Bellowing in devastated outrage, he struck me again.
And my world went dark.
Chapter 32
Indigo
