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He stepped toward me. Even from a yard away, I could tell that the growler of ale wasn’t all he’d had to drink that night. The sharp smell of corn liquor wafted from him, stinging my nose and eyes.
With one swipe of his hand, he pulled off my cap and my hair came tumbling down. I could see instantly that he recognized not just my gender but my identity. “It’s you,” he said slowly, his liquor-thickened tongue slurring his words. “Princess Pussy herself.”
Shit, shit, shit. I backed up slowly, and as I did I tried to reach for my dagger, but he seized me by the wrist and thrust me up against the mantel. I felt the heat of the low-burning fire against my backside as he forced himself up against me.
“Do you know who I am, Princess Pussy?” He growled as he felt me up. As if his smell wasn’t bad enough, now his filthy hands were all over me. I shuddered with a wave of nausea.
“Please… Just…please… I don’t want any trouble.”
“Trouble’s exactly what you want. Whore to the prince, stepdaughter to that usurper, our king? My father was loyal to the real king, and you know what that got us? A big pile of steaming shit, that’s what.” He let out a huge, stinking belch. “Is it any wonder I turned out the way I did, having to take care of my whole family after he was executed for his loyalty?”
He leaned in to me, licking a long line up my throat before grabbing me hard and tearing at my clothes. I shoved him away, but I was powerless. He had me up against the fire, and he was far too big and strong for me to fight off by myself. He ripped my tunic from my body.
For one brief moment he seemed stunned, taking in my breasts, and I took the chance to desperately claw at his eyes. But he shoved me hard up against the mantel once again. It was made of field stone, ruthless and unforgiving. The room spun around me and a searing pain echoed through my skull.
“It’s fucking time that I take what’s mine,” he slurred, attempting to yank my britches off of me. “I’m just as deserving of this cunt you’re handing out to all comers. But you wouldn’t know that, would you? Because you fucking people don’t care about anybody but yourselves.”
I didn’t know what he was talking about and I didn’t care.
“Please,” I begged, trying to defend myself however, and wherever, I could. I kicked him, my heel causing sparks to fly from the embers behind me.
I blindly searched the mantel for something to defend myself. A vase shattered on the ground and I heard the thump-thump-thump of some sort of fruit or vegetable rolling off the mantel piece. Then my hand found something heavy. Glancing to the side as he undid his pants, I saw it was a meat mallet. Hardly a deadly weapon but it was something. I struck him hard on the side of the head with the squared end, but it only served to anger him more.
“You fucking cunt,” he snarled, seizing me so hard by the throat that I was certain I was going to pass out.
From my left, I heard a shatter of glass, and there, through the window, emerged none other than Maksim himself. He seized the man from behind, and drove his face hard into the mantelpiece, then tangled his fingers into the man’s hair, pulled him back and thrust him again into the stones.
I cringed and turned away at the sound of crushing teeth, then jaw, then skull itself. Splatters of blood landed on my skin. I was too horrified and shocked to open my eyes.
“You motherfucker!” Maksim roared, slamming the man’s face into the fireplace. I heard a gurgling, final breath as he slumped heavily into the fire, and the smell of burning flesh filled the air.
CHAPTER 22
Maksim
I wiped the blood off my hands and dragged the corpse out away from the fire grate. I felt no guilt about killing Anika’s attacker, or about watching the light go out of his eyes. I’d do it a thousand fucking times to protect her, if that’s what it took.
But it had rattled Anika badly. She glanced, horrified and terrified, from the body to me and then back again. I had lived long and hard enough to understand the necessity of fatal violence. But she hadn’t. Not even fucking close.
“Anika, I had to do it. You know I had to do it.”
She backed away from me, brandishing a meat mallet like some sort of weapon.
“Don’t you come near me!” Her voice quivered, eyes damp and wide. “Don’t you dare, you monster.”
Monster. What in the ever-loving fuck? I stared her down, trying to understand what she was thinking. In her eyes, there was no welcome home. No joy at seeing me. No relief or love. Just utter fucking terror and betrayal.
