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Is she flirting with him?
“One day,” Leon responds noncommittally, flicking his gaze back to me. My teeth start to chatter, but I grit my jaw tight and edge slowly around the tree, readying myself to bolt. Leon draws his lips back over his teeth, like a shark about to bite. “Right now I have plans.”
Out of the corner of my eye I notice Konrad stepping away from Four and Eight, dropping their hands. “Be sure to tell the Numbers that we will be having aformal banquetto welcome our new friend.”
“Tonight?” Four questions.
“No, Nought has a lesson to learn before we’ll introduce her to you all,” Leon interrupts.
A look passes between the two men, and Konrad nods. “Indeed.”
“A lesson?” I croak, my stomach turning over.
“Off you go,” Konrad urges.
“Yes, Master,” they agree, before they both give him a seductive smile that leaves no room for misunderstanding. They truly have been brainwashed. Regardless, I don’t want them to leave me alone with these men.
“Don’t go!” I call, my voice cracking, betraying me.
They leave without a backward glance. My stomach drops, nausea rising.
“Now, where were we?” Leon asks, his eyes narrowing. “Are you going to heel?”
A sudden rush of rage replaces the fear. It obliterates it, sets it alight, burns it to ashes. With my next shaky breath I dig deep, drawing on the courage that I know lives within me. Right here and now, I decide that I will not be a victim. I will notobey. I refuse to be theirs. I won’t be owned by anyone. “Never!” I snarl, pushing off from the tree with a rush of adrenaline and new found energy.
I bolt, running straight into a hard chest. Strong arms wrap around me, holding me tight, and I’m immediately accosted by the smell of wet pine leaves and freshly turned, damp earth.
Jakub.
“Nie powinienes biegac,Nic,” he says, before snapping a pair of handcuffs around my wrist. He walks me backwards, shoves me back against the bark, then yanks my wrist into the air and reaches above my head. “You shouldn’t have run,Nothing,” he repeats in English, clipping the handcuff into a metal loop fixed into the tree trunk, his hazel eyes shadowed beneath his mask.
“No…” I whimper, trying to buck him off me, but he pins his body against mine, attaches another handcuff to my other wrist and yanks my arm upwards, clicking it into place too.
“Yes,” he counters, wrapping his fingers around my throat, stroking, not squeezing. “Perhaps now you’ll understand that we mean what we say. This isn’t a game. You belong tous.”
“Konrad said you like the chase,” I say through gritted teeth.
“Maybe that was once true. Now I don’t like much of anything,” he whispers against my lips, a note of sadness in his voice that’s too confusing to analyze at the moment.
“Let me go,” I beg, the handcuffs digging painfully into my wrists.
“I can’t do that.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Won’t,” he replies, so close that I can feel his heart thumping against my breast and the heat from his skin seeping through the thin cotton of my dress. He breathes in deeply, running the tip of his nose against my skin, then steps back enough to pull out a white mask from the back of his jeans. This one completely covers the face and has two red teardrops falling from the section cut out from the eyes, and two holes for the nose. He holds it out to the side and Leon steps up, taking it from him
“Put it on her,” Jakub orders.
Leon nods and Jakub steps out of the way so that he can attach the mask to my face. “There, now isn’t that just fucking poetic,” Leon says, his fingers running down my neck and between my breasts before falling away, leaving a trail of heat in their wake.
“Are you just going to leave me here?” I ask, my voice muffled beneath the mask.
Konrad nods. “Yes.”
My chest heaves as I draw in a breath through the small nose holes and try not to panic at how claustrophobic I feel. Digging my bare feet into the roots of the oak tree protruding out of the stone slabs, I force myself to keep calm knowing that my fear is their sustenance.
“This is The Weeping Tree, Nothing,” Jakub explains. “It’s over a thousand years old and has borne witness to many atrocities, including the hanging of innocent women charged with devil worship and witchcraft. Many, many years ago a foreign nobleman fell in love with a local healer woman named Marie. They were together for ten years, had several children, and lived a happy life until she was charged with witchcraft for curing a family of influenza. In those days, barely anyone survived, but her ability to use natural remedies saved that family. Instead of being praised for her kindness, the family turned on her, afraid they would be charged with devil worship for surviving the unsurvivable. Marie was hung from this very tree.”
