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“You thrice damned whore!”
It’s the other twin and he’s enraged. I need to move, but my quaking limbs are far from cooperative. My leather slippers and the heels of my palms slip in the fallen pine needles as I desperately try to retreat from him.
With a roar, he kicks out at me. In his frenzy, he misses, but I’m not so lucky on the second attempt. Or the third. Then he falls on me and the punches come.
Curling into a ball, I try to protect myself, but the blows are like hammers, driving the breath from my lungs and the sense from my mind. My vision goes dark for a second. When it flickers back, I realize everything has stopped and that Noé is yelling . . . at me. “What were you thinking?! You stupid woman.Father’stit, what do you have to say for yourself?”
My short, panted breaths aren’t enough to allow for words and I’m not sure I could come up with anything coherent even if they did.
“She led him out here,” a twin accuses at the top of his lungs. “Said they could have some fun. And look what she did! She killed him.”
“Wha –”Fun? Killed?
“You will speak!” Noé roars.
“I did no such thing,” I wheeze.
“She callsmea liar after slaying my brother?!” the twin rages to Noé and then at me, he spits, “I am a warrior of the Mountain Lion Range.”
Mountain lion. That makes sense. The cat insignia on their shoulders has a long body. It must be a mountain lion.
Vaguely it occurs to me how useless these thoughts are. I should be listening to Noé. He’s saying more, things I’m not processing. Abruptly he leans down and grabs my wrist, dragging me along the ground back to camp. If I could scream, I would. The pain radiating along my already-bruised ribs almost pales in comparison to the feeling of my shoulder about to wrench free of its socket.
“Noé, what are you doing?” comes the urgent voice of another. Bron. He meets us at the wagon where Noé dumps me in a heap.
“You don’t move,” Noé growls at me. “Do you hear me?”
He leaves me there with Bron. “What happened?” he whispers urgently, helping me to sit up with my back against a wheel.
I bring a very unsteady hand to my head and it comes away bloody. “Hhhe . . . he attacked me.” My survival instincts really kick in and I start searching for my horse.Would they pursue me? Hunt me down?My brain lurches and sways in its attempts to form a plan, any plan, to get away from here.
“Noé? Noé attacked you?”
“No . . .” I can barely concentrate on Bron’s words. “Will hhhhe let me go?”
“What?”
“Will Noé let me go?”
“No, he won’t let you go,” Bron says like I’m daft. “He must deliver you to the deve without fail.”
We hear cursing, and Bron looks over his shoulder. The sight of Noé and a twin carrying a body between them has Bron’s very wide, brown eyes swinging back in my direction. “Is he dead?”
“I think so,” I whisper, tears now blurring my vision. I must get away from here.But where will I go?“Will Noé kill me?”
“What? No! I told you, he has to deliver you.”
Dix appears. “What in all the horrors ofthe Abysshappened?” he demands, watching them slide the body onto the cart bed.
“The D’heilarian whore,” a twin scorns, “lured Carson into the trees, and when she didn’t like the results, she killed him.”
“That’s not true,” I cry, struggling to my feet with Bron’s help. “He attacked me.”
“You’re disgusting!” It must be Cayson if Carson is dead. “You’ve been making eyes at us since we left D’heilar.”
I don’t know if the dizziness is sparked by his despicable statement or the pain in my ribs, which is quickly growing intolerable. “That . . . is . . . not . . .” I weave, and though Bron catches me, everything goes dark.
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