AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I did need revenge, one way or another. I supposed it hadn’t occurred to me that I might not have the stomach to go through with it myself.
So I jerked my head in a nod, and he lifted our intertwined hands to his lips.
I watched, somewhere between shocked and happy and terrified as he dragged his lips over my knuckles. “Do you want to be in the room?”
Did I?
I didn’t, honestly.
But I also knew I wouldn’t be able to stand it if I didn’t hear the men answer the questions themselves, if I couldn’t look them in the eyes and decide which of them I found guilty.
So I jerked my head in a nod.
He replied with a nod of his own, and then stepped up to the door and tugged it open.
I heard Namir and Diora behind me, their footsteps as quiet as Horvis’s behind them.
“I’ll watch the door,” Diora said, slipping out of her mate’s grip and turning smoothly so her back rested against the wall beside it.
Stars, she looked… like an adult.
My mind dragged back the feelings and images of her as an infant, cradled in my arms in that prison, and I fought to keep my stinging eyes from watering.
She was alive because of me.
Because I had survived well enough for both of us. All three of us.
Was that not revenge enough?
She flashed me a small smile, and I nodded back at her before I stepped into the room in front of Espen.
Chapter10
The questionings were absolutely exhausting.Espen and Namir took the helm, and honestly, Namir scared me a couple of times with the way he went from charming to murderous in a heartbeat. They gave me opportunities to run the interrogations myself, but I made it clear that I didn’t want to be in charge of the damn thing.
I just wanted to look into the eyes of the bastards who could potentially have been behind the hellish decades I had survived.
When we’d made it through all twenty of the men, I still had no idea who was to blame for what had been done to me. There were more than a handful who seemed bastardly enough to be responsible, but there were also a handful who responded calmly and neutrally enough that they could’ve just as easily been behind it.
There were only six who I disqualified after seeing them.
Seven, if I counted Horvis, but I needed more information about why Espen was so confident that he wasn’t responsible before I really marked him off my list.
“Do you want to come find some place to eat with us?” Diora asked me, as I finally slipped out of the interrogation room. My shoulders were already drooping, my body a bit hunched after so much time spent trying to play the cold, uncaring Queen.
I wasn’t a queen.
I wasn’t cold or uncaring.
I was just… exhausted.
“Thanks for thinking of me, but I’m going to crash early. My stomach’s a bit upset after all the furious energy the men were emanating, anyway.”
Her expression grew empathetic. “Can I bring you something back? Just a few rolls, or some soup?”
I’d never seen her as expressive as this before. Not in the prison; there, she was either desperate, or furious, or afraid.
Now, she was… caring.
