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Both women he recognized, even through their bloody and bruised faces, as he had observed them from far away long before he showed up at Wolfbridge. They had both fought against this.
More than once.
Every day it looked like. Though Eva appeared to be in worse shape.
He really had fallen in line with the devil.
Both women were sitting on the floor, close together, their backs against the far wall of the small stone cell. Their legs shackled together with chains linked to a hook in the floor. No blankets. No pallets. A tiny pile of straw and one bucket. They were huddled together for warmth.
The bile almost escaped.
Instead, he set his face to stone as Freddy opened the heavy iron bars of the cell door,metal on metal creaking as it swung out on its hinges. “Get her in here.”
Lewy walked farther down the corridor, clanking around in a cubby in the wall that Rafe couldn’t see.
What he wanted to do was kill both Freddy and Lewy with his bare hands and get the women out of there.
But Victoria was currently dead to the world, who knew how injured Eva or Torrie were, and he’d still have to bumble the three women up through a castle which he knew nothing of and then get them all past Falsted and his other two blackguards. Knowing Falsted, there were probably other guards stationed around the castle as well.
Killing these two brutes would do little good at this point. But it was coming.
He didn’t have enough information yet, didn’t have a plan, and as much as it killed him to do so, he had to be smart about this and leave Victoria down here.
At least she would be with her aunts.
His knee hitting the floor of the cell, he set Victoria down onto the cold stone of the dingy hovel, right by the silent but watchful eyes of Eva and Torrie.
Eva’s bloody bottom lip trembled as she looked at Victoria, and her eyes lifted to him, venom in her look. “What did you do to her?”
He set his glare on Eva, his eyes harsh, meant to silence her with just the look. “Her left thigh needs to be bound. She is losing blood.”
Lewy strolled into the cell and tossed iron shackles down onto the floor next to Rafe’s knee. “Chain her up.”
Torrie leaned forward and wrapped her hands under Victoria’s head, then scooted forward so she could set Victoria’s head on her thigh.
Rafe glanced up at Lewy. “Necessary?”
He pointed to the shackles. “Chain her up. Falsted intends to have all of those asses down here, seeing what happened to their women. Chains are a necessary part of that.”
“Utter destruction?” Rafe muttered under his breath.
“Nothing less.”
His hands left Victoria’s body and he picked up the shackles, turning his back to Lewy as he lifted her skirts, shifting them out of the way and he clamped one shackle around one leg, then the other. Not too tight. He settled her skirts back about her legs.
“Ye going soft, whelp? Shove her boots down, get ‘em tight. Don’t make me cinch those onto her.”
His breath seething, Rafe adjusted her boots and tightened the clamps down around her ankles, then pulled the chains together, gathering them and securing them to the hook in the middle of the floor.
Lewy spit on the ground and turned to walk out of the cell.
Rafe stood from the floor, not allowing himself another look at Victoria.
One mere glance at her shackled to the floor and he would be done for, the rage firing through his veins forcing stupid, stupid decisions.
Not when he needed to be smart.
Needed it like never before.
