AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Nodding, I stepped away from him. “If that is your wish.”
“It is. Go now.” His lips trembled, and his eyes held the shine of tears. “Take care of her for me.”
With a sharp nod, I strode back toward Onyx, and as I held the reins to mount the horse, an unsettling sensation struck the back of my neck.
Turning back around showed Augustus still warming his hands at the fire. But even as far as I stood, I could see something stirring in the flame.
Fire demons.
“Augustus!” I called out, spinning back toward the cave. “Get out! Now!”
The old man shot to his feet, but not fast enough. Nowhere near fast enough for the fiery hands that reached out from the flames and dragged him in. The sound of his painful outcry sent a shudder down my spine. Hellsfire was known to feel like one’s skin being slowly peeled from its bones.
“No!” I darted toward him, and as I leaped toward the bonfire, I only just touched the tip of his hand before he slipped into the blazing depths. Out of reach.
The flame fizzled to smoke, and only the reverberating echo of the old man’s screams carried through the trees.
34
THE BARON
Fire spread across the baron’s flesh as he lay on the cold floor of the cell. The torment was nothing new. He had endured such pain for months since the first whipping at Bishop Venable’s hands, and he’d grown accustomed to the agony of torture. Forehead resting against the dirt, he knew to breathe in deeply through his nose. To lay perfectly still so that his wounds did not stretch and break open. He knew to moan and cry, as if in pain, so Bishop Venable would not become wise to his ruse. And he knew, above all else, never to heal his own wounds.
From the corner of his eye, a flicker of movement drew his attention toward the shadowy half of his cell. It’d been weeks since he’d last been placed into a room with another prisoner. Or patient, rather. Most times, he had been left alone to face the breadth of his injuries in silence.
He lifted his head, not entirely certain that he had, in fact, seen movement at all.
Until the shadows shifted across the wall.
“Who is there?”
The shadows gave way to slender legs and arms, and the long, blonde locks of a woman. “I do not mean to interrupt your healing, My Lord.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Syrisa. Syrisa of Soldethaire.”
Soldethaire. A northern village he’d heard about, whose inhabitants had been taken by the Pentacrux, many of them as prisoners for the way they lived almost savagely, well before the baron had been born. She pushed forward, crawling toward him like an animal on hands and knees, into the light shining through the window. Across her skin were the telling and familiar marks of abuse–bruises, cuts, the glisten of burn marks and new skin. The shine of metal drew his eyes to her throat, where a gold band dug into the flesh of her neck. The woman had been tormented, that much he could tell.
“I did not take notice of you before. How did you find your way inside this cell?” the baron asked, curious about her. He would’ve surely noticed her, even in the darkest corners of the small space, given that his eyesight allowed him to see through shadows.
“It so happens that I don’t like the dark much. Does it trouble you?” She still hadn’t answered his question, as if she didn’t want to say.
“No.” He studied her closer, and at the first spark of recognition, his eyes widened. “You are the Widow of the Woods. The woman who lures young boys to her cabin.”
“Widow of the Woods, you say. Is that what they call me these days?” With a roll of her eyes, she chuckled. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph. They will inevitably find something to make a woman out to be a predator.”
“You do not seduce young boys into your cabin, then?”
“Should a boy find his way into my cabin, I can assure you, it is his own free will which compels him. Have you never taken a fancy to older women before?”
He tightened his lips to hide his repulsion. “Not usually.”
“Really? Ah, well. To each his own.”
“Why are you here?”
She gave a wistful sigh. “Love. I loved someone deeply. And he was stolen from me. Cursed.”
