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Not Zorander, obviously, who loathed women and bodily contact and me, especially.
Not Tavion, because I’d killed Julian, and he’d rather strangle me than look at me.
Not Tristan, because he hated me nearly as much as Tavion did.
It had to be Raziel. Choosing him made a twisted kind of sense, since we’d both been slaves…were still slaves, for all intents and purposes. He’d sympathize and wouldn’t muck this up with emotions.
Because he wasn’t free, he’d understand what this was.
An act of defiance that would save me from my predicament and give me a means to protect myself against the forces threatening to crush me.
I even knew where he was. Sort of.Home sweet home, the slave barracks, beyond the back of Keep.
First, I had to get out of this room. I waited until nightfall, and since I’d been picking locks since I could walk, I had the door open in short order and navigated the busy outer hall, keeping my head down.
I layered two dresses to cover myself. Then wrapped a black strip of fabric around my head to hide my hair, and kept to the shadows while I navigated my way to the main floor.
Every castle had a warren of back stairs and corridors at its center, to keep the help hidden from their masters. This place was no different, and it was easy enough to duck my head and slink down the steps to the ground floor.
I found a pile of old uniforms in a storage closet and swapped one out for my layered dresses, rewrapping my hair. I stuffed the ridiculous dresses into a rag basket, then peeked through the door.
My instincts had guided me in the right direction, I was at the back of the Keep.
Jagged mountains rose in the far distance, so huge even the Keep shrank before them, while a dead, cavernous forest even denser than Bloodwood crept in to my right.
But in front of me, across a wide-open clearing, stood a jumble of rickety hovels with a roaring fire at their midst. Even from here, two males brawled, their muscular silhouettes writhing against the dancing flames.
They both had collars on, but I recognized one of those gleaming torsos, shiny with sweat, the heavy muscles on his back bunching. I debated the wisdom of my decision one last time, then headed straight for them.
With the black scarf wrapped tightly around my hair, I was just another slave girl creeping in the dark, looking for a companion to warm my bed for the night. I kept to the outskirts of the crowd, chanting for their champion, who was not Raziel.
But Raz won in the end, flattening his opponent to the dirt hard enough I winced as bones cracked.
“Stay the fuck down.” Raz dug his finger into the male’s chest. “Or next time, you’ll be six feet below where you are right now.”
Something about his growled threat reached deep inside me and yanked up a bone-deep shiver from the most intimate depths of myself, one that went on and on, the longer I watched him.
And the longer I watched him, the more I knew this was what I wanted.
Raziel, in all his dark glory,was exactly what I wanted.
A couple slaves watched me and Raziel followed their gazes to where I waited, praying no one recognized me. Then all I saw was Raz stalking toward me, my eyes fixed on his powerful body, the flex of his muscled stomach, the wariness in his dark eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Raziel whipped his shirt off a tree branch, mopping his face. I realized my mouth had been hanging open and snapped it shut before I made a total fool out of myself.
I’d seen naked men before.
Lots of them. There was no such thing as privacy in the slave barracks, no such thing as modesty, either.
Of course, those males had been half starved, nothing like the absolute mountain of muscle in front of me, sweat glistened body gleaming, power and presence radiating from him like a siren’s song.
Raziel was too much—too big, too strong, too masculine…my gaze dipped lower…too male.Holy gods.
I swallowed. This was a bad idea. Maybe Tristan would be a better choice.
Or a complete stranger? Over and done and behind me with not a second thought.
My gaze drifting to the knot of males—all bearing those hideous spiked collars—gathered around another pair of combatants as they beat each other to a pulp for no apparent reason.
