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“Oh, fuck off,” Ren said to her, but without much bite. “Like you’d do any better.”
Remembering what Filiberto had said about her being difficult to catch, I sighed. “She probably did. We were...that was fucking humiliating. We’re not letting them take us back to Welzes, Ren. This willnotbe how we go down.”
I returned my attention to where I had his hand in my lap, scratching and tugging at each link of chain in the hope of finding a weakness in the manacles that had somehow eluded the dozens of prisoners they had undoubtedly held before us.
“Mathias,” Ren warned as he caught sight of the state of my hands, his voice low and furious. “Stop. You’re hurting yourself!”
I ignored him. None of it mattered if he died; not the blood, not the pain, not the consternation of knowing how badly we’d screwed up.
“Mat.Fuckingstop,” he said inthatvoice, and my hands stilled of their own accord. He pried my bloody fingers from the metal, lacing them through his instead.
“I can’t give up,” I said, although it came out as more of a whisper. “I won’t.”
“We won’t.”
But he wasn’tdoinganything! How could he sit there so calmly, with every rotation of the wheels below us delivering him closer to his death? How could he let those power-hungry pricks win, after everything he’d fought so hard for? How could he-
“I said no more inns,” Ren remarked, his lips twitching in amusement as he took in my expression. He leaned in and kissed the tip of my nose. “Future tense, little wildcat. I have no intention of going meekly into the afterlife, but rather than breaking all of my fingernails on re-proving the unmalleability of metal, I’m planning to hit a rather more tractable target. People.”
The prince offered me a wry smile, lazing back on the bench and stretching his feet out so they rested next to the girl. She gave his boots a scathing look but said nothing.
“We know that my execution will have to be quiet and as innocent-looking as possible. That means Welzes and Navar won’t risk being caught near me when it happens. Andthatmeans the involvement of other people...people whom we may be able to convince into helping us.”
May. It was far from a guarantee, but it wassomething. A possible glimmer of hope that didn’t see Ren’s lifeless corpse being thrown into the river in the dead of night.
“I’m also,” Ren continued casually, trailing a suggestive finger up my thigh, “trying to work out if we have enough time between our chatty companion here being dropped off at the city gaol and us arriving at the palace for me to give you one hell of a goodbye,mi cielo.” Ren held up a vial of oil between two fingers of his free hand.
I stared at it. “How many of those fucking things do you have?”
“This is, regrettably and devastatingly, the last one. If you’re hoping for a second round, we might just have to get creati-”
I snatched for it with my right hand but he jerked his left back, halting me in mid-air as the chain snapped taut. I growled out my frustration.
“Fuck, I know you love my cock,mi corazón, but I draw the line at getting it on in front of a child.”
“Ren,” I snarled. “Give me the Blessed oil.”
He shot me a wicked grin. “You’re going to have to beg harder than that.”
“How’s this?” I asked, elbowing him sharply in the side. He crumpled, his boots slamming back down onto the wooden floorboards, but still managed to keep the bottle just out of my reach. “We can use it to slide our hands through the cuffs, asshole.”
Ren gathered his breath and dubiously inspected his shackled wrist. “I doubt it. I think they’re too tight.”
“We can at least fucking try!”
Chastised, he nodded and made to hand me the vial. “You’re right. We should-”
One of the girl’s chained hands shot out, snatching the bottle from Ren’s grip. We both gaped at her in shock for a second and then Ren hissed out his irritation, trying to wrench it back. She kicked him away and pressed herself against the canvas out of reach of his straining fingers.
“By the Blessed, you’re quick,” he reluctantly admitted, and then dropped his voice back into that deliciously dominant tone that sent shivers up my spine and brought my cock to immediate attention. “Give it back.”
But even though I was ready to hand him anything he wanted, dignity and all, she merely rolled her eyes and popped the cork, drizzling the entire precious contents of the vial over her slender wrists.
We both muttered angry curses as we watched her drain what was likely our final chance for getting ourselves loose prior to arriving in Máros, although the difficulty she had in freeing herself told the rational part of my brain that it hadn’t been much of a chance at all. Her hands were half the size of either of ours, and it still cost most of her skin in working them through the ruthless bite of the cuffs.
“You’re out for yourself, I can respect that,” Ren said grudgingly. “But now you’re free, you could at least…”
She shot him a rude gesture, staggered to the back of the swaying wagon, and swung herself around the side of it like a Blessed cat.
