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One leaped forward, and I cut him down with a slice across his face that left him bloodied and screaming on the floor. The next used the moment of distraction to make his attack, but I kicked at his crotch and he doubled over as I brought my knee up to connect with his nose. The third turned and tried to run, but in three strides I was behind him, and ran the knife through the back of his throat. As he lay dying, I returned to the two I’d dispatched, and slit both their throats, then wiped the knife on my britches.
When I was sure they hadn’t woken Sara, I approached the hostage. I dragged him out of the shadow of the magnolia into the moonlight, and pulled off his hood. Staring up at me was the bloodied and bruised face of Sara’s father, in way worse shape than he’d been when I leveled him days ago. Someone had kicked the ever-loving shit out of him. I yanked the gag free and he coughed and sputtered in a pathetic heap at my feet.
I crouched beside him, keeping my knife blade in full view. “What did you tell them?”
He spat out a mouthful of bloody spit. “Nothing.”
What a useless son of a bitch. I put the point of my knife to his forehead and dug it in, just deep enough to make a trickle of blood slide down his face. “Do I look like a guy who likes to repeat himself?”
“Okay, okay,” he babbled. “I told them everything, along with the other men from the town who was with them. Those city folk had seen the mark on her. They came looking for her. I told them I’d been paid off to take her when she was a baby. I’ve always known who she was. They planned to take both me and her to the king, after killing you first.”
Still with my knife point on his forehead, I glanced over my shoulder. “Bad plan. Worse execution.”
“Listen. If you keep quiet about this, I’ll cut you in on the stipend I get every month for keeping her. I’ll help you bury the bodies. No one will know. You can even fuck her sometimes, just as long as I also get to…”
I hated him. Fucking hated him.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said, and shoved the gag back into his mouth. I stared down at him, trying desperately to resist the very real urge to eliminate this fake father problem from Sara’s life.
But I’d spilled enough blood for one night without going overboard. Excessive force wasn’t exactly my thing, and besides, the thought of explaining it to Sara didn’t fill me with excitement. Once I’d checked his bindings and replaced his hood, I went inside and gently awakened her. She opened her eyes and smiled up at me, and I broke the bad news. “We need to go. Now.”
“What?” She asked, sleepily and confused. “Why?”
The five city folk had been willing to attack at night, but I had no doubt that someone else from the town would try their luck as soon as it was light. “Because you’re in danger. And the longer you are here, the bigger that danger becomes. People know, more will come for you.”
They will kill me and take you is what I wanted to tell her, but I saw no benefit. Her safety was my only purpose now. Even if it meant my life would be forfeit.
She got to her feet, half-wrapped in a blanket. “But what about Angelica? We can’t just leave her there. She needs our help, Bors.”
I gathered up my riding tack and pulled on a shirt. “We can’t risk it. We’ll send someone back for her, I promise.”
Together we hustled out of the house. I did my best to protect her from the pile of bodies, but there was no way I could hide the other part of the bad news I hadn’t yet delivered. Her father might be hooded, but he was so scrawny that he was hard to mistake for anybody else. Sara spotted him and gasped, but I hoisted him up by his bindings and slung him over my lame stallion’s back like a sack of grain. “Please don’t tell me that’s who I think it is,” Sara said.
I was honor-bound to serve her, so I didn’t tell her a thing. “As you wish, your Highness,” I said. I lifted her up onto the bay mare, mounted behind her in the saddle, and then grabbed the reins of my stallion as we took off into the night.
Sara
My body ached as we made slow progress under cover of darkness. Though we stuck to the road as far as it went, we soon found ourselves cutting across the moorland, picking our way by lamplight around boulders and dips that threatened to unmount us. I was unaccustomed to riding for such long hours, and I was sore from lovemaking with Bors. We rode two-in-the-saddle together on his borrowed mare, and I felt each step the horse took deep into the center of my being.
