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José shoved me forward when I paused for too long.
The night air bore an unexpected chill, and I shivered as I was pushed out of the crowded, fire-warmed inn onto the road. Two carriage horses stamped their hooves and breathed visible puffs of air from where they were harnessed to a canvas-wrapped wagon, and I swallowed as I took in the three armed men watching us with gleeful anticipation.
Mierda.
“You got them,” one said with audible relief. “They put up much of a fight?”
Filiberto snorted out his amusement. I saw Mat’s shoulders tense and knew it meant he was now offering one of his fiercest scowls to anyone with the misfortune to be looking in his direction.
Another of the mercenaries let out a low whistle, raking his eyes over me with disdain. “I can get my cock wet every day for a year with the moneythisone will bring.”
“Noble aspirations,” Mathias snapped as he was guided by the nape of his neck to the back of the wagon, which unlike the sides was open to the air. There were two rough-hewn wooden benches inside, lining the outer canvas walls, with a large metal ring secured in the centre of each one. A pair of shackles was threaded through the rings, but while the set on the left lay empty, the right held the wrists of a young Quarehian girl no older than fourteen, her dark hair tumbling over her face to reveal little more than a crooked nose and two jet black eyes glittering through the oily strands. She was straining at her restraints, sprawled ungainly on the floor between the benches.
“Dump her,” one of the men said immediately. “These two are a thousand times her worth.”
“After all the shit the little thief put us through to catch her?” Filiberto asked scornfully, letting go of Mat to shove the girl back up onto her bench and give her a hard kick to the thigh for inconveniencing him so. She hissed at him and he casually backhanded her across the face. “Not fucking likely. We’ll collect the bounties for all three.”
“But there’s no room-”
“The boys can share,” he said. “I’m not giving up gold because of your whining, fuckwit, so shut the hell up.”
José hummed in my ear. “Another kiss for the road, gorgeous?”
“That’s a definite no.”
But he’d already turned my face towards him, so I decided to let it happen. My mouth had been in many worse places than on a stranger’s, and a single kiss wasn’t worth-
The man jerked away from me as Mathias’ fist slammed into his jaw. The way José went instantly down into the dirt was satisfying, but I found it decidedly less so when Mat was forced to follow him there a moment later, ruthlessly descended upon by two of the mercenaries. The other grabbed me as I tried to stop them from laying into my lover, snarling curses at them as he was repeatedly hit and kicked.
“Fucking hold!” Filiberto growled, wading through the mess to haul Mat to his feet. He grabbed the collar of his coat and shook him hard before throwing him into the wagon. “You’re Blessed lucky the king is willing to pay for you, too,” he snarled as he shackled my northerner’s right wrist, stopping him from pulling through the slack on the chain by grabbing the other end and gesturing for me to be brought forward as well. When I’d been similarly secured by my left hand, Filiberto spat on Mathias’ face and gave us both a shove to keep us in our seats before hopping off the wagon and barking orders at his men.
José wiped the blood from his lip and gave a rueful chuckle, before disappearing around the side where the canvas walls hid him from view.
“Oh,mi sol,” I said sadly, reaching up to clean Mathias’ face with my sleeve. I was pretty sure I smeared dirt over the bridge of his nose as a result of how filthy our clothes had become, but at least he didn’t have another man’s saliva on him anymore. “If you’re going to misbehave, could I suggest that you choose a time when we could actually escape? Or, and I know this is a huge ask, maybe more than ten seconds after we promised we wouldn’t? It makes it difficult to lie to them convincingly when you do shit like that.”
He just glowered, shooting a bitter look at the manacles, the floor, and the poor girl across from us. I tugged my wrist closer to me, forcing his to follow as a result of the short length of the chain, and he immediately yanked it back with the automatic type of fuck-you insolence he always gave me.
“Sorry,” he muttered quietly after a moment. “I just...I couldn’t watch him pawing at you.”
“Defender of my unsullied virtue and irreproachable honour,” I teased, pretending to swoon into his arms so I could feel him up without the girl seeing. Yet a raised eyebrow peering through the mane of her dark hair suggested I hadn’t been nearly as subtle as I’d hoped, and my lover soon shoved me back onto my own side of the rickety, splinter-ridden piece of wood that didn’t deserve to have my ass on it.
“We’ll ride through the night,” Filiberto called from outside, and while there were low groans from the others, they quickly disappeared when he added, “for the payout we’ll receive when we deliver these three to Máros will mean we won’t have to work for a month!”
“Ren...” Mat began, his expression dark, and I heaved out a weary breath. There was a click of hooves and then the wagon began to move, jolting unsteadily as it traversed the uneven road. Echoing hoofbeats and the leathery rustle of tack told me the other men were on horseback around us.
“I know,” I murmured. There was little else to say: we were bound, surrounded, and being dragged back to our enemies.
Or, to put it more succinctly, we werefucked.
*
Chapter Seven
“No more inns.”
“No more inns,” I repeated after my lover, feeling shitty and terrified but mostly angry. At myself. I clawed at the rough metal of the cuff around Ren’s wrist, each fingertip already raw and bleeding from my desperation to free him. “We were Blessed stupid to go anywhere we could be recognised...tostaythere.”
An assenting snort drew our attention to the girl seated opposite us.
