36. Kiera

Chapter 36

Kiera

Pain ricocheted in my skull as I slowly opened my eyes.

Black spots swam over my vision. I tried to focus.

Golden hair. A familiar face.

“Maz,” I croaked. “Maz!”

I reached for him, but something held me fast. I groaned, trying to collect my bearings.

I was face down on a long table. Ropes strapped my legs and shoulders to it. I was cold and damp, but clothed. Maz was bare from the waist up, his tattoos on full display.

My eyes rolled, searching the dimly lit room we were in. A cave. Shelves of jars full of murky liquid and floating things . A small barrel of fireseeds. Racks of weapons. A familiar whip braided with sharp chunks of glittering sunstone.

Just like his old lair in the palace dungeon.

No. Gods, no.

I whimpered, struggling against the ropes. I stretched my fingers toward Maz’s limp ones.

“Wake up, Maz! Please!” A tear dripped down my nose.

“He can’t hear you.”

I gasped and wrenched my head as far as it would go, peering at the voice near the foot of the table.

Korvin.

He stood with his hands behind his back, watching me with a small smile on his face. His oily black hair hung in strings around his face. Those cold black eyes held no mercy, no emotion other than cruel delight. He, too, was shirtless, sweat dripping from his blood-streaked, muscular torso.

My body started to shake, and his smile grew.

“Don’t worry, princess,” he said, gesturing to the blood on his skin. “It’s not yours. Or his.” He nodded to Maz. “Not yet, anyway.”

I cowered, wordless, helpless, as he sauntered between the tables that held me and Maz. Korvin passed me, stinking of carnage, and fondled the whip that had torn my back years ago.

“I’ve learned a lot since I last saw you,” he murmured. “So many interesting things I want to try out.”

My mind was blank with fear, a stark white canvas, while my heart pumped frantically. More tears slipped silently down my cheeks.

Korvin let the whip’s strands fall back, the sunstone chips clinking together. “I’ve been waiting years to see...”

He approached me again, and I thrashed, desperate to get away.

“Hush now,” he said, his eyes glittering like the sunstone. “You can’t escape.”

I pressed my face onto the table and closed my eyes, a scream building in my chest. His sticky hands scraped over my skin, pulling my shirt collar down, exposing my scarred back.

“Ah, beautiful,” he murmured, as if admiring a well-threaded tapestry. “My whip leaves such a unique pattern.”

His fingers dug into my scars—the ones he’d lashed into my skin—and I cried out.

“Enough, Korvin!” Renwell’s voice rang out.

Korvin jerked his hand away.

Renwell strode into sight, his features livid. “I forbade you from touching her.” He glared down at me. “She’s mine .”

Korvin bared his teeth in a skull’s grin. He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “Have fun, princess. I know I will.”

Horror crashed into me. “What do you mean?” I rasped, my voice like claws against my throat. I glanced at my mentor. “Renwell?”

He slashed my ropes with his sunstone knife. “You’re not learning from your own scars, Kiera. Perhaps you’ll learn from someone else’s.”

My heart shattered with terror. “No. No!”

Korvin approached Maz with a thin, curved knife—one I’d seen used in butcher shops. For flaying fish and skinning hides. “I hear these Dags care a great deal for their inked markings,” he murmured.

“No!” I screamed. “Stop!”

I tried to hurl myself off the table, but Renwell caught me. I beat him with my fists and kicked him in the shins.

“Gods damn you, Renwell! Don’t fucking do it!” I struggled to throw him off me, but he held fast, his fingers like shackles on my arms. Korvin set the knife to Maz’s skin, right over the peak of his beloved mountain tattoo—his home—and began to carve.

Maz woke with a shout.

“NO!” I clawed at Renwell’s face as he dragged me away. “Let me go! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill both of you gods-damned lunatics!” My hands sought my knives, but they weren’t there.

Maz’s shouts turned to screams, and I started to sob. Renwell flung me across the hall and into another room. He slammed the door shut, breathing harshly. A scratch bled beneath his eye.

My eyes darted to the knife in Renwell’s belt.

“Try for it,” he whispered, stepping closer to me. “I would love?—”

I lunged forward, but he spun away and seized my throat, crushing it. I gasped and clawed at his hand as I had at The Crescent Moon .

He sneered at me. “Did you really think?—”

I made myself go limp, the full weight of my body dropping like a stone. Renwell swore, his grip weakening for a moment.

I twisted his arm and jammed my thumbs into the nerves at his wrist and elbow. He grunted in pain. I tore his hand off me and leapt for the knife once more.

He roared and drove his knee into my stomach. All the air gusted from my chest. He crouched and swept my legs out from under me. His boot heel was on my throat before I could catch a single breath.

In all our training sessions, he’d never shown me how to fight like that .

I stared up at the single, flickering brazier hanging from the ceiling, the fight bleeding out of me. Humiliation and despair poured into me like salt on gaping wounds. Maz’s screams echoed faintly through the door.

Maz. Gods, why Maz? Why did I have to fail him, too?

Renwell must’ve seen the defeat in my eyes because he removed his boot. I scraped myself off the floor and huddled against the back wall.

“Why are you doing this?” I whispered.

“I have to free you of your weaknesses somehow,” Renwell said. “Even if I have to cut them out.”

I wrapped my arms around my shivering body.

He could let Korvin torture Maz for hours. I had no weapons. I would be hard-pressed to fight both him and Korvin. Even if I managed it, we must be in the Den. Dozens of Shadow-Wolves awaited us outside these rooms.

“You care for this Maz, don’t you?” Renwell stalked closer to me. “As much as you do for your beloved Aiden?” He spat the name as if he hated even saying it.

I froze.

He swiped the blood from his cheek with a mirthless laugh. “I questioned Asher’s servants. They told me about the enormous, golden-haired man they hadn’t seen before, acting as a servant.” He brought his nose within an inch of mine, breathing heavily on my face. “They also told me of a golden dancer kissing a guard they’d never seen before near the vault. A guard who sounded a lot like my prisoner.”

Gods, he knew.

I opened my mouth to deny it, but nothing came out.

“Was it a simple seduction, Kiera?” Renwell whispered, his eyes burning into mine. “Like what you did to that idiot, Asher? Or was it something more?”

I swallowed, unnerved at the feverish rage in his eyes. “I did what I had to. What do you want from me?”

“I want the gods-damned truth. And it seems the only way I’m going to get it is by taking someone you care about and using him to make you talk.” He backed away from me, pacing in front of the door. “Which was my original plan for Lord Garyth until you helped his family escape.”

His words kindled my own anger. “You were going to use an innocent woman and a little girl to force Garyth to talk?”

“I told you everyone has a monster locked away inside of them—whether that’s a murderer, a coward...” He sneered at me. “A traitor . All I ever have to do is find the right key.” He smiled a little to himself. “Except for Korvin. His monster never had a cage.”

Neither does yours, it seems.

“They’re gone, Renwell,” I said harshly. “I don’t know where.”

“Just as well. Garyth doesn’t need to know that. For all that mumbling coward knows, we have them in a room next to his.”

He was still alive then. But for how long?

Save my father if you can , Isabel’s voice echoed in my mind.

I wish I could. But I can’t even save myself. Or Maz.

“You got what you wanted,” I whispered. “Now let me and Maz go.”

Renwell laughed again, the sharp sound bouncing off the rock walls. “I haven’t gotten what I wanted. Not by half. But I will.”

I threw my arms wide. “What else do you want? The gold?”

“I don’t care about the gods-damned gold. I want to know how your lover plans to kill your father.” A slow, wicked smile curved through Renwell’s dark beard. “Surely you know that one by now.”

I inhaled sharply. He couldn’t possibly know what had transpired between me and Aiden last night. But what else could I tell him? How much should I tell him?

I felt like I was falling down the cliff road, crashing against rocks, unable to slow myself down. How many others would fall with me?

“He doesn’t tell me everything,” I admitted hoarsely. “All I know is I’m to set fire to three buildings in the Old Quarter as a distraction for your dogs. In seven days’ time.”

Renwell’s eyes gleamed. “Finally, something useful. You’re the bait. He’s the blade.” He crossed his arms over his chest. “And how does my sweet little sister fit into this plan? Did she mention me?”

“No,” I spat. But Aiden said you shot her with an arrow before shooting his mother. “I didn’t even know you had a sister.”

“I didn’t either. That is, I didn’t know she was still alive,” he added, his voice distant. “Dear little Nik. The survivor.”

My chest tightened. Did he know what had happened to her? Where those scars came from?

“I’ve told you everything I know,” I said. “Now let me and Maz go.”

Renwell’s attention snapped back to me, and his arms fell to his sides. “No. You’ve broken both of my rules. You helped my quarry escape, using resources I’m certain you’ve kept hidden from me.”

The tunnel.

“You also seem to know surprisingly little about this plan,” he continued. “Are you lying to me, or are you simply a poor seductress?”

His serpentine stare made my insides crawl. His words threatened to poison my beautiful memory of being with Aiden, but I refused to let them.

“I’m not lying,” I said, pouring every ounce of truth I felt into my expression. Like we were back to playing a game of Death and Four in his study, and I was trying to bluff my way to victory. But in this game, defeat most likely meant death.

“I have difficulty believing you’re a poor seductress, Kiera,” he whispered.

My skin grew cold and clammy, but I lifted my chin. “Believe what you will. Not every man gives up his secrets with a mere kiss.”

Renwell’s dark eyes dropped to my mouth. “Only the weakest men. And Aiden is not weak. Something we have in common, I suppose.” He shook his head. “No. If I let you go back to him, it will be for one purpose only.”

He pulled Mother’s sunstone knife from his boot and unsheathed it.

I flinched. After our meeting at The Crescent Moon , I hated to see it in his possession.

He pointed the knife at me. “Kill Aiden, then come back to me.”