Chapter 43

ChapterForty-Three

She wasn’t afraid. Varya thought maybe she should be. She knew what to expect in the clutches of the Horde, and worse, she knew this time she wasn’t getting away. They knew she had led Greed to them, and they would want reparations for that.

The Horde leader threw her into the arms of the big man who had been punching through the walls of people’s homes. He gave her a far too pleased grin before wrapping her up in his arms and tossing her onto his horse.

The town burned behind them, but she quickly realized she wasn’t the only one who had been captured. Other men and women sat before the Horde members on their mounts. Most of them were listing to the sides, their bodies limp and unaware. She wondered how they’d knocked them out when she couldn’t see any blood on their heads.

The man holding her leaned forward, looming his entire body over hers and dragging her tightly against him. She felt his hand curving around her ribs, cupping her breast in one hand with a satisfied growl.

“Do you want to be awake for this?” he growled in her ear. “Or do you want to be the like the others?”

She knocked her head back so fast she caught him off guard. The back of her skull connected with his nose, and she heard a satisfying crack before his roar of rage.

The Horde leader rode up beside them, laughing at her antics. “I should have warned you, that one bites.”

Though she could still hear the man behind her swearing, he kicked his horse forward. She rode away from her home, though she knew she wouldn’t be gone for too long. Greed wouldn’t leave her behind for much longer than he had to, and she wasn’t all that worried about him finding her. He had their scent, after all, and she’d long ago learned to not question her demon king.

So she bided her time as they raced across the sands. She found all the markers that would let her lead them back home if some of the other prisoners happened to awaken fast enough for them all to make an escape attempt. And in between those thoughts, she planned how to stay alive.

She could use the map to her advantage. She knew where it was, so it wasn’t all that much of a stretch for them to believe her. They wouldn’t keep her alive for that alone, though.

The man behind her didn’t grope her again, perhaps fearing what other parts of his body she would harm. But she wouldn’t put it past him to try the moment they stopped.

What she didn’t understand was why they were kidnapping townspeople. The Horde only had members who willingly joined, at least that was what she had assumed.

Glancing around herself, she found it hard to believe anyone in this party didn’t want to be here. The Horde members enjoyed killing and thieving far too much. So what did they want these people for?

She was jumping too far ahead of herself. Right now, she needed to focus on creating a distraction until Greed could find her. And then they would kill them all together.

The Horde moved quickly. One moment they were in a familiar part of the desert and the next, she wasn’t really sure where they were. The moon was just a sliver in the sky, and without its silvery light, the entire desert started to look the same. The deeper they went, the less she recognized.

Eventually, though, they reached an encampment much like the others she’d seen that the Horde had left behind. Tattered leather tents dotted the horizon, each one a little more dingy than the first. And when had she missed that the Horde wasn’t... prepared? It wasn’t ready for almost anything at all. They’d always seemed to have quality tents, but now that she’d lived in Greed’s home, she realized they were just as poor off as the rest of them.

The only difference was that the Horde had better fighters, and they were hard to find.

It was the Horde leader himself who came to yank her off the horse. He pulled too hard, and she ended up on her knees in the dirt. Spitting out a mouthful of sand, she glared up at him as he hauled her upright.

“Oh, yes. Glare all you want, little girl,” he snarled as he hauled her toward another tent. “I’m getting what I’m owed from you, one way or another.”

Did she owe him the map? Or did he have worse, more devious plans?

Letting out a snarl of her own, she only allowed him to push her toward the tent for show. But once inside, she whirled on him with her fists raised and her body much more prepared than it had been before. She’d spent hours training with the best, and she’d become a better fighter for it. Morag had shown her how to take down a man much larger, and how to fight against someone who couldn’t move as swift.

She would not go down without a fight, and he would have to learn the hard way. If he wanted to take her, then she’d have him spitting out his own teeth before he managed.

“Put away your claws,” he said, blocking the exit to the door with his body. “We’re going to have a little fun.”

The tight quarters of the tent would make it harder, yes. And she needed him to talk a bit longer so the other Horde members would think he was succeeding in what he intended to do.

He wasn’t a talker like Greed, but this would have to do.

“You will not touch me,” she warned. “Not after everything you put me through. If you think I’m going to just lie down and take it, you are sorely wrong.”

“I think you’ll do exactly that, after you tell me everything you know about Greed’s castle.” His thick beard twitched as though he smiled underneath all that fur. “You’re going to tell me how to get in. How to get out. How many people he has and the easiest ones to pick off. You’re going to draw me a detailed map, exactly where I can find all the places best suited for an explosion, the kind this kingdom has never seen.”

Her mouth fell open as she realized the Horde hadn’t been baiting Greed at all.

They’d been trying to capture her.

“How did you know I was even there?” she hissed, dodging him when he tried to grab her. She slipped between his legs and rolled upright on the other side, not even looking at the exit of the tent.

Out there, there were a hundred people waiting to fight her. In here? There was only one.

He turned with a growl, realizing far too quickly that she wanted to deal with him herself. He grinned again, this time with a flash of yellow teeth. “I’m no fool. I know that Greed is too powerful for me to fight on my own, which is why I plan to take him out at the knees. Destroy his army, his home, and there will be nothing left for him. Not even his pretty new toy, who will be ruined by the time I give her back to him.”

“You’ve trapped me twice before and it didn’t stick.”

“No, but this time I’m prepared with chains. I have people on all sides of this tent, so you aren’t getting out.” He reached for her again, but it was like trying to capture an eel with his bare hands. He caught the back of her shirt, but she slipped out of it before he could reel her in.

It worked to her advantage. The sight of her barely clothed torso was enough to make him freeze for the briefest second. The salacious grin on his face made her skin feel like she was covered in ants.

But it was enough.

“I refuse to tell you anything,” she said, making sure her words were loud. “You will have to torture me first.”

“I can make that happen.”

He lunged and this time she used his own weight against him. Varya wrapped an arm around his neck and flung her legs up. It gave her a small amount of purchase on his own body as she wheeled him around, wrapping her legs firmly around his throat and squeezing tight as both of them thudded hard into the sand.

He grappled with her, his powerful hands grabbing her thighs and trying to wrench them open. But she had the better angle, seated upon his shoulders on the ground with his head awkwardly at an angle. He tried to roll them. She twisted against him, using the momentum and fear that he must feel against him. She rolled if he wanted, like a snake she’d trapped against her limbs. But she never let up. Squeezing tighter, harder, until his face turned a deep purple and his eyes bulged as he stared up at her.

“I don’t like people who try to take what is not freely given,” she hissed. “Now you’re going to make a noise for your men to hear. You’re going to think you’re letting them know that you’re in danger, but all they’ll hear is a man in the midst of passion. Yes?”

She let him have the smallest amount of air. Not nearly enough to keep him alive, but enough for him to let out a garbled groan.

“Perfect,” she murmured.

There were even a few chuckles from outside the walls of the tent. She made a whimpering noise, then added in a breathy moan, just to make it more believable. The man between her thighs choked again, but then she squeezed harder than before.

Baring her teeth, she murmured, “They’re out there thinking that you’ve turned me over. Probably making some jokes about the size of your cock and how no woman, willing or otherwise, wouldn’t want it. And all the while, I’m sitting here suffocating you between those thighs you so desperately wanted. How is it? Is it what you expected?”

That shade of purple was not one she’d ever seen on a person before.

“I suppose it’s terrible.” She leaned just slightly, using her back muscles as well as her thighs to put even more pressure on him. “I want you to know it was the haven you sought in the bodies of women that killed you. You might never have tasted this pussy, but I hope you can smell it while you die.”

And then she laid back in the sand and waited. She never loosened the hard clench of her muscles, not even when he stopped moving. Not even when he stopped breathing.

She laid there, her legs shaking, muscles quaking, lungs burning, and she kept squeezing until tears burned in her eyes. She counted to a thousand and then back down.

Varya wanted to let up a hundred times. She wanted to just give up and if he wasn’t dead then she could maybe wrench his neck to the side, but she wasn’t sure she was strong enough to do that. All of her strength was in her legs.

So she kept going. For all the women who came before her who hadn’t gotten so lucky. For all the women that would certainly come after if she failed in doing this. It didn’t matter that his hand slid to the sand, limp and curled. It didn’t matter that the chuckles from outside the walls of these tents continued, jabbing at their captain for never lasting long enough. That they bet she’d passed out because no one could take a tent pole like that.

And she vowed deep in her heart that she would murder them all.

Greed would come for her. He always did. Even when she didn’t want him to find her, he was there. At the end.

Finally, she couldn’t hold on any longer. And it felt like her hips had snapped into this new position. She had to forcibly remove her legs from around the beastly man’s neck. And even then, she wasn’t sure. She couldn’t be sure unless she touched him and she didn’t want to.

But she did.

Varya leaned down, wincing at the pain of the bruises covering her legs as she felt for a pulse. There was none. Thank all the gods.

He was still a behemoth in his death. Far too large for her to move, so he would have to stay in the center of the tent. Finally, she looked around, searching for anything she could use as a weapon. Unfortunately, there was nothing at all. Just sand and more sand that had been kicked up in their struggle. She could see the patterns where they had rolled, struggling for purchase.

Shit, how long had she been quiet?

This time, her whimper sounded much more real. Because it was. Because she was going to do something that she had never even thought of in her life. But she crept around his body and removed the belt from around his waist. Lifting it over her head, she cracked it down upon him.

It felt a bit like she was massacring the dead, but he deserved it.

Another whimper, another crack. Then the voices outside the tent started up again, commending their leader for his stamina after all. Let the girl have it, they said. Teach her what it means to hold secrets that the Horde wants.

She hated them. She hated them all.

And then she remembered that Greed had said the desert needs blood. It feasts upon the souls of the wicked and that likely all the death in their kingdom had raised the snake. It had sunk through the sands, awakening the creature.

One body wasn’t likely to do the same thing. She wouldn’t summon the snake here, though it had likely already reached her small stone town. But it still felt right, like she was honoring the gods, to pull the Horde leader’s knife out and then slice it across his throat.

Huddling in the back corner of the tent, she held the knife against her chest and stared at the door.

If she was wrong, then one of the Horde members would come through that entrance first. They would likely try to kill her. She would kill them and run. But she wouldn’t get far because there were a lot of them and only one of her.

But if she was right, then Greed would come through that entrance first. And the sight of him doused in their blood would soothe the tremors that ran through her body.