I don’t pay any attention to where I’m being taken, I’m so hell bent on trying to get out of the guard’s hold. So when I’m dumped on my ass in what looks like some kind of church-like room, I’m surprised. A huge boot immediately pins me to the ground by my throat. I’m already struggling to catch my breath because this fucker just knocked the wind out of me when he threw me down; the boot to the throat is completely unnecessary.
Good thing I ripped out a chunk of the fucker’s armpit hair just before he dropped me. I add that to the score board of hits and then squeal and try to get out from under his boot. I wrap my legs around his tree trunk thigh and go for a good junk hit, but he’s too tall for me to connect properly. Fuck. Why didn’t Sutton teach me how to get out of shit like this?
Fucking Gryphons and whatever growth hormone that makes them giants!
I gasp and sputter when the guard applies more pressure to my airway, but I can’t stop fighting. I don’t exactly know what the Vow is and what all it entails, but I don’t want it. I have the sinking suspicion that it will mean that I can never get home, and I can’t have that. It’s the only thing I have to hang on to. That may be pathetic or delusional, but it is what it is.
Something hard and cold is pressed against my neck, and a slight stinging sensation there has me immediately going still. I pull my focus away from kicking in the guard’s dick and realize that one of the women from the Syta’s entourage is crouched next to me. And yep, she’s holding some kind of knife to my throat.
“Leave us,” she orders, her green eyes fixed on mine.
I realize quickly that it’s the seer-slash-lie detector chick. Ryn said she’d turn a blind eye to my half-truths. Despite the knife at my neck, a flare of hope goes up inside of me. Ryn said he would get me out of here, and she must be it. I release a relieved breath, grateful that he wouldn’t let this happen to me.
The guards that brought me here hesitate.
“I said leave,” the woman barks out again, and this time, the mountain sized males hurry to listen.
Heavy footfall moves away from me. I lie still, the blade nestled against my throat as a door closes and the room grows quiet. I pant from my escape efforts and from fighting the guards, and wait for the green-eyed woman to tell me that it’s time to run and get me out of here.
“Listen carefully, Ouphe Born,” she starts, and a sinking feeling in my chest warns me that maybe she isn’t the savior I was hoping for. “The Altern said we can’t let them mark you, which means we have to do to you what we did for him. I’ll mark you, but not with the Vow. It will be a dead marking. It will look and smell right, but nothing more. It will hurt, and we don’t have time to waste.”
At first I picture the mismatched eyes of the Avowed Altern and wonder why he’d be the one stepping in. But I quickly realize that she’s talking about Ryn. She presses the knife harder against my neck, and I can feel warmth spill around the blade.
“Here’s the thing, little one, you have to stay away from Lazza and his advisors at all costs. If they try the mark, they’ll know it’s not right, and you will have just exposed everyone who has one. Lazza doesn’t know that we can do this, and if you’re the one to reveal it to him, I’ll kill you. Do you get me?” she asks, the question more of a growl as she pulls the dagger from my throat.
I give her a frenzied nod yes.
“Roll over,” she commands, and she shoves my shoulders to hurry me into action before I can so much as blink and respond to the order.
I move the rest of the way to my stomach, and I feel the blade of the dagger she’s holding slice through the top of the shirt I’m wearing. I want to protest because this is the only article of clothing I possess, and it’d be cool if she didn’t shred it, but I worry she might get stabby, so I shut the fuck up. I feel her grip the back of my neck, and surprisingly there’s heat where her palm and fingers meet my skin.
I gasp, and then I’m suddenly not there anymore.
It hurts so much. Why does it hurt? I struggle to get away from the hands holding me down in my bed. My screams are accompanied by a rhythmic chanting, but the burning I feel everywhere overshadows it all. I writhe and beg for it to stop. I can just make out my mom and dad.
“Mommy, please, it hurts!” I wail and struggle harder to get away from the hands and the pain they bring with them.
“Shhhh, I know, My Heart, it’ll be over soon. Be strong, my girl. Be strong for mommy.”
I keen and plead for it to stop, but it doesn’t. The fire wants to eat me up whole, and no amount of screaming or begging will keep it from consuming me.
4
“Wake up,” a growly female voice demands.
My cheek lights up with a stinging sensation, and I can feel someone shaking me.
“Wake up!” the voice orders again, and this time I get a hand up before she can slap me another time.
“What the hell?” I groggily ask as I come to.
I catch a flicker of relief in the female lie detector’s green eyes before I look around and try to make sense of what’s going on. I’m still in the weird chapel-esque room. There’s an altar-like pulpit at the front of the room, and pews all lined up like they’re ready and waiting to worship and watch whatever Vows or other bullshit goes down in here. This is the only room— aside from the dungeons—that I’ve seen that isn’t capped by crystal walls and iron. Instead, the whole room is the cream stone I’m used to seeing at the Eyrie, with images of mythical creatures carved into the corners and ceiling. The non-fire torches make the lighting and feel of the room eerie, and I’m instantly not okay with having been unconscious in here.
What happened?
The last thing I can remember is this green-eyed chick threatening to kill me if I exposed their secret and then grabbing my neck. I reach back and rub at the spot where she had her hand.
“Did you do it?” I ask, not feeling anything different back there.
I scan the room again, but I don’t spot any mirrors or other reflective surfaces that I might use to see what’s going on back there.
“It is done,” she answers, but there’s something about the look on her face that gives me pause.
“What happened?” I query, self-consciousness and anxiety slamming through me as I study the haunted light in her eyes.
“What did they do to you?” she asks me almost on a whisper.
I’m confused for a beat by the question. “What did who do to me?” I demand, even more alarmed as she unsteadily moves away from me. “What are you talking about? What did who do to me?” I ask again when it seems like she’s about to make a break for it.
What the fuck could have happened that would have her so fucking freaked out?
“Remember what I told you.” She whirls on me in warning. The fear and trauma are suddenly gone from her eyes, and they’re once again hard and angry. “Stay away from Lazza and his followers. They’re the only ones powerful enough to know your mark is wrong, and they can’t know no matter what. It would mean the death of hundreds.”
With that, she stomps out of the room through a side door I’m just now noticing and leaves me a pile of what the fuck in the middle of the floor. I rub at the back of my neck again, weirded out that there’s something there and I still have no fucking clue what.