Empire’s Curse (Drakkon #1)

Chapter 13

Daiyu groaned softly, her chin and elbow aching. Her eyes slowly fluttered open, and she was nearly blinded by the blaring sun. She inhaled sharply and looked around herself wildly. Where she expected to see the silhouettes of her four-poster bed or the familiar furniture of her room, she was instead met with hills, trees, and a cluster of men on horses surrounding her. Her body jostled forward, and she could barely sit up on the floor of the uncovered wagon she was on. Her hands were bound tightly with rope and bits of hay covered her night robes.

It took her a few minutes to realize the position she was in. Had she been … kidnapped? Sold to a group of mercenaries? A band of thieves? Bandits? She couldn’t tell, but by their gruff outfits and crude, chipped blades, they seemed like the latter.

“Hey! Look who’s awake,” one of the men closest to her wagon said with a loud laugh. He had a long scar running across his cheeks and nose, splitting his face in half and giving him an eerie expression.

Daiyu flinched as he flashed his yellowed teeth and blackened gums at her. “His Majesty’s beautiful whore is awake!”

The other men turned their attention to her and Daiyu was suddenly in the spotlight of their lustful leers and sneers. Her heart sped in pace and all the hairs on her body stood straight. She brought her bare feet closer to her body, curling herself into a defensive ball.

“I can’t believe this pretty little thing caused you so much trouble, Bao,” the scarred man said to one of the riders, who glared at her from his position a few feet away from the wagon. His hands were bound with gauze and he had a wad of bandages on his neck.

“Bugger off,” the man grumbled.

Daiyu instantly recognized the man’s voice from last night, and she gasped. “You’re the man who attacked me yesterday!”

“Not yesterday.” The scarred man continued to grin at her, and she found herself scooting farther back in the wagon, a cold sweat forming over her body. “It’s been three days. You’ve been out cold thanks to the potion that bastard gave you.” He jerked his chin in Bao’s direction, and the man turned away, sniffing. “We were afraid you wouldn’t wake up, and then this whole ordeal would have been for nothing.”

“The ordeal of kidnapping me?” Daiyu tried to hide the tremble in her voice as she met the man’s amused smirk. “Why would you steal me, of all people? I’m not important to anyone!”

The man tipped his head back and laughed loudly, and it boomed across the valley they were going through. Daiyu shivered, her gaze skating to the mountains in the distance and the woods on the horizon—how far had they been traveling? And where were they intending on taking her?

“You’re precious to His Majesty,” the man sneered, the mocking tilt in his voice coming off harsh. He touched the scar on his face and it somehow appeared angrier, redder, and uglier. But it must have been the light playing tricks on her eyes, or the twist of his lips that gave that impression. “Drakkon Muyang doesn’t have many weaknesses, and so of course we had to take the one woman who seemed to matter to him.”

Daiyu’s mouth dropped open and she couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. “You … You think I matter to him? He doesn’t even know me!”

“He chose you for a reason.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “We can use you in many ways to get to him, my lady.” He hissed out the last part and gave a short laugh as if he found himself amusing.

All the color drained from Daiyu’s face. These people actually thought they could anger Muyang by stealing her? It was the most absurd notion she had heard in weeks—besides the fact that Muyang had chosen her, for some apparent reason. How far would they go to get a reaction out of him? Would they torture her? Send bits and pieces of her body to him as presents? Wave her battered body on the battlefield as a warning? The more her mind traveled to morbid territory, the more lightheaded she became.

“Y-You’ve made a mistake,” she heard herself breathe. “A terrible, terrible mistake.”

“No, we haven’t.” One of the men chuckled, bringing his horse closer to the wagon so he could peer at her better. He tightened his hold on his reins and grinned. “I wonder what it’ll be like to be with the emperor’s whore?—”

“Are you out of your mind?” Daiyu’s eyes nearly bugged out from their sockets. “I’m not his … his whore! I’m to be his wife, not—not—” Tears stung the back of her eyes when laughter filled the space around her. Everywhere she turned, a man was grinning at her salaciously. Like they wanted to strip her down and parade her in their little group. “You fiends! This isn’t how you treat a woman?—”

Another round of laughter, this time heartier than the last.

If she thought being stuck in the palace with Drakkon Muyang was bad, this was infinitely worse. This type of captivity, with obscene men who would do unimaginable things to her, appeared to be a different version of cruelty than Muyang offered. At least in the palace, she had a chance to escape. But here? She glanced at the fields of grass, at the weapons the men had, and then at the beaten path toward the mountainside. There were far too many variables to consider with escaping.

Her stomach twisted into a tight knot and she resisted the urge to vomit right then and there, even as waves of nausea rolled over her. First, she had to find a way out of these constraints. Then she could worry about outrunning these men.

Maybe it was better this way, she reasoned. If she managed to escape and run to her family, without notifying the emperor, then wouldn’t that mean she successfully evaded him? He would assume she was either dead or still in the midst of the enemies, and he would eventually forget about her, and she could live her life without worry.

But even with the slim possibility of escaping from Muyang, the idea of fleeing from this group of bandits seemed more daunting and impossible. In the palace, she had Feiyu. But here there was no one to aid her.

Daiyu shimmied her wrists and cringed at the rawness of her skin and the rough material of the rope. “Is there any way you could remove these ropes from me?” she asked no one in particular. “There’s no reason to keep me bound?—”

“There’s plenty of reason,” Bao, the one who had snuck into her room and abducted her, snapped. He touched the bindings on his neck and glared at her darkly. “You’re not as timid as you look. The next thing we’ll know, you’ll try to slit our throats.”

The corner of the scarred man’s mouth lifted. “That’s a great point, Bao. We can’t have her trying to kill us like she almost did with you.”

Some of the men snorted, and Bao’s face purpled. “She didn’t manage to do anything.”

“Doesn’t look that way,” one of them said with another cackle.

Daiyu frowned and tried pulling one of her hands from the constraints. “Where are you taking me?”

“None of your concerns.” The scarred man pulled out a dagger from his belt and flipped it in the air before catching it quickly. It was only then that Daiyu noticed the dragon curled along the hilt and the ruby eyes.

She inhaled sharply. That was Muyang’s dagger; he had told her to keep it safe, and yet a common bandit was whirling it around his fingers like it was a toy. She could only imagine what the emperor would do to her if he found out she lost his prized possession.

But that shouldn’t have been her concern, she told herself. She had no plans of returning to Muyang, so he would never find out what happened here. He shouldn’t have given his dagger to her in the first place if it was so important to him. He should’ve just kept it to himself. He was the na?ve one for trusting her with it.

In fact, if it wasn’t for Muyang, she wouldn’t even be in this mess.

The scarred man pointed the end of the dagger at Daiyu, his eyes narrowing to slits. “This is his dagger, isn’t it?”

“No.” Daiyu leaned into the hay and stared at him levelly. She tried to keep a neutral expression, even as her heart nearly leaped from her chest. “A soldier gave me that dagger.”

“That’s not what your expression is saying.” He waved the dagger closer to her and she turned her face away. “Your face is telling me that this is really important to you.”

“Careful or you might fall off your horse,” she said as calmly as she could muster, but her voice rose and there was a shrill quality to it, betraying her nervousness.

The man laughed and tucked the blade back into his belt, which carried two swords—one of which was rusted along the edge. “Do you know how I got this scar on my face?”

Daiyu tried not to look at the bumpy, raised scar tissue slicing his face in half. He shouldn’t have even been alive after a wound like that.

“That bastard on the throne did this to me.” His voice came out rough and gravelly, and his knuckles turned white as he held his reins tighter.

A chilling wind ripped through her hair and she shivered against the sudden cold. “His Majesty?”

“Yes, that bastard.” He tapped the scar, his eyes glazing over and his mouth twitching into a scowl as if he was remembering something unpleasant. “I used to be a respectable soldier in the imperial army for Emperor Yan. And then, that bastard and his armies … destroyed everything I had worked for my entire life. That all of us worked for.” He waved to the group of men, most of whom were too focused on moving forward to look at them. “And now that he’s the emperor, we’re all enemies of the empire! Can you believe that? I’ve worked my whole life to protect this empire, and now … now I’m nothing.”

Daiyu eyed his worn weapons with renewed interest; that still didn’t explain why he was now dressed like a bandit, with rusted weapons and a crude demeanor. Unless he had turned to thievery since he wasn’t a soldier anymore. In that case, his intentions in the army were likely not honorable in the first place.

“My fiancé also served in the Emperor Yan’s imperial army,” she said slowly, hoping to draw some sympathy from him. “He died fighting against Drakkon Muyang, so I understand some of your frustrations.”

He turned to her sharply. “Oh? But look at you now—cozying up to the same man who killed your fiancé.”

“I don’t have a choice.” Daiyu pursed her lips together, sweat rolling down between her shoulder blades. “How can a lone woman defy the emperor after he’s chosen her to be his? Women are no more than tools and pretty dolls in a man’s world. I have no say in what I want. Capturing me will bring you nothing but?—”

“And you’ll be a tool for us too.” A sinister grin curved his lips and caused the scar on his face to lift in a way that made her flinch back. “A symbol to prove to the world that we’ve taken from the emperor. He might not care for you as a person, but he chose you as his woman, and we’ve stolen from him. The act of taking what belongs to him is what will anger him, pretty lady.”

“You … you monster!” She wanted to scurry farther into the wagon, to be away from him and his ominous cackles, but the manure-smelling hay created a barrier between her and the railings of the wagon. There was no talking sense into this man or garnering sympathy. They would use her however they saw fit.

The man sniggered, and soon, the rest of the men joined him, their guffaws booming across the fields of swaying grass.