ANNE
It would have been easier if Mestyn had knocked me out. Or at least less embarrassing.
But I’d rather be embarrassed than terrified.
Mestyn was still too injured to do much, but he had an accomplice, and that accomplice clamped a hand down over my mouth before I could scream. It was late, but Remmen would come sprinting if he heard me.
So I gave him something to hear. I couldn’t see the man behind me.
All I had of him was how big he was, one arm clamped across my chest and a hand big enough to cover half my face.
I threw my weight against the arm and got nowhere.
I stamped where a boot should be and hit dirt.
I drove my elbow back into his gut as hard as I had in me, and he grunted, so at least something landed.
It didn’t help. He just hauled me up off my feet until my heels were kicking air.
Seven feet of minotaur. I’d have had better luck fighting the truck.
“Hurry up with that,” Mestyn said and waved us down the street where a beat-up truck was idling.
Something scratchy that smelled a bit like hay came down over my head and I couldn’t see anything else.
They threw me in the truck bed, and a heavy hand pinned me flat by the back of my neck.
I couldn’t see a thing. The sack let in nothing but old hay and dust, and every breath pulled some of it into my mouth.
The engine caught and we started moving.
I felt every rut come up through the flatbed, in my hip, my cheek, my shoulder, and with a knee in my back I couldn’t brace against any of it.
I tried to count the turns anyway, like that would do me any good tied up in a barn.
Left out of town. A long straight stretch.
Then the road went rough, nothing like the streets in town, and rattled my teeth.
I stopped needing to guess. There was only one place out past the good road. The farm.
The truck stopped and hands hauled me up and out by one arm like I weighed nothing, which to them I did.
My knees hit the ground when they dropped me.
Someone dragged me backward over the dirt by my wrists.
My shirt rucked up and the ground scraped the skin off my back, and I couldn’t get my feet under me to stop it.
Then they hauled my arms up over my head.
Rope went around both wrists, rough and fast, and cinched tight.
When they let go, my arms stayed up there, tied to something I couldn’t see.
A post, maybe. A ring in the wall. I pulled and it held and wrenched my shoulders at an angle they didn’t want to go.
Someone knelt on my shins and roped my ankles, winding it around and around and knotting it off, each loop tighter than the last, until my legs didn’t feel like mine anymore.
Tied up in the dark with a sack over my head and strange hands shoving me around like livestock, I heard myself make a sound I hated.
I couldn’t see any of it coming. A hand landed on my ankle and was gone. Rope bit where I didn’t expect it. My breath went short and fast against the inside of the sack.
“Get out of here,” Mestyn said to his accomplice.
Who was it? Hesk? It couldn’t be Rauf. At least I hoped not. I’d spent hours out on the farm, but the dynamic out there was too complex for me to divine in just a few visits, especially when they were determined to keep themselves hidden out here.
I heard hoofsteps fade away and Mestyn yanked the bag off of my head. I gasped in a deep, involuntary breath and was assaulted by the scents of the farm.
Manure, thick and close. Wet straw gone sour. Animal musk, and under it rotting silage, and the cold dirt smell of the floor against my cheek. I’d smelled all of it a hundred times out here, on my own two feet, my bag on my shoulder, a way home whenever I wanted one.
“There’s no use struggling.” Mestyn took a step forward, like he meant to crouch in front of me, but he winced and then leaned back against the wall. He was well enough to no longer need to stay at the clinic, but he wasn’t healed.
I tugged on the ropes anyway. I would have spit in his face, but I held myself back.
I might need to pull that out later. First, I had to see if he could be reasoned with.
I wasn’t afraid. I was pissed as all hell, but even with my hands tied above my head and Mestyn looking at me like he meant violence, I didn’t have it in me to be afraid.
It was foolishness. This was a violent man. My mate had just taken away his new toy, and he’d abducted me off the street.
But it had been a very long day, and I was too tired to do anything but stare at him and wait for his master plan to start making sense.
“What?” he asked, affronted. “You’re not going to tell me that I’m not going to get away with this.”
“It’s a small town, Mestyn. I think you already know that.”
It was just past midnight. All of New Knossos was asleep and would be for some time. Remmen woke with the sun, but we could go an entire day without seeing each other, especially after a night together.
Chelsea would notice I was gone, but not until nine. I was completely at Mestyn’s mercy until then.
Oh. There was some of that fear.
Mestyn made a show of cleaning his fingernails. “You see, your Mayor Remmen thinks he owns this place. He thinks he can tell us what to do, how to live, how to have our fun. And when he doesn’t like it, he kills our pets and smashes our face into the dirt.”
Now wasn’t the time to remind him that it had been Rauf who smashed his face in the dirt.
The tired was wearing off fast, and what came up under it wasn’t brave.
My heart was going hard, up in my throat and down in my wrists where the rope cut.
My hands had started to prickle and go cold where the rope choked off the blood.
And every time Mestyn said Remmen’s name my stomach dropped another inch toward that filthy floor.
I kept my expression blank and made him work for it.
“And you’re his little pet, aren’t you? His favorite counselor. Does he cry on your couch? Does he tell you that he was forced to kill to survive? It’s a lie, you know. He was just as vicious as the rest of us. He loved it. And he needs to be reminded that things can be taken away. He’s not god.”
Mestyn grabbed a length of rope and my eyes widened. I struggled against the ropes, but they didn’t budge.
Oh god, he was going to strangle me right here.
“Stop being dramatic.” Mestyn scowled. He shoved the rope in my mouth and tied it behind my head. “Sleep tight, lovely. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He walked out of the barn, back stiff, like he was forcing himself to stand tall.
He was still hurt. Could I use that, somehow?
I worked at it while I still could. The post behind me was solid and didn’t budge when I threw myself against it.
The rope had no give at all, and every time I twisted to find some it just bit deeper and rubbed my wrists raw.
I tried to walk my fingers up to the knot and couldn’t reach it.
My hands had gone from prickling to a dull ache to almost nothing, fat and dumb at the ends of my arms.
I let myself think about Remmen for exactly one second, asleep in his bed with the sun not up yet, no idea.
Then I put it away and got back to the rope.
Even if I did get loose, I wasn’t sure my legs would hold me, and I couldn’t have outrun a drunk toddler right then, let alone a yard full of gladiators.
But panic wasn’t going to pick a single knot, so I made myself stop sawing at it and breathe.
After that all I could do was wait. The barn creaked and settled around me.
Something small rustled in the straw. Somewhere past the wall an animal shifted and blew out a breath, and every sound had me bracing for Mestyn coming back.
The cold worked up out of the dirt floor into my back and my dead hands.
I started shivering and couldn’t stop. I lay there and waited on a morning I didn’t want to come.
At some point I passed out. Or time decided to speed up between one blink and the next. When I came to, the gag in my mouth was looser, as if shifting positions or being coated in my spit had slackened it. Gross, but good.
I struggled, forcing my tongue against it until the rope was past my teeth. I scraped my face against the wall, unable to use my arms, but trying to peel the damn thing down. As soon as it was free, I screamed.
My scream tore out into the dark and I had no clue what it would bring back.
For all I knew every bull on the farm was in on it and I’d just rung the dinner bell.
One of them had carried me in here and I still didn’t know which one.
Who else? I pictured the whole lot of them rolling off their bunks to come watch Mestyn have his fun, and my throat wanted to close.
But it was all I had. Nobody in town could hear me this far out, and I couldn’t get my own hands free.
So I sucked in another breath and screamed again, louder, and kept it up until my voice cracked.
For a second nothing came back but my own breathing. Then boots hit the yard at a run, heavy and fast and coming straight for the barn, and I braced for whichever of them I’d called down on myself.
Rauf marched into the room and froze when he saw me. He looked so angry for a second that I thought he was on Mestyn’s side. Especially when he snapped, “Shut your damned mouth.”
I did. And then I opened it again. I wasn’t taking his orders.
But Rauf was already kneeling by me and working at the ropes with a knife he’d pulled from his pocket.
I felt the knife sawing at the rope more than I saw it, quick little tugs I felt way up in my dead arms. I held still so he wouldn’t cut me by accident.
I still hadn’t figured Rauf out, but right then, down in the muck sawing me loose, he was the best thing I’d ever laid eyes on.
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying in front of him.
My whole body was shaking now, big and helpless, and I couldn’t stop it.
“It was Mestyn,” I forced out.
“No shit,” Rauf said. “Who else would it be? How’d he nab you?”
“He took me off the street in the middle of town. One of your guys was with him, but I don’t know who. He was behind me the whole time and they put a sack over my head.” The words came out fast, frantic, and I was worried we’d be caught.
“No one stopped him?” Rauf was incredulous.
“It was the middle of the night. No one was out.”
“What were you doing out in the middle of the night?” he challenged.
“Getting kidnapped, apparently. Are you going to help me, or blame the victim?” All the anger and vitriol I couldn’t spit at Mestyn was getting misdirected at Rauf. It wasn’t right, but I was in pain and exhausted and all my filters were gone.
The ropes went slack and my arms dropped. It was relief for half a moment followed by a wave of agony.
“Rub them,” Rauf instructed, working on my legs with the knife. “You need to get blood flowing back fast.”
I didn’t ask if he knew from experience. It was too clear that he did.
Once my legs were free, Rauf helped me to my feet and nearly dragged me out of the barn. “Come on, we need to get you back into town before this blows up in anyone’s face.”
The same truck that Mestyn had used to take me was sitting in the middle of the yard and Rauf climbed in.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to set the farm on fire in retribution for what Mestyn was trying to do to me. And I really didn’t want to get in the same vehicle that had been used to kidnap me only a few hours ago.
“We need to tell someone about this,” I insisted. “You can’t just kidnap someone off the street and get away with it!”
“Oh, do you want me to go inside and kill him?” I couldn’t tell if Rauf was joking or not. He didn’t get out of the truck.
Fuck it.
I climbed onto the passenger side of the bench and watched him start the engine. “I’m not saying murder, that seems a bit hasty. But if he did this to me, he might do it to someone else.”
“It’s not really Mestyn’s style,” Rauf countered.
“I beg to differ.” I held up my bruised wrists as proof.
Rauf sighed. “Listen, Mestyn got drunk last night and he’s sleeping it off. Let’s just get you out of here before things get worse.”
“He probably shouldn’t be drinking with the antibiotics he’s on.” The concern was a reflex.
And Rauf looked at me like I was crazy. “Do you really care about that?”
“Let’s go.”
Rauf threw the truck in gear and we lurched across the yard for the open gate.
We almost made it. We were maybe two truck-lengths short when a roar went up off to the side, loud enough I felt it through the glass, and the house door banged open.
Mestyn stumbled out first, listing hard, one hand clamped over his belly, drunk or hurting or both and no use to anybody.
Hesk came out behind him, and Hesk wasn’t hurt at all.
He saw us rolling for the gate, put his head down, and ran to cut us off before we could reach it.
Rauf cursed. “Can you drive this thing?” he asked me.
Uh…
“Probably?” I wasn’t confident.
“Then drive.” He jumped out of the seat and launched himself at Hesk.
I didn’t give myself time to doubt, scrambling over to take the controls and straining for the pedal that would take me to freedom.