Chapter 4
Zyla
Never trust a handsome stranger. Especially if you’re in a Bride Hunt.”
— ZYLA BASHKIRIA, AUTHOR OF A brIDE’S GUIDE TO HUNTING THE HUNTER
“Put me down!” I scream, driving my head back into my captor’s face. “Where is she? Where did you take her?”
“You fuckin’… bitch.” The bastard shoves me forward, one hand in the back of my hair as he sends me hurtling down the stone steps in front of me. “You’re not goin’ anywhere. And your friend is now the least of your concerns. Fuck. My nose. You broke my nose.”
A torch flickers, casting light across the tunnel—and the cells that line it.
I stagger to a halt, then spin around, but the tip of a sword slides under my chin and I freeze.
“Could be worse,” I growl. “You kidnapped my friend and I want her back. Your nose is going to be the least of your problems soon.”
Blood drips from my captor’s nose as he glares at me along the line of steel.
His friend, a weedy little man with a long face and droopy mouth shoves past him, grabbing hold of the manacles they’d fastened to my wrists, hauling me out of the way.
There’s something rodent-like about his appearance, and he seems the sort to latch onto more powerful males in order to elevate his status.
“Easy, now. Easy. Rhykus wants her alive,” he reminds his broken-nosed friend.
Rhykus.
The fleshmaster, from what I’ve managed to glean.
I barely caught a glimpse of the manor when we arrived.
Only enough to note it was well guarded by what seems like dozens of armed warriors.
Groups of eight were working together, another team of hunters going out whilst ours bought us in.
A well-oiled operation, and clearly one that was planned before these men arrived here in the Labyrinth.
And inside…
The rooms were lush and lavish, an oddity for such a place. Red velvet curtains covered the windows and the walls dripped gilt. There seemed to be mirrors on every wall.
But that wasn’t the shocking part.
There were women everywhere; some gowned in virginal white gauze so fine you could see the crest of their nipples through it, some collared and naked as they knelt with platters to serve the menfolk, and some who wore nothing more than mesh masks clamped over their lower face and jaws as if to muzzle them.
Something about them gave me pause, and it took me long moments to realize why.
Their eyes were as ancient as the black gaping void between stars.
Not with age, but as though they’d all lived a thousand years in the course of a single one.
My heart had dropped.
Because only twelve brides were sacrificed to this year’s hunt, and before me stood dozens.
“If you make it to the end of the Labyrinth unclaimed, then you are free,” Mariam had whispered, her voice bearing the scars of some untold horror. “But not all brides are claimed. And not all of them escape. And those that don’t… must find some means to survive in the Labyrinth between hunts.”
Kari trembled as they hauled us before a powerful man wearing a plain black linen shirt, with rings that glittered on all his fingers.
That was the last time I saw her.
My captors shove me inside the cell. I grapple against the man I’ve nicknamed the Mouse as he undoes my manacles, but Broken Nose hauls me off him, slamming the door behind me. Throwing myself at the bars, I try to escape before they can lock it but the key turns with an ominous click.
Curse it.
“You filthy savage.” Broken Nose spits again, pinching his wounded appendage. Rage ignites in his eyes and he snatches at me through the bars. “I swear to the Laughin’ God, that I will break all your fuckin’ fingers before we’re done here.”
“You can try,” I tell him, rubbing at the red marks the manacles have left on my wrists. “In fact, why don’t you try now? Come on in and give it your best attempt.”
Broken Nose pulls a metal-plated glove from his belt, slipping his fingers inside it, then reaches for the keys.
“Wait!” The Mouse squeals.
“I’m gonna teach this bitch a lesson—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” comes a chiding voice from the darkness behind me, the low timbre of a stranger’s tone sending an unexpected shiver down my spine. “Rhykus wouldn’t want you to damage the merchandise, would he?”
Broken Nose freezes.
I spin around, eyes searching the dark for any sign of the newcomer who spoke.
There’s only a nest of shadows in the cell beside me, an enormous shape tucked up on the far bench wearing what seems to be a black cloak.
A hood shields his head, and only the curve of his mouth and the stubbled cut of his jaw are visible.
He tosses a coin in the air and catches it again nonchalantly.
I don’t know why, but a sudden prickle of unease trails talons down my spine. The air feels like the moment before lightning strikes.
The men outside the cell aren’t the danger here. Every instinct I’ve ever owned screams it.
And only thin bars separate me from the true predator.
“This one’s not merchandise,” spits the prick I bloodied, pinching his broken nose and glaring at me.
“Rhykus isn’t going to put a bitch like this on the auction block.
” His smile spreads wide, teeth dark with blood as his gaze slides down over my body so slowly I can almost feel his oily touch.
“No. This one’s meat. Once we serve up Rhykus’s pound of flesh, this one’s his.
And then mine. And then every fucking guard in this place, until she can barely gasp for mercy. ”
The stranger stills and even though it’s me who was threatened, I swear the shadows press closer around him.
“There are rules to the game,” he growls slowly, capturing the coin in his hand and vanishing it. He uncurls from his nest of darkness slowly, straightening to a staggering height. “The women are not to be harmed.”
My feet take a step back before I can stop them.
Leather creaks behind me as if the two guards feel that exuding menace too, and shift uneasily.
“Who’s gonna stop us?” demands Broken Nose. “Kasaros? Rhykus paid him his tithe. He won’t bother us.”
Each step brings the stranger closer to the torchlight, the warmth of its touch cutting harsh lines across his chiseled face, the bands of shadow from the bars rippling over him. It feels like a tiger prowls toward me, powerful and dangerous.
He looks like he could guard a castle drawbridge all by himself armed only with a broadsword.
A warrior marked by the kiss of battle, scars paint across his knuckles, his upper lip, and there’s a hint of claw marks sunk deep into the bare swathe of throat I can see.
There’s a bronze torc around his throat, etched with symbols in molten gold.
“Who’s going to stop you?” he repeats in a voice soft with the promise of violence. “Me.”
I search for a weakness and find none.
Dusty leather breeches clad thick thighs, and his boots cup the curve of his calves.
Suddenly, all those jokes Aylin used to make about a man’s thighs make sense.
He towers over me by at least a foot, his shoulders broad enough to strain the canvas of his shirt. Pure, brute strength exudes from him.
Those hands… If he got within reach of me, I’d never escape him.
Would you want to?
I squelch that little whisper. I’ve never met a man I wanted to bed. Never met one I trusted enough to allow into my blankets, though men have tried. A sharp knife often took care of that.
But there’s something inexplicable about him. Ancient, brutal, and somehow regal. A fallen king perhaps. I don’t know why the mere sight of him impacts me so much.
I don’t like it.
His hands curl around the bars, even as he stares through them at my captors with dangerous, amber eyes. “You lay one finger on her and I’ll feed them to you.”
“You ain’t hurtin’ us this time, you bastard,” sneers my old friend, Broken Nose, though his laughter sounds strained. “Not behind these.” He raps on the bars with his knuckles. “And not with that on.”
The stranger lifts his right hand, touching the ancient torc at his throat. “This?”
He smiles and somehow the shadows behind him seem to lengthen, to distort, stretching across the floor.
Undoing the button at his throat unleashes the cloak and it slithers to the floor around his boots, leaving him wearing a simple, sleeveless charcoal tunic that’s open at the throat.
“Do you feel safe now that I’m wearing this, my powers bound? ”
The Mouse swallows visibly. “Come on,” he whispers, tugging on Broken Nose’s sleeve. “We’re going to miss all the fun of the auction.”
Broken Nose stares back at the stranger, perhaps emboldened by the bars and the collar. But everything in me tenses as I see the stranger’s thighs flexing, movement starting to—
“Boo,” he suddenly snarls, lunging forward and grabbing through the bars.
Broken Nose and the Mouse scramble back, both slamming into the wall behind them with loud screams.
Metal shrieks as the warlord sets all of his strength into his task, shifting the bars apart, inch by slow inch, his biceps gilded and straining in the torchlight…
Until he lets them go with a rough laugh.
My heart races, blood pulsing through my veins as I stare at those bent bars.
Iron won’t stop him if he wants to take a tilt at me.
“It would be too easy,” the regal stranger mocks. “Go. Go run to your lord. Tell him I’m locked away, broken, chained, a prisoner of his.” His laughter is so deep it shivers over my skin. “Tell him how safe you feel with me down here, behind these bars.”
The Mouse pisses himself. Broken Nose draws his knife, but the way he’s shaking shows he couldn’t stab a barn door with it right now.
The laughter cuts off. The stranger turns those dangerous eyes upon Broken Nose, almost daring him to come closer with that knife, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous whisper. “Run.”
The pair of them flee up the stairs with a clatter.