Chapter 34 Thyra
Chapter Thirty-Four
Thyra
Idon’t have time to think.
My left arm shoots upward, my hand closing around my attacker’s wrist, a desperate defensive move as I try to halt the oncoming blade.
I have a split second to assess my situation.
I must have loosened the blanket during my sleep, and by pulling it off my face and neck, my attacker opened my comforting cocoon even further.
Both of my arms are free. My legs are only lightly wrapped.
The chain attached to my right hand is draped across my left shoulder and my neck, not trapped under my left arm.
My attacker stands beside the bed, dressed in black, but his face is uncovered. I register a short beard and pale eyes, and dull black hair.
He’s a lowborn.
It takes me a heartbeat to register all of this, to scream at myself to fight for my life, a moment during which his arm strains against mine, the blade’s tip suspended only an inch above my neck.
Desperately, I jab my right hand upward, my fingers clawed, aiming for his left eye, ready to gouge like hell.
He’s quick, knocking my oncoming hand aside with his free hand before ramming that fist down hard against my throat.
The punch makes me choke and gasp for breath.
I nearly lose hold of his blade arm.
The dagger descends further, its tip now scraping my skin, and it’s all I can do to focus all of my strength into keeping it at bay.
He uses my distraction, following up the throat punch by wrapping his left hand around the side of my throat, squeezing hard, his thumb against my larynx.
Now he’s leaning fully forward over me, his dagger scraping one side of my neck, while his other hand throttles me.
It’s only been seconds. One quick move after another.
His weapon’s tip stings my neck, and I anticipate he’ll draw back in a second, release his downward pressure so suddenly that my left arm will spring forward and I won’t be able to stop the next strike.
I haven’t screamed. I’ve reserved all of my energy, focusing on keeping him away from me, but I haven’t come close to using every defense available to me, including the chain.
With a swift left-to-right movement, I swing it over the back of his neck. He’s so intent on squeezing the life out of me that I suppose he doesn’t realize the danger. Or how exposed his own neck is.
With another swift movement, I loop the chain back around his throat.
Now, he jolts, but I’m already yanking the chain tight. As fast as I can, I swing my legs to the right, knocking the blanket aside, drawing on all the strength in my stomach muscles, kicking as hard as I can into his upper chest, not only ramming him backward but planting my feet and pushing.
His eyes fly wide as the chain pulls tight.
One end is attached to the bed. The other end is connected to my wrist. The middle is wrapped around his neck.
I slap my left hand behind my right wrist, focusing on supporting it so I don’t break my own hand under the pressure. At the same time, both of my feet push, push, push against his shoulders, harder and harder, forcing him away from the bed, tightening and tightening the chain.
Now I scream.
I cry with effort and with horror, because his eyes are bulging, he’s dropped his dagger, and he’s scrabbling at the chain with both hands, trying to loosen it, trying to swing himself free of it, trying to breathe, trying to live.
My scream peels out around me, strained and painful, my throat injured and my voice damaged, but that doesn’t matter to me right now.
I can’t die tonight.
His body is twitching, the chain is cutting through his flesh, and the pressure on my wrist is unbearable, but even in the haze of blood and rage and fear, I register the fact that the circlet is pulling most strongly against the inside of my wrist where the image of the blade’s cross-guard lies.
It may as well be metal armor, protecting my skin.
The ruby circlet can’t cut my arm.
My earlier attempts to get the blade out would have failed.
But that, too, isn’t important to me right now.
Another scream leaves my lips. This one sobbing and sickening.
My attacker’s death isn’t quick. He continues to struggle, even as his eyes fill with blood and the flesh across his neck splits.
Life clings, and it doesn’t flee easily. Death is horrifying and gruesome, and there’s nothing heroic about it.
I need it to be over. I’ve never killed anyone.
I’ve never ended a fae’s life.
Tears pour down my cheeks. I nearly loosen the chain, almost pull my legs back. I’m certain I’ve hurt him enough that I could knock him to the ground and tie him up somehow. Maybe. If the chain lets me move far enough—
Across the room, the door bursts open.
Antony stands in the opening, naked from the waist up except for the leather strap over his heart.
His chest heaves, growls, leaving his lips like he’s some fucking ferocious beast.
He’s covered in blood, dripping with gore. So much blood that I can smell it across the distance between us.
I catch sight of a long, jagged bone gripped in his hand before he launches himself forward and rams the bone through my attacker’s exposed side.
The weapon strikes all the way through the man’s torso, plunging out the other side.
The life finally leaves the man’s eyes, and his arms flop to his sides, his head lolling.
My feet are still planted on his chest.
The chain is still taut around his neck.
My breaths scream in and out of my damaged throat. Choking, sobbing, furious breaths.
Antony swings toward me, but before he can utter another sound, I roar at him. “You are never leaving my sight again!”
It hurts to speak, let alone shout, and the end of my cry has none of the force I want it to have. It’s nothing more than a damn whisper-shout.
And still, my legs strain, and I can’t seem to release the tension in my arms to let the body drop.
Antony becomes very still, the bloodied strands of his hair dripping crimson liquid down his face, his broad, fully muscled chest continuing to rise and fall so rapidly that it looks like he ran extremely fast to reach me.
His savage gaze takes me in, following my form from my eyes to my neck, where my blood must be pooling, to my tense torso, my bare legs, still extended and knees only slightly bent, and to my feet still rammed against my attacker’s shoulders, the pressure keeping the man aloft.
Without taking his eyes off me, Antony circles behind the man, reaches for my right hand, brushes his fingers across it, and in the next second, the circlet releases from my wrist.
My would-be killer’s body drops out of sight, although the chain presses down across my chest now that his body weight pulls it in that direction. At the same time, my legs straighten out because of the outward pressure I was placing on them.
Antony immediately catches them, scooping one arm around them and swiveling them back onto the bed before he prowls up onto it, climbing over me like a beast to straddle me, his knees to either side of my waist.
“Where,” he asks, his voice a low, guttural growl like a feral animal, “are you hurt?”
Droplets of blood fall from his hair onto my chest, the warm liquid somehow shocking me more than the attack I just endured.
I try to breathe as I point to my neck. To what must be cuts and trickling blood, although I’m not sure if the accompanying bruises will be visible yet.
His gaze flickers to the location where I point, but it’s the briefest release from his scorching intensity.
“Where else?”
I assess other parts of my body, but my attacker focused mostly on my neck.
My voice is so damaged, and I’ve pushed it too far already, so it’s only with difficulty that I whisper, “Only here.”
To my shock, Antony gives me a wild grin, and it sends shivers down my spine.
In a swift movement, he lowers his bloodied head to my neck, burying his face against my throat.
His bared teeth scrape against my skin.
I gasp at the sting of pain before his tongue travels across my wounds, licking at me, a strangely soothing sensation that contrasts sharply with the amount of blood he’s smearing all over me.
With every nudge of his head against my chin, every press of his rough tongue against my throat, blood splatters from his body to mine.
Warmth pools against my chest where he presses against me, his hard muscles rubbing against my breasts, sending a shot of startling heat to my toes.
“There.” He pulls back, that wild grin still plastered on his face. “Now you need to bathe.”
Somehow, even my palms are slick with crimson liquid where my hands closed around his forearms.
“Too cold,” I whisper, recalling the water temperature as I try to make sense of the increasingly incoherent thoughts whirling through my mind.
It isn’t desire. I wish it were.
I’ve experienced shock before. It’s debilitating and unforgiving, and soon I’ll be trembling.
“Not this time,” he whispers, and I’m not really sure how to interpret his soft declaration before he lowers himself back to me.
His big chest presses against mine, but instead of rubbing against me, his arms sweep behind my back, and he scoops me up off the bed, keeping me plastered to his body as he pulls my legs around his hips and cups one hand around the back of my head.
He cradles me in a firm but painless hold, carrying me swiftly toward the bathing room.
I try not to look down at the floor where the assassin lies, but Antony has to step over the man’s legs.
I catch a glimpse of the dagger the assassin tried to strike me with, the dark wooden hilt startlingly similar to that of the weapon that killed my father.
How did I not foresee this attack tonight?
I’m certain I can’t count on blade visions to help me, but why didn’t my oracle power warn me?
I don’t have answers, and the shock my body’s going into makes rational thought nearly impossible.
When we reach the bathing room moments later, only the softest glow of starlight shines through a small opening in the ceiling, also seemingly glass-covered like the ceiling in the main room.
The darkness in here is numbing, but it doesn’t stop my shivers as I press my head to Antony’s neck.
Tremors I can’t control are now beating through my body, and there’s nothing I can do about them.
He could hurt me. Badly. And I wouldn’t be able to stop him.
I’m completely at his whim.