Page 101 of The Rose in the Shadows

I frowned. “And what is that?”

His dark laughter echoed around me as his blue eyes scanned over me. It was like he could peer into my very soul. Like he knew me better than I would ever know myself.

“Don’t you know yet?” He snickered.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Iwoke with a start, shivering against the cold and groaning against the ache in my head. My swollen tongue felt too heavy for my mouth, dry and nearly choking me. As I came to slowly, I struggled against the binds that pinned my wrists sharply together behind my back. The world was too dark and the feeling of hay scratched against the exposed skin of my cheek. Gods, it stunk.

Or was that me?

Based on the bumping sensation of movement under me, I suspected I was in a moving carriage or cart of some kind.

“I thought you said she would sleep the whole way there!” A voice scoffed.

“She was supposed to,” answered a second, deeper voice.

“I’ll take care of her.”

A wave of starlight flooded over me as a blanket that had been covering me, hiding me, was ripped off and I met the eyes of one of my captors.

He was so dirty. That was the first thing I noticed about him. He was tall, broad, and absolutely covered in blood, muck, and dirt. Thatsmell.I fought the urge to wretch as it invaded my senses. That smell was definitely not me.

There was no kindness in his dark eyes as they scanned over me, lingering at the rise of my chest and swells of my hips. His tongue darted over his bottom lip.

All the bravery I had summoned when I had been naïve enough to think I could fight Camilla on my own terms dissipated as he hoisted himself into the cart and lunged towards me.

At that moment, it didn’t matter that I was a powerful Descendant. It didn’t matter that I had been trained to defend myself or that I could kill with only a brush of my will.

At that moment, I screamed.

“Shut her up!” hissed the voice from the front.

“Working on it,” the man snapped, removing a cloth from the pocket of his breeches and jamming it into my mouth.

I ripped my head back away from him, struggling as best as I could despite the lack of access to my hands. Still, his meaty paw wrapped against the back of my head as he continued shoving the gag into my mouth.

“Time to go back to sleep, princess.”

He smirked, an expression that I was positive would haunt my nightmares, and then with an unbelievable force, he pounded my head against the floor of the cart, and I slipped away once more.

The first thing I noticed when I woke was the overwhelming nausea that flooded me. Then I was suddenly aware of the stillness of my body. The cart was no longer moving. We’d arrived at wherever they were planning to bring me, which couldn’t be good. I swallowed down my fear.

My captor once again ripped the blanket off of me, but this time his hands wrapped around my ankles and pulled. A strangled cry escaped through my gag as he yanked me towards him. He wrapped his fingers around my waist and ripped me up until his sweaty body was flush against mine.

“Camilla should be here soon,” his accomplice said. That man was smaller and somewhat cleaner, but still appeared to lack any expression of kindness.

We were in a small clearing in an otherwise heavy section of forest. The second man perched against a tree, carving a small wooden block in his hand and peering at me under bushy red brows.

“Good,” the man holding onto me replied, grinning toothily. His breath against my cheek was rancid, and I turned my face away from him, ignoring the kink of protest in my neck. “That means I can have some fun with her first.”

My stomach dropped at the tenor of his words and the way his hand grabbed onto the flesh of my ass possessively.

“Do what you will, Henrick, just be quick about it. I’m going to go take a piss.”

I wasn’t necessarily counting on the second captor to help me, but as he left me alone with this man, Henrick, I couldn’t escape the shiver of terror that made its way down my spine. His hand trailed down my thigh, lingering on the blade that was sheathed there.

“Oh look,” he purred. “We missed one.”

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