Page 67 of Anathema

“I’ve never seen a mortal’s cunt before, have you?” Dark-Hair asked over his shoulder toward the other men.

“No. Can’t be any different than our women, eh?”

“Oh, I think you’re wrong.” The guard grabbed a stick from the ground and hooked it on the hem of my dress. “I heard their cunts have teeth. Bite your cock clean off.” He lifted my skirt to my thigh, sparing me a wicked grin, then lifted it higher. “Does your cunt have teeth, pretty?”

My scream arrived as a muffled hum in my chest, unable to break past my clenched jaw.

All eyes remained rapt on my naked flesh beneath, but before he could expose my privates, the stick was somehow knocked out of his hands, though none of the other three were close enough to have touched it.

“Enough. Perhaps send her back through. No one has to know.” It was the man who hadn’t said a word up until then who’d spoken that time.

“You ever interrupt me again, I’ll take your head clean off,” Dark-Hair warned, snarling back at him. “She isn’t going back through. The vale won’t allow it.”

“Then, offer her a mercy kill.”

“I say we take her to Bonesguard and give her to the poor bastards due to be hanged.” A wicked grin stretched across the redhead’s lips. “They won’t care about diseases, and we’ll get a nice little show. From afar, of course.”

Dark-Hair smirked and twisted his hand again, giving them a view of my backside. “I think that’s a brilliant idea. She looks like a feisty one. Might put up a good fight.”

Eyes straining, I peered out the corner for a single glimpse of the archway, still too far out of view.

He twisted me back around and dropped me just far and fast enough that my dress flew up, giving them a flash of my undergarments. “Ah, shame. Thought she’d be naked beneath.”

The fourth guard turned silent again. With as much as I could muster, I focused my attention on him, my eyes pleading, begging him to speak up and let me go.

Warm fluids leaked down my leg, and tears filled my eyes.

“She fucking pissed herself!” One of them sneered, but I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered to me was Aleysia.

My sister.

Who was probably dead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ZEVANDER

Aknock sounded at the door to Zevander’s office, before Ravezio peered in. “You have company,” he said. The fellow Letalisz stepped inside. The leather vest he wore, sans a tunic beneath, revealed his sigil that was inked in gold down his shoulder and bicep–the coiled body of a golden basilisk.

“Who is it?”

“A royal guard from the looks of it. Found him pacing outside the gates. Lucky for that ward, or I suspect the fyredrakes would’ve made a tasty meal of him.”

Zevander frowned and pushed to his feet, following after Ravezio to the grand foyer, where a familiar face glanced around.

The guard at Hagsmist who he’d cursed with the scorpion. There was only one reason he’d have sought him out. “Someone crossed. A mortal, My Lord.” Fear and urgency clung to his shaky voice.

“A mortal,” Zevander echoed. “When?”

“This eve.”

“Taken to the king’s dungeons, I presume?”

“Bonesguard.”

“Bonesguard?” Zevander frowned at that. Set apart from the main castle, Bonesguard Keep stood on the southern grounds of Costelwick, an impressive tower that hadn’t been used for defense in centuries. Not since the Brumanox Solstice siege, during the coldest winter ever recorded in Aethyria. The Keep had remained empty of royalty since then, its dungeons mostly used to house the most violent of criminals, who weren’t held for very long. Zevander knew firsthand of those cold, dank cells–he and his father had been guests there before Zevander had been sent off to work the mines in Solassia.

“Yes. Sometimes, female prisoners are … taken there.” Brow furrowed, the guard looked away. “I have nothing to do with that. But they … the other guards … they find it entertaining to watch the lady prisoners with the more … violent criminals.”

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