Page 12 of The Shadowbound King

Ah, there was the snake.

Gaze locked with hers, I cupped and squeezed her breasts, feeling for another knife. She glared, her chin high and her stare unwavering. At the edge of my vision, the shadows retreated farther into the trees.

A breeze stirred the air, making the leaves shift and sigh.

For a moment, confusion replaced my anger. The Edelfen was stagnant. For two hundred years, its trees had stood frozen. Nothing moved in the forest. Nothing grew.

Only died. Walto Lornlark had seen to that.

The wind stopped. The leaves settled.

An anomaly. Nothing more.

Mirella watched me, a slight frown between her brows. Her expression had softened. Now, she looked as she had at the Covenant. Guileless. Innocent. The kind of enemy that could slip past defenses and ruin a kingdom.

“Yes,” I said. “I want to hurt you.”

The softness fled her eyes. She tried to pull away, but I caught her chin.

“You may be a liar, my lady, but I am not. So let me be clear.” I ran a light thumb over her jaw, tracing the bruise the blacksmith had given her. “I want to hurt you a great deal.”

Chapter

Four

MIRELLA

We walked for hours.

With every step, my body screamed at me to stop. My boots rubbed against my heels, forming stinging blisters. My chemise stuck to my sweaty back. More sweat dampened my temples and gathered at my nape. The few bites of bread I’d shoved into my face as I tended Ingaret were long gone, and now my stomach gnawed at my spine. My jaw throbbed from Gerren’s fist. The shadow tether bit into my wrist.

But I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t give the elf the satisfaction. And I had little doubt he’d simply drag me to my feet and force me into a faster pace. He’d shown zero regard for my well-being so far.

Although, that wasn’t quite true. He’d frowned when he examined the bruise on my jaw. And for a brief moment when I told him Gerren was responsible, the elf had looked almost…furious.

I shook my head to clear the image from my mind. I couldn’t allow myself to believe he felt any sympathy toward me. He’ddemonstrated that when he shoved his hand under my skirts and touched meeverywhere.

After you tried to kill him, a little voice reminded me.

My stomach clenched, the memory of the elf’s bloodied abdomen filling my head. He’d kept his purple eyes locked with mine as he gathered his intestines and pushed them back inside. His flesh hadwriggled, sealing itself in under a minute.

When he grabbed my braid, I’d prepared to fight for my life—and lose. What Ihadn’tprepared for was his glittering, furious eyes boring into mine as he touched every part of me, including places no one had ever ventured. A hot, twisting humiliation had spun through me as his long fingers pressed between my thighs, finding the slit in my drawers before skimming and slightly parting the seam of my sex. The sensation had flared higher when he pushed the thin fabric into the furrow of my buttocks, his face so close to mine I could see the faint lines radiating from the corners of his eyes.

But the slight imperfections didn’t age him. His skin was too smooth, his body too lean and muscled for that. At the same time, something old and potent hovered around him. It dwelled in his eyes, which burned with alien intelligence. No one looking into his eyes would ever mistake him for something other than a creature of Ishulum.

He was otherworldly. Deadly. And, as he’d said, I’d been stupid to stab him.

But he hadn’t killed me. He hadn’t even really harmed me, even if he’d looked ready to pounce in the moments before I drew my knife.

He’d looked different, too. Distant. And for a few seconds, his purple irises had appeared almost…black.

Acawsplit the air, jerking me from my memories. On either side of the path, shadows hovered between the trunks of the twisted, blackened trees. The air was still and heavy, a thickblanket of dread hanging over every skeletal branch and pile of dead leaves. Silence reigned, broken only by the crunch of the elf’s boots and my rapid, shallow breaths.

Anothercawrang out, and then a crow fluttered across the path in front of the elf before settling on a tree branch. I held my breath as it folded its wings, a rattling sound emanating from its chest.

The elf ignored it. He continued forward, his long, black hair swinging against his back. He hadn’t looked at me once since he said he wanted to hurt me. But he hadn’t followed through on his threat. Clearly, he wanted me alive.

But for what?

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