Page 30 of Hold my Reins

“They attack your herd to take servants?” He raked his thumbnail over the fine chain as if seeking a break in the delicate loops of silver.

“Yes. Along with salted fish and gold.”

“Gold?” He turned the chain, and it dragged against the back of Lynck’s neck.

Lynck didn’t care. Now he was talking, he needed Rox to understand the hopelessness of the situation.

“In the rivers. As well as farming and fishing, we dived for gold that washed down from the mountains. As children, we sifted through the slit on the shore. The gold was then made into simple rings and used to buy leather and cloth and other things that we didn’t make.”

“I’m guessing he didn’t want to trade, only take.”

“Correct.”

“Bothvar Bothvarsson?” Rox looked up from the chain, one eyebrow raised. His eyeliner smudged around his eyes, and his dark blond hair mussed.

Lynck wanted to press him into the mattress and silence him with a kiss. He knew too much…he didn’t know enough.

It was too dangerous for his human to learn more, but what if there was something in the human world that could free him?

“He seems like the kind of dick who’d do something like that. No doubt his son has been cursed with the same name.” Rox rolled his eyes. “Family tradition and all.”

“Gideon Roxburgh the second?—”

Rox held up four fingers.

“The fourth?” Lynck laughed.

“Jokes on him since I’m breaking the chain.” His eyebrows drew together. “Unless he also named one of his other sons Gideon… Fuck, that’s a horrendous thought.”

“Why did he leave?”

“I wasn’t even two. He walked out and never came back, is what Mom said. She also said his family didn’t like her because she didn’t have the right parents—he came from a wealthy family, and she didn’t.”

“That’s even shittier.”

Rox shrugged. “Shitty people do shitty things.”

That was true even for monsters. “It was Bothvar.”

“The grandfather, father or son? Family dinners must be confusing.”

“The son was a child the last time I saw him. The father killed his own father to take over the family business.”

“Which is terrorizing kelpies, kidnapping, and stealing?”

“Not just kelpies. His family has controlled the trade route through the mountains for generations. It’s how they make their money.”

“Extortion? Making people pay to use the pass, or making them pay for protection?”

“All of that. It’s been a couple of generations since the last uprising, and that didn’t end well for anyone except theBothvarssons. They made the kelpies fight their own.” Lynck sighed. “We remember battle in songs as a warning not to revolt.”

“But you fought him when you were captured?”

“That is different. If we do not resist when he raids, the punishment is worse.”

“What? That is so messed up.”

“After the failed revolt, some villages went for the peaceful option, hoping to be forgiven for their part. They were all slaughtered. Bothvar wants to give his fighters practice. He wants to kill a few and take a few. The first act of a captured kelpie is to kill one of their own. I expected to die. I did not expect to be the one bridled and forced to kill.” Lynck swallowed, knowing he’d said too much.

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