Page 60 of Ties of Bargains

Val didn’t even seem to hesitate before she strolled down the winding path that zigzagged down the canyon’s face to reach the bottom, her shoulders straight, her back stiff, in that deadly posture she’d worn so often at first. Daisy clambered over the rocks with ease, but Harm picked his way down, falling behind until he was nearly at the end of the ten-foot tether.

Just as well. He appeared more the unwilling captive that way. He tried to add a few extra staggers for good measure, keeping his head down and his shoulders hunched.

At the canyon’s bottom, Val strode between the various shelters. Some of her fellow mercenaries stopped what they were doing to nod to her or offer a stilted wave. Those salutes turned to sneers when their gazes landed on him.

At one fire, a cluster of five mercenaries stood as Val neared, their faces breaking into smiles that seemed to hold more warmth than the others. Val’s comrades, perhaps?

Val halted long enough to nod at them. But then she kept walking, turning her face away as if she were too focused on her task to speak with them.

Harm dropped his gaze back to his feet instead of studying them. But he could feel their gazes pinned on his shoulder blades as he kept walking.

At the far end of the canyon, a throne made of random bits of wood, animal hides, and bones rested among the fallen boulders.

Diego lounged on the throne, his black hair slicked back, the streaks of silver at his temples even more prominent. His thin beard and mustache were well groomed while the leathers he wore over his clothes were well-oiled. A sword rested at his hip while daggers glinted at his belt and in the bandoleer across his chest.

At Val and Harm’s approach, a smile curved his mouth. He lifted a hand. “Valeria! You have returned at last! I see your charge is still in one piece.”

“Of course. I never lose a package.” Val halted before the throne, her hand on her hip near her dagger. “A package I’m told belongs to you.”

Harm halted a few feet behind her, the picture of cowed submission, or so he hoped.

“Yes, quite convenient, isn’t it.” Diego’s gaze swung from Val to Harm.

Val tugged on the cord, and Harm staggered as if she’d forced him with far more roughness than she had. When she shoved him forward, he made a show of resistance, digging in his heels and squirming in her grip. She halted him at the foot of the throne, as if presenting him to Diego. “Do you accept the delivery of this human?”

Diego’s mouth twisted with even more of a smirk, his dark eyes glittering. “Yes, I do.”

Harm had been so used to the squeezing pressure of the bargain that he hadn’t realized it was there until it was gone, lifting from his heart.

Finally. They’d traveled across seven courts to hear those words. Harm could stop journeying away from his family and at last escape back to them.

If he didn’t die in the next few minutes.

Harm clawed at the end of the rope, ripping it off as if he hadn’t been free the night before, and threw it away from him. “I don’t belong to you.”

“Yes, you do. That was the bargain. Your life is now in my hands.” Diego rose to his feet with all the grace of a hunting lion. He prowled down the rocks from his throne and stalked around Harm, taking him in with a hungry look that was almost reminiscent of QueenTitania’s, though with a different undertone. “You did well, Valeria, in bringing him to me. I knew I could count on you for this task.”

Harm lifted his chin, glaring first at Diego, then at Val, trying to sound hurt and betrayed instead of like he was reciting his lines. “After all we’ve been through, you’re just going to give me to him?”

“That is my job.” Val divested herself of the end of the rope and coiled it with swift movements, her tone and expression so cold it sent a chill through Harm even though he knew better. “You could have saved me a lot of trouble, Diego, if you’d just claimed his bargain from the beginning rather than let me travel across half the Fae Realm with a useless human in tow.”

“I do apologize for the length of your journey. I had intended to bargain with Mab for him but was delayed in doing so. Arranging for more weapons and recalling everyone not on a mission took time, even with traveling through the rifts.” Diego continued to stalk around Harm as if he was prey and Diego the wolf. “It’s just as well. His blood will be all the more potent for the length of time he was traveling with you. I see he’s already shed some along the way.”

Was it Harm’s imagination, or did Diego’s gaze linger on the bloodstains the way one might study a favorite painting?

“Then you intend to use him for blood rites. I wondered, once I realized that you must have arranged all this.” Val tapped her fingers on the hilt of her dagger, all cool indifference and idle curiosity.

“What do you mean? What’s going on?” Harm swungwide eyes from her to Diego, as if realizing the true depth of his peril for the first time. “Blood rites?”

Diego ignored his question, as if he were nothing but a yappy puppy. Instead, the Wild Hunt leader gripped Harm’s shoulder, kicked the back of his knees, and shoved him to his knees.

As Harm struck the rocky ground, pain flared up his legs. He couldn’t help his grunt of pain, little as he wanted to give Diego the satisfaction. He struggled against Diego’s unyielding grip on his shoulder even as he remained hunched on the ground to shield his hands and arm from view.

Diego grabbed a hunk of Harm’s hair and yanked his head back, pain tearing across Harm’s scalp.

Harm ceased struggling, but he inched his right hand up his left sleeve and closed his hand over the knobby hilt of his iron knife.

Diego turned Harm’s head this way and that by his grip on his hair, as if inspecting his neck for the best place to slice. “Others here in the Realm of Monsters have begun experimenting with such things again, and if our Wild Hunt is to survive, we must keep up with the times. This human’s blood will do just that.”

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