Page 11 of Beguiled
I chased his lips, but he angled farther out of reach, giving me full view of his profile and the awful bruises on his cheek.
I released an exasperated sigh. “You are a stubborn man.”
“Thank you, my lady.”
“’Twas not a compliment.” If he refused to dull the pain, then so be it. I’d let him suffer through my ministrations. I picked up the rag and pressed it to the burn mark.
He hissed through his teeth before he clamped his mouth closed and shut his eyes.
I lightened the pressure. “Daft is a better word—a word you cannot misconstrue for a compliment.”
He didn’t respond this time, likely in too much pain to think of a retort. As I resumed washing the wounds, I attempted to be careful, but with each touch, he stiffened until his body and limbs were as rigid as the cave walls. Before suturing the first cut in his arm, I offered the medicine again, but he pressed his lips into a hard, straight line.
“Daft,” I whispered again. But even as I slipped the needle through his flesh, my admiration for him swelled. He might be foolish, but he exuded a strength unlike any man I’d ever known.
Maybe I’d been amiss to think I could sway him into revealing the truth about his being on the island. What if he didn’t tell me anything by the week’s end? And what would I do if Irontooth insisted on killing him?
I pushed away the thought. I had seven days to earn Mikkel’s trust. Surely I could accomplish the feat if I set my mind to it.
Chapter
5
Mikkel
Fire raced upand down my arms as if someone were roasting me alive. I jerked to free myself, but I was trapped in the flames. I lurched again, and this time cold shackles dug into my flesh, waking me from one nightmare and plunging me into another as the memories of my capture came back to me.
“How do you fare, Your Highness?” a voice whispered through the thick darkness.
“Gregor.” I fought off the pain in order to think clearly. “You’re delusional to call me by so great a title.”
“Fowler’s gone, Your Highness. It’s just us.”
I relaxed against the cave wall, pressing against a cloak someone had draped around my body. Although my arms and chest burned from my wounds, the rest of my body was cold from the dampness of the cave, and I was grateful for the covering.
My mind scrambled to remember everything that had happened. But my last memory was of the veiled woman stitching my wounds. “How long have I been unconscious?”
“Only a couple of hours.”
“What happened to Fowler?”
“They took him up above.”
“Is he free?”
“No, he’s been made a slave.”
I’d expected as much, since enslaving prisoners was the practice over in Blade’s camp. What I hadn’t counted on was raising their suspicions to the point that they would consider killing me.
At least I had a week to figure out how to keep myself and Gregor alive. What other tale could I spin? I’d already used the most plausible one and had no other ideas. Perhaps I needed to put my energy into devising an escape instead.
I tested my manacles, twisting and turning them.
“I’ve already tried to free myself,” Gregor said. “I can’t do it without a knife.”
“The one in your sole?”
“I took it out during the gauntlet and couldn’t get it back into my boot in time.”
