Page 52 of Marked By the Dark Lord
“Fuck you,” I spat. “You’ll never have me.”
The bull-headed beast snorted, then kicked me in the head with a boot. Stars danced across my vision as I rolled away, my ears ringing from the blow.
On he came. I tried to focus, to call up a shield to stop him, but my brain wasn’t working right, wasn’t responding how I wanted it to.
“You’re mine now,” he snarled, hauling back and slamming his fist into my nose, breaking it.
As I tried to respond, he drove a punch deep into my stomach, causing me to convulse upward. “No more jokes.”
I clawed at his eyes, but he batted my hands aside, slapping some sort of restraint around my wrists, pinning them together.
“I’m going to enjoy this,” he growled as the Knight I’d dumped in the river clumped his way free of the soggy bank, fury evident in his gaze.
A fresh punch further broke my nose. I cried out, curling into a ball, ready for the next one to land.
There was a burst of light, which I initially attributed to another blow to my head. But no agony followed it. Instead, a wave of cold settled over me as the minotaurs shouted.
Thwack.I grimaced at the sound of flesh on flesh, then retched as something very largesnapped. The scream was cut off abruptly, followed by a deep snarl that ran through the very rocks on which I lay.
“She. Is.Mine,” Korr’ok snarled again, radiating a fury I’d never seen in him before.
“She’s a fugitive who broke the confines of her punishment,” the lead minotaur said, not backing down. “A punishmentyouwere supposed to be overseeing, Lord Rokk.”
“Are you challenging me, Divecto?” Korr’ok asked in cold tones.
“No,” Divecto replied, though it was clear much was implied by the exchange.
“I thought not,” came the angry reply. “I will bring her back. You have my word.”
A long silence followed before Divecto eventually grunted an understanding. Purple light came and then went, leaving me alone with Korr’ok.
“Get up,” he ordered without coming to see me.
My chest burned immediately, forcing me to comply. I stood, staring sullenly at the ground as blood dripped from my nose.
“Enough of that.” Korr’ok snapped his fingers at me, and my nose exploded in blinding pain, enough to force me to cry out.
Once it faded, however, so did the pain and swelling that was pushing my eyes closed.
“How?” I gasped, lifting my bound wrists so that I could tentatively touch the healed area.
“That’s not important,” Korr’ok growled, marching over to me until he was so close his size was almost oppressive. “What is important is that we go back. Peacefully.”
“I won’t go back,” I said quietly.
“You can, and you will. Then you will accept whatever punishment is meted out for breaking the rules. I cannot protect you from that.”
I frowned. That wasn’t all … “There’s something you aren’t telling me, isn’t there?”
Korr’ok sighed. “By breaking the rules, you have shown my claim on you to be … incomplete. Others will come now and challenge me.”
“Challenge you?” I asked, my stomach tightening with nerves. “For what?”
Twin eyes burned scarlet in the dark, making me their sole focus. “You.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mila
