Page 27 of The Frost Touched Queen

“If I so much as feel your teeth, then you’re as good as dead. Fucking you alive or dead makes no difference to me. Understood?”

I narrow my eyes at him, and spit in his direction.

“She’s a firecracker, this one.” Eger chuckles.

“Soon she’ll be a dead firecracker.” Dima scowls, pure hatred dripping from him. “Keep still, bitch, or I will kill you!”

“Do it! I’d rather be dead than suffer looking at your gods-awful faces a second longer!” I shout.

I don’t even see him do it, but when Dima’s boot hits my mouth, blood splatters onto the snow beside me. My teeth feel like they are about to fall out, my head hurting with unimaginable pain.

He crouches down, his rotten breath fanning my face and corrupting my skin with his stench. Having this upside-down view of him only makes him more monstrous in my eyes.

For the longest time, all he does is look at me, but when a sinister smile begins to crest his lips, I become almost paralyzed with fear.

“No, princess. I see what you’re doing. Trying to force my hand to give you a quick death. But you’re out of luck. I’m going to keep you alive. I want you to feel every second of what Eger and I are about to do to you. I’m going to make sure that the last hour you spend on this earth will be utter hell.”

My nostrils flare in disgust and loathing even as the tears fall down my cheeks. I read the threat in his eyes and know he means every word. They’re both going to ruin me, and once they have taken the last bit of dignity from me, they’ll kill me.

I either meet my makers as a coward, or as the future queen I was always meant to be.

I chose the latter.

“Do what you will. You’re a dead man either way.”

Dima pulls at my hair, my scalp burning from his grip.

“By the time we are done with you, you’ll be begging for mercy,” he spits out, his saliva hitting right in the face, making me want to gag.

But I never let him or his friend, Eger, see how truly terrified I am. I may be a woman, the weaker sex, as my father so loves to point out, but I have northern blood to cool my nerves and offer me the strength to overcome any storm.

“The only thing you’ll hear from me is me cursing your very existence.”

“Dima,” Eger interjects on a grunt, starting to lose his patience. “Are we gonna fuck her or continue to waste precious time chitchatting? Her father’s men must be searching for her royal head as we speak. No way she could have walked out here on her own without anyone knowing about it. I say we play with her for a bit and then leave her for the wolves to find.”

When Eger’s member starts to dig into my tender flesh, vomit begins to rise up my throat.

“You’re right. Hold her still, and get that goddamn mouth open for me,” Dima replies with a snarl.

But just as Eger widens my jaw open with all his might, a dagger flies through the air and pierces him right between his eyes, his limp body crashing over me.

“THE FUCK?! Dima hollers, turning around, but as he does it, the edge of a sword slices him through, from head to navel.

Blood and guts cover my face as I roll my eyes back and see the avenging dark angel who had vowed to protect me with his life.

“Levi,” I breathe out, tears of happiness replacing the fearful ones I had been crying.

Levi jumps off his horse, and quickly kicks Eger off me, pulling me up and into his embrace. He cups my face in his hands and starts kissing my cheeks, my temples, uncaring of the blood on my skin.

“I thought I had lost you,” he chokes out, staring down at me, looking just as devastatingly torn as I am.

Levi shouldn’t be kissing me like this.

If my father found out he took such liberties with me, he’d be as dead as the two men lying on the ground.

But I can’t find it in me to even think about that right now. All I can manage to concentrate on is how my Levi, my protector, looks like he’s on the brink of madness. All because of me. All because he thought I’d be lost to him forever.

I don’t even question what I do next.

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