Page 9 of A Court of Broken Promises

I didn’t spare Liam a glance when he came in, either. I only watched Kaia.

My chest burned when her broken voice sobbed out Liam’s name in her relief. She started hiccupping, gasping, heaving breaths through her tears.

She hugged her manacled hands against her stomach like she was in severe pain and needed to stop her insides from spilling out all over the floor. Her hysteria was so severe, her body crumbled and tilted towards me. I put both arms around her and pulled her tighter against me for support.

I let her go when she flinched under my touch, jerking away, even though I wanted to hold tight.

I watched Kaia in a red haze as she ran to Liam. She lifted her still-manacled hands over his head and clung to his neck, holding him as tight as possible. Her fingers dug into his hair as she shook even more in his arms.

The weight of her sorrow made her knees buckle. Liam banded his arms around her waist, holding her to him. He was the only thing keeping her up. She had kept her back straight and eyes forward all day, keeping her chin up through everything, yet broke because someone she trusted had come for her.

I watched as Liam buried his face in her hair, breathing her in, and offered her nonsensical reassurances and apologies, doing and saying anything he could to comfort her. He always did anything he could for her. I’d seen her and Liam embrace more times than I could count. He was always around her, touching her. This was nothing new. It always gutted me.

This was worse. I watched Kaia cling to Liam after she refused to even glance at me. She didn’t flinch away from his touch; she pulled him closer. She didn’t speak, but she let him cradle and comfort her while she broke apart completely.

Just because it was exactly what I’d expected— and precisely what I had asked for over the years— didn’t stop it from gutting me. I had my reasons for pushing her away, but the fact remained that I had broken her trust.

I only stopped watching Kaia when Liam’s eyes flashed to mine, capturing my hard stare. His nostrils flared, and his fiery eyes promised retribution.

Liam and I didn’t always get along. Liam is five years my junior, and until recently, we hadn’t had that much in common. He had been lazy and took full advantage of his lack of responsibility until he joined the Denalians, about a year ago at that point. That was hard to forgive while I worked my ass off.

Retribution was something Liam and I wholeheartedly agreed on. He’d have to stand behind me for his chance, though.

Whatever her father's crimes may or may not have been, Kaia was innocent. Yet for days, they’d beaten and tortured her— and from the look of her, with no healing. Or I hoped to the Goddess that that had been the result of no healing.

Anything fixed would have been severe and wouldn’t reflect in the mosaic of wounds I still witnessed, meaning she could have suffered much worse than I could tell. There was also the fear that something else had been done to her, something she couldn’t easily recover from, and that thought alone…

I would have come sooner if I had known they would go to these extremes. I was unsure what I could have done, but I would have tried. And probably gotten both of us killed. Well, all three of us killed. Liam insisted on coming, and there was no way he was pulling this off without me. I’m not being cocky, it’s true. I was the only one of the two of us capable of pulling that off.

Liam was just starting the Denalians at nineteen. Under Eryk’s tutelage, I advanced into the Denalians at sixteen. That was practically unheard of, except for me and the rest of my team, who all advanced at roughly the same age. We proved ourselves and passed even the most seasoned soldiers for promotion and I was the best.

I started working on a plan as soon as I left the council chambers. It took ten hours before we were ready to act. First, I had coordinated with the rest of my team. They would have needed to be ready with our supplies and secure our way out. Then I had come straight here.

During the council meeting, I had clenched my muscles, holding myself tight to the wall in order to stop myself from demanding Kaia's immediate release. I couldn’t rush to protect or remove her from their clutches. The king and council made an exception allowing me to be present, but they wouldn’t have tolerated my interruption. It would have made things worse.

It was hard to watch. They had taken away her dignity and modesty by making her wear a small scrap of rags. She was still bleeding from a cut on her head. Her naked legs were a disgusting canvas of bruises, scrapes, and dried blood. The bruise on her neck was so dark it almost covered her Air Marking. And that brand!

That fuckin’ brand.

She was clearly innocent, yet she would be forced to wear that mark of shame on her forever, and they didn't even make sure it was deserved. They had infused it with magic and permanently burned it onto her skin. For. No. Reason. I would brand that fucker everywhere, starting with the eye.

Every muscle was locked tight to hold back the guttural roar that had threatened to escape all day. I kept opening and closing my fists, clenching hard to calm the burning inferno of rage. It did nothing. I was too full of adrenaline, shaking and needing a release for the tension in my muscles and the raw fury that threatened to burn that place to the ground. My heart hammered, and my entire body ached to release that energy on the people responsible. It was unlike I had ever experienced before.

I didn’t know why her injuries affected me as intensely as they did. I’d been a Denalian for seven years and a soldier for longer. I had seen injuries far worse than hers and didn't feel the need to burn everything to the ground. I had watched comrades lose limbs, mourned them when they were captured and likely tortured with no means of escape, and held some while they took their last breaths. Yet, I didn't feel even a tiny portion of the intense agony I felt now. I didn’t know what was coming over me.

We had to move, or I was going to explode. We didn't have time for this. The distraction we set up would only work for so long. Ralph would be back, and we needed to be gone before that happened. If I had had more time, I could have devised a better plan, but with the time restraints, I did the best I could. And we would have to make do.

I pocketed the vial of murky ointment the Earth User had provided before crossing the room and looping her arms back over Liam's head. I grabbed her from his embrace, spinning her towards me instead, my adrenaline running high.

Shocked out of her hysteria, she fell into me, laying her small hands on my chest for balance. I grabbed her thin wrists to steady her. Her sobs quieted as she looked up at me with large, red-rimmed, pale gray eyes. I watched her final tears trail down her pale cheeks, tempted to reach up and wipe them away.

Anger riding me, I barked out, “I don’t have the damn time or patience to listen to you exclaim your undying love any longer.” This was directed at Liam, but Kaia still reacted, trying to pull away. I tightened my hold, adding my second hand. “Kaia, I know you’ve been through a lot, but you’ll have to hold it together a little longer, or we won’t have another opportunity to get out of here. I will get you to a safe place, then you can have all the time you need to grieve and process. But for now, we need to move.”

I was being an asshole. I knew Kaia deserved words of comfort, but she wouldn’t have welcomed that type of response from me, and I wasn’t willing to offer her more than I could give. I was in no mood to coddle anyone.

“Shit,” Liam said, glancing at his wristwatch, “we may only have a few more minutes.”

He made no comment about my brisk tone and ways, knowing it would do no good. This is just who I had become, and he’d learned to accept that.

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