Page 56 of White Horse Black Nights

He gives a laugh that rings bitterly. “Every other man can see you naked, but not me? Is that it?”

My lips part, but only silence emerges.That’swhat he’s thinking about right now?

His eyes soften as he runs his hand down the contour of my face. He gives a slight chuckle. “I’ll go up and give you some privacy. But there’s one other thing. How I said Myst was too recognizable to take with us? The same goes for your hair. It’ll identify you immediately.” He draws a long, thin knife from the bundle. “I’m sorry, I truly am, but we have to cut it off.”

A tightness knots in my chest. “My hair?”

“I know you prize it, but there’s no other way.”

He doesn’t understand. I don’t prize my hair, not in the slightest. In fact, my hair is the symbol of the binds that kept me imprisoned in the convent and my father’s house. I was forced to grow it out as long as possible to make me more appealing to a suitor.

Just one more way Adan is a stranger, and I am to him.

“Do it,” I say, tilting my head to give him the right angle. He seems surprised by my readiness, and he looks regretful as he saws through the thick tresses at my nape. I close my eyes, feeling the gentle tugs on my scalp like a thousand tiny fingers. Separating me from those shackles. Transforming me into something new, no longer the pretty girl able to fetch a high price.

When it’s done, and the rope of my severed hair is clasped in Adan’s fist, I run a tentative hand along the rough-cut edges that hang an inch above my shoulders. A part of me feels missing. Without my hair’s weight, my head feels too bobbly. And yet, at the same time, free.

Adan carefully stuffs my severed hair into the bundle. I suppose we can’t just leave it out loose in the boat.

One of his brothers shouts something down, and Adan squeezes my knee. “Stay down here. Don’t make a sound.”

Before he leaves, I snare his wrist as a shard of fear cuts into my chest. “Adan, everything’s going to be all right, isn’t it?”

He gives me a smile that, in the dark shadows, doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Everything is going to be exactly as it should, Sabine.”

And then he leaves me in the dark hull, uncomfortable on a pile of damp fish nets, crammed between reeking barrels, and all I can think is:This doesn’t feel like freedom.

Chapter18

Wolf

“Folke?” I shake him. “Folke?”

He slumps further as his eyes roll back in his head. Cursing, I catch him before he falls and hoist him onto my shoulder, groaning from his weight. His lame leg hasn’t stopped him from training to be one bulky motherfucker.

Struggling under his heft, while my eyes water from the smoke, I stagger toward the door. The flames reach a pocket of fuel somewhere in the rubble, and explode with a blast of heat that singes my face. Glowering, I fight past the heat and finally lurch through the door.

The moment I’m out of the building, I suck in a breath of fresh air like I’ve been underwater. My legs give out, and I drop to my knees, letting Folke’s unconscious body crumple onto the street.

Maybe not the gentlest approach, but hey, he’s lucky I saved his ass.

Townspeople rush forward to help us.

I jerk my head toward Folke. “My friend—help him.”

The burly leader shouts for two men to pull Folke’s body to safety.

I totter on weakened legs to a lamppost near the bridge, and lean my weight against it while I try to catch my breath. With Folke out of the worst danger, my thoughts double-back hard on Sabine.

She must have made it to the stable by now, so she’s with Myst. That’s good. That damn stubborn horse will keep her safe. Sabine knows better than to try to escape again, but still, every fragment of my body urges me to get to her. Rian might have sent me on this mission to protect her, but I’m no longer doing it for him. Every last shred of me is dedicated to nothing but her safety. I’d rush into ten burning buildings for her. I’d fight every godkissed warrior in Astagnon. I’d slaughter anyone, man or woman, who so much as laid a finger on her in malice.

But there’s one more thing to do first—I have to find out who the hell the godkissed spy is.

Against the warning cries of the townspeople, I stride back into the burning inn. Raising my arm to protect my face from the wall of heat, I duck away from the worst of the smoke and pick my way over debris to the place where the spy fell.

I stop abruptly.

His body is gone. Only a streak of blood marks where he fell. Bloodstained bootprints form a line back toward the kitchen.

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