Page 29 of An Oath and a Promise

“You are,” I said eventually, dragging my lips from Mathias’ with reluctance. So much reluctance that I leaned back in and gave him another quick kiss because fuck it, he was mine. “I’d ask for an extra half hour before this all plays out between us somi cieloand I can finish what we were doing, but I don’t suppose you’d agree.”

“Sure we would,” offered José, winking at me. He stood only a few yards away with Filiberto and two of the other men: the rest of the group save for the one who had been killed in the fall. Two dogs with slobbering jowls and heaving chests waited obediently at their feet, their canine faces twisted in near-feral grimaces. “Ifwe can watch. Maybe join in when it gets good?”

I glanced at Mat with curiosity, and he snorted.

“Nyet.”

“He’s very shy,” I explained to them. “Maybe you could all turn your backs and take a few steps away while I get him warmed up? A mile or two should do it.”

“Or you-”

“Or,” hissed Filiberto, clearly not as invested in the idea as the older man, “you two can drop to your fucking knees and start listing reasons why we shouldn’t break every bone in your bodies.”

“I thought you were going somewhere else with the knees thing.” José looked disappointed. “Are you sure we don’t have time for a bit of fun first?”

“We sure don’t. Because we’ve spent the better part of a day in this Blessed forest, and we still have to get them back to a town to find new transport. You really want to delay us any further, José?” The man’s voice was hitched in a livid snarl, his lips peeled back from his teeth. I guessed we had been more than a little bothersome to their plan of collecting the bounty on me, but I also didn’t give a shit, so there was that.

“Breaking bones isn’t going to make us move any faster,” Mathias pointed out with disdain, and I nodded in wholehearted agreement.

“You know whatwouldmake us haul ass out of these woods? Letting us go.”

Filiberto began to angrily march towards us, clearly ready to haul one or both of us over those massive shoulders of his, and as much as I was keen to feel if his muscles were as mouth-wateringly juicy as they looked, I figured he wasn’t going to be particularly nice about the manhandling.

So, as he approached, I backed up. One step, two, until my heels were resting on the very edge of the cliff. Rather than protesting, Mathias had moved with me; precise, unquestioning, and with a derisive sneer in the direction of the other men.

“For every step you take forward, we take one back,” I called, and that fucking stopped the mercenary in his tracks. “You’ll note that we don’t have a whole lot to spare.”

“This isn’t a damn ballad,” Filiberto snapped. “There’s no heroism or miraculous survival to be had here, boy – you go over that edge, youdie.”

We would. It was the unarguable truth.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Mathias said, arguing anyway because he washimand even impending death wouldn’t change such fundamental principles. “But are you keen to find out?”

“Oh, but it’s going to be awfully difficult to collect the reward money when they don’t even have our corpses as proof,” I mused to him, although my voice was pitched loud enough to include the rest of them in the macabre conversation. “And then that would make this little jaunt of theirs entirelyworthless.”

“Wait,” José said, his brows drawing low in horror as he finally caught onto our threat and the implications for their purse strings. “Don’t. I’m sure we can…come to some sort of arrangement?”

“They won’t do it,” scoffed Filiberto. “Why the fuck would they choose death for each other?”

“He’s rather fond of drama,” Mat said, jerking his chin at me. “If you take us to Welzes, he’s dead anyway, and I don’t see a future without him in it…so why shouldn’t we inconvenience you assholes on the way out?”

I grinned. The mercenaries bristled.

“You’re going to toss us the key to these,” I ordered, shaking the wrist that bound me to Mathias and letting the links of the chain rattle. “Then you’re going to-”

“Call your bluff, little princeling,” Filiberto growled, even as his men hissed out pleas for him not to be so hasty in risking their gold. Damn it, if he’d been the one who’d died in the wagon accident, we might have had a chance. “Here’smydeal. You both get your skinny, privileged asses over here, take the beatings we give you without a word of complaint…and if you apologise nicely enough for the trouble you’ve caused us, I might consider giving you food and water between here and Máros.”

“Skinny?” I demanded, indignant, not having heard anything he said after that. “Nat, he’s even crueller with his adjectives than you are.”

Mathias cocked his head. “So to confirm,” he said unnecessarily loudly, “you plan to hurt us, starve us, drag us back to the capital, and then sell us to a man who intends to kill one or both of us?”

“Sí,” said Filiberto. His lips were twisted with spite.

“And nothing we threaten or offer could possibly change your minds?” Mat was still almost yelling out the words, and I didn’t know why.

“No.”

The other mercenaries shook their heads in support, Filiberto’s confidence seeming to have given them back their own. And then movement in the tree line behind them caught my eye.

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