Expletives came out of my mouth on rapid fire as I tried to get out of the ties. I gave up after an hour of no progress, and my throat became sore from yelling.
I fell asleep in a hot sea of red.
* * *
I woke with a sore throat and the sun shining through the strands of the willow tree. Confusion muddled my mind while I sat up and tried to remember where I was. I looked over and noticed Weston watching me cautiously.
“What did you do to me?” I croaked.
He raised a brow. “Why do you think I did something to you?”
“Because you’re looking at me weird and I feel like I was run over by a carriage,” I said as I rubbed my sore wrists.
“I’m sorry to break it to you. But I didn’t do anything to you.”
“Then how come I can’t remember falling asleep last night?” I looked at my wrists and noticed a red line around them. “What the hell happened to me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Yea right. Me being a queen’s more believable than those words out of his mouth.
“I swear, Weston. If you did anything to me while I was sleeping . . . I’m going to kill you,” I growled.
“Trust me, Princess. Nothing happened,” he said.
“But—”
“Quit talking, let’s go.”
I didn’t reply.
Because I remembered.
But as long as he thought I didn’t, it never happened.
I was positive that was a rule.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
FOXES AND FEELINGS
Assassins.
You can’t live with them, and you can’t live without them.
Wait . . . I don’t think that’s a saying.
But it might as well have been because it was my life. My unfortunate situation that I didn’t think I could escape. I could leave, and most assuredly get myself into a lot of trouble, or play follow the leader around Alyria until we killed all of its people. Seemed like an easy decision to make, but fear, that nasty word ruled my life.
What would Grandmother do? She would have found a way to survive on her own. She wouldn’t have followed a corrupt assassin across the country.
And that was why I was scrubbing myself raw with the supposedly scent reducing soap. I was in a hurry so I didn’t get cold feet, which was just a euphemism for being scared out of my bloody mind, and I wasn’t going to acknowledge it. The knots in my stomach were only a reminder.
I slipped on clean clothes and headed out of the bathhouse. I’d hoped that what had happened in Latent City wouldn’t have Weston tying me to him. The act I’d performed in the woods must have cooled his blood a little because he let me walk around Ulmer City.
I wandered around until I found what I needed. Two men jousting. One had his shirt off on the ground, and I slipped over to it without them noticing. I grabbed the shirt, feeling like someone would start yelling thief. That’d be my luck. Nobody noticed my thievery, and I headed back to the inn.
I made it around the corner before I stopped in my tracks. I stared at the square wooden building in confusion before I hesitantly walked over to it. It looked like a lot of other buildings in these cities, but there was something that drew me to it.