Her body shook. Niall wouldn’t leave her be. “The knife. Where is the knife?”
He kept talking about the knife. He urged her. Told her they were coming. The words didn’t make sense.
“The tower. In the tower.” That was where she’d hidden the knife. The knife had been her father’s. The knife had killed her, blood tumbling from her body until nothingness had swallowed her up and then fire had brought her back. A phoenix. She’d been a phoenix, born anew.
They had given her wings.
“Where in the tower?” Niall growled. “I’m out of time. They’re coming back. I’ll have to find it myself. I am sorry for this, Your Highness. I wish you good luck in your journey.”
And she was back on the floor. Alone. Abandoned. A cramp hit her. She needed to touch herself, but she couldn’t make her damn arms work. A journey. She was taking a journey.
Into death.
Rough hands pulled her up, dragging her when her feet wouldn’t work. Tears streamed now. The world was a chaotic mess, and she couldn’t feel them. They were always there, somewhere in the back of her mind. She no longer cared that they were an expression of what was wrong with her. They had been the best part of her pathetic life, and she couldn’t feel them. Real or not, she wanted them here.
“Lachlan.” Someone was screaming his name. “Shim.”
She could smell the fire. So close now. Her head snapped back. Someone had slapped her. Blood. She tasted it even as another seizure hit. The agony was unimaginable, a body that cried out for solace and would get not an ounce.
Rope bit into her wrists, the only thing holding her up.
The guards laughed. Called her trash. Better off ashes. That was all she was to these men. Nothing. She meant nothing. Her dreams and madness meant less than nothing. They would lash her to a pole and burn her then sweep up her ashes. It would be as though she hadn’t lived.
Bronwyn Finn had died so long ago, and now this girl, this woman she’d become, would be gone, too. Ashes burned in the fire, sent to the wind. The ache in her gut…pussy. It was in her pussy. There was no way to deny it now. The ache in her pussy superseded all other pain. What a horrible way to die—all her sweetness dissolved and she was left with only a raw ache as the sum of all her years.
Lachlan. Shim. She called to them. She didn’t know if she cried out loud or if it was only in her head.
She felt the heat of the fire and prayed she would see them soon.
Chapter Nine
The phooka stopped at the edge of the f
orest, his mighty hooves kicking up dirt. Lach dismounted. Beyond the copse of trees, there was a small village. Bron’s village. They’d ridden all night, never letting up. Lach wasn’t close to tired, as though something as inconsequential as fatigue couldn’t touch him now.
But fear could.
Lach dismounted from the phooka’s enormous back, his boots thudding against the forest floor. Something was wrong. He could feel it. Or rather not feel it.
He didn’t have the same connection to Bron that his twin had, but since he’d been on this plane, he could feel her, like a whisper in the back of his head. Now the little noise was gone, as though someone had turned it off. It had happened just a few minutes before, but it scared the crap out of him as his vampire cousins would say.
“Something’s gone very wrong.” Shim stood beside him, one hand on their steed.
Their ridiculously obnoxious steed who talked way too much for a horse. “Aren’t you the smart one, Shim? The king is slaughtering Fae and you’re just now figuring out that there’s something wrong.”
Lach rolled his eyes. “Shut up, phoo.”
Shim ignored the phooka utterly. “A couple of minutes back, I lost touch with Bron.”
“Could she be sleeping?” Lach couldn’t imagine it. She had to be terrified. They had no idea what had happened after she’d been called a witch and lost consciousness. But the humming in the back of his head had been there, an oddly comfortable sensation. He felt bereft without it.
But he thought he would know if she had died.
She couldn’t die. Not when they were so close.
Shim shook his head. “She was sleeping earlier. I could feel it. You have to get used to the connection now that it’s strong enough for you to feel it. When she’s sleeping, the hum changes.”
Yes, Lach had heard it. “It’s like it’s muted and calm, and when she wakes up there’s a liveliness to the sound.”