“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to. He made me kill her,” Mara whispered.
Lord Mansell slowly blinked, revealing his yellow eyes. Mara couldn’t look away. Just like Mother’s.
“Mara,” Lord Mansell whispered through jagged teeth.
“Yes.”
Lord Mansell’s arm moved beneath the covers. “Mara.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Mara,” Lord Mansell said a little louder.
“I can help you. The Beast can help you.”
Lord Mansell swiped at Mara’s face. “Mara,” he screamed.
Mara staggered backwards, losing his balance, and fell through the curtain onto his arse.
“Mara. Mara. Mara,” Lord Mansell screamed.
Mara rose and dabbed at the stinging scratches around his eyes and nose. There was blood on his fingers, his blood. Lord Mansell’s shadow writhed behind the curtain as it shouted his name. The pretty woman’s shadow was still and silent.
Mara took handfuls of the curtain and yanked it down. The disgusting Lord Mansell continued to scream. He was in worse shape than Mother, struggling to even sit up.
“There is nothing to be learnt from you,” Mara shouted and drove his blade into Lord Mansell’s stomach, chest, shoulder, neck, and face. Over and over again, long after Lord Mansell stopped moving.
Finally, he stepped back, leaving the blade driven into Lord Mansell’s blood-covered chest. He looked to the pretty woman, panting. She smiled at him. Why is she smiling? Why didn’t she run away?
A loud crack sent Mara to his knees, a sharp pain filling his head. A second crack put him on his side, and he rolled onto his back to face his attacker.
Arnolo lowered his club. “Peter? Thomas, look… remember Peter?”
Thomas came to stand next to Arnolo, said nothing, then stepped over Mara toward Lord Mansell’s bed.
The pretty woman knelt at Mara’s side and placed a hand on his cheek. “Pretty eyes.”
“Not just an urchin after all then, Peter.” Arnolo smiled. “Shame, I liked you.”
Mara blinked at the pretty woman as she held a familiar sour smell over his mouth and nose.
Mara’s mouth was dry. There was a sharp pain on the top of his head and a dull ache behind his eyes. Whatever he lay on was hard and uncomfortable. As he tried to shake away the darkness, something rustled on his face. He tried to reach for it, but his hand moved only a few inches before it stopped with the clink of a chain. The same with the other arm. Both stretched out sideways. Cold, he wiggled his hips, his cock flopping side to side. Why am I naked? His legs were also chained at the ankles and spread out diagonally.
“Hello?” He pulled hard at the chains, but the pain it caused stopped him trying for long.
He remembered everything until the Red Mist room. Then only little bits of what happened after. The curtain, the pretty woman. Arnolo. I saw Arnolo. He said he liked me. When he finds out I’m chained up, he’ll let me go.
Then the image of Lord Mansell’s lumpy body covered in blood stood out in his mind. The gold handle of his blade sticking from it. He saw me do it. He hit me. It was him who chained me up. Mara felt light-headed. A cold sweat spreading over his body as his breathing sped up.
Someone hummed in the distance, and the click-clack of footsteps on stone grew closer.
“Hello?”
“Ah, you are awake,” a man said in a hissing voice.
A key turned in a lock, and a gate squeaked. The footsteps walked alongside Mara and above his head. Light stung his eyes as whatever covered his head was whipped away.
The man that looked down at him was pale, had a bald head, and wore a brown jacket.