Page 152 of Of Bargains & Betrayal

And a half-breed bastard? Well, that was just an irrefutable fact, no matter how it was packaged.

My still chest ached, though.

I remembered those particular words being fired at me in the Keep’s throne room while Maksym tried to announce our betrothal as if it was anything of value.

I remembered other combinations of those words being seethed at me at earlier parts of my life too, ones I’d desperately fought to repress the memories of.

That, maybe, was why it had become a little hard to breathe.

“Look at me.” Jasper inserted himself into my field of vision. “Take what you need and get out of here, please. This will all be dealt with in every sense of the word. Trust me.”

Trust me.

Were we back on trusting terms so easily? A simple day and night together to fuck away all those years of hurt? My fickle heart could not find itself swayed so quickly.

An hour earlier, when we were warm and draped in bed? Maybe, foolishly. But not now. Not when I’d been reminded with such harshness that Grimmoria was not the place to set down my trust yet, despite how desperately I wanted to.

But to Jasper, I lied with a silent nod.

It didn’t ease the crease in his brow.

I found a leather hair tie in one of the few undisturbed drawers and made quick work of taming back my hair. If it were up to me, I would’ve slipped out of my room and hauled ass straight to the barracks, ready to unleash the torrent of nasty words building in my throat.

Of course, Jasper had to stop me when I was halfway to the door.

He grabbed my wrist and halted my course, and there was just a little too much confusion written on his face, laced with a bit of budding hurt.

None of it was his fault—not what had happened, or the cruel memories of a traumatized young woman coming up for a breath of air. Not why those events had happened either, even though I blamed him at the time. His absence wasn’t his fault, but my heart begged to differ.

“I have to go,” I said weakly.

Jasper dropped my hand and nodded. “Don’t let them get to you, Nor.”

The hallway was quiet as I hurried out into it, and every ounce of air came rushing out of my lungs when I was a few paces away from my door.

This place was going to kill me, one way or another.

I just hadn’t imagined it might happen that day.

Corridor after corridor flew by me as I rushed through the Keep, and I couldn’t shake the feeling it was unusually deserted. Eerily so.

A couple of sentries standing at their post tipped their heads at me when I hustled past them, and I earned a highly puzzled look from a maid tending to an overflowing vase in the atrium.

“Do you know where everyone is?” I stopped to ask her. “Did something happen?”

She winced and shook her head before she opened her mouth and pointed inside.

No tongue.

Not the first worker I’d encountered who’d been maimed in the same horrific way, and probably not the last.

I thanked her anyway and fought my way through one of the enormous doors leading out to the grounds. Thick, charcoal-gray clouds hung low in the sky, and a nasty bite flowed through the wind, but that didn’t stop me from breaking out into a jog.

Nearly halfway to the barracks, an ear-splitting rumble of thunder gave way to the first drops of a quickly building storm, and I sprinted the rest of the way.

When I’d reached the building that was starting to feel like a second home, I resembled a drowned rat more than a woman. Actually, maybe a cat was a better analogy, because I’d also developed the urge to claw a few eyes out in an alleyway scrap to settle the score with whoever had thought they could violate my things with no consequence.

That fiery urge was doused unceremoniously when I threw open the barracks door and found the hall room nearly empty.