Page 32 of The Incendiary

My eyes burned. An easy answer. “Yes.”

Torment contorted his devastatingly beautiful features. “And you’re sure that’s all you saw?”

“That’s all there was to see.” I retreated farther back from the cell bars. I didn’t want him to see me anymore. “She rode south, and she was gone.”

“Gone.” The word shuddered past his lips. A brutal and true reminder. The compliant queen that Simeon wanted me to be was gone. Dead. And her vulnerable, bleeding heart? A desiccated piece of flesh at the base of some cliff south of Brinnea.

“Is that useful enough for you, Commander Winterton?” I snapped, making a show of impatience to avoid this moment turning vulnerable. His attention snapped to me. Had he been dreaming about his queen? An idea?

Curious eyes searched what he could see of me, retreated in the dark. “For now.”

He turned and left me alone in my cell.

Elias returned the next day wearing tight black pants and a loose white shirt, his bronze hair less perfectly coiffed than it had been. Rather, it looked like it had been run through more than once, by his hands or someone else’s.

Gross.

I expected an arrogant, facetious greeting and was disappointed when I didn’t get any type at all. Our verbal sparring the day before had been my only excitement since being locked up.

“How does my cheek look today, Commander?” I gestured around my cell after he dismissed the guards. “No mirrors in here. Though I can’t imagine it looks rougher than you do.”

“You were right.” His voice was riddled with exhaustion, and he had pronounced bags under his eyes. Had he even slept? Panic stirred behind my ribs. “One of my spies was near the camp the night she died. Too far away to be noticed by Molochai and his Insidions but close enough to hear her screams as she was brutally tortured and killed. He saw a young woman with white-blond hair approach Molochai’s camp unaccompanied like a lamb to the slaughter.” He rubbed the back of his neck, his toned biceps straining against his sleeve. “She showed up at Molochai’s camp alone.”

The memory of that early winter chill on my naked skin crept up my spine. The rope around my wrists and the scraping of tree bark against my back. The Insidions gawking and leering.

“Tell me, Fera.” His dangerously low voice snapped me out of my grim memories. “Because I do not understand. Why the hell would she go there alone? By choice?”

Because I’d been heartbroken. Because I’d been stupid and naive enough to think I could make a bargain with Molochai and not end up tortured and dead.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” my umbra spoke into my mind. “You thought you were doing the right thing. Helping him. Helping all of them.”

“That memory wasn’t meant for you.”

“Then control the volume of your thoughts. You’re sending them right to me.”

“I can’t answer that for you, but I’m sure your queen had her reasons,” I spoke aloud.

Beneath the glow of the torches, Elias’s mouth looked red and swollen. His ocean-mist eyes were rimmed red and faintly bloodshot. Mixed in with the aromas of juniper and mint I now recognized as Elias was something zesty and floral. Peeking out above the collar of his white shirt were two dotted pink, nearly symmetrical half moons…

Were those bite marks? And this was who Simeon had picked for me to marry? A ridiculously beautiful man, yes. But tormented by thoughts of his lost betrothed one moment and content to stick himself inside someone else the next.

It seemed Gemma hadn’t been exaggerating when she told me Elias Winterton enjoyed a nice, proper fuck. Disgust caused my nose to scrunch.

“Why are you here asking me instead of confiding in whoever put that on your neck?” I scowled, shoulders tightening. “Seems like they’re the one you should be sharing your frustrations with, not the pesky little snake you’re holding captive.”

He touched his fingers to the indent on his neck and rolled his eyes.

“Fuck.” He shrugged his shirt forward to cover it up. The movement dropped his neckline and gave me unwanted visual access to a pair of flawlessly carved pectorals. At my disgust, he did a double take. “Oh, please. Everyone knows what happens in Brinnea when the boats return to port after months at sea.” I waited for him to elaborate. “What are you? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Willing young women show up in droves to offer themselves up to ravenous seafarers in the hopes of securing a husband.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I’m twenty. And do I seem particularly willing to you?”

Shock lifted his eyebrows. “You’re only twenty?”

“Yes. Why is that such a surprise?”

He rested his forearm against the cell bars above his head and leaned in, studying me with curiosity. It would have been easy to shrink under the chill of his stare. I didn’t.

“Who taught you to fight?” His unnervingly calm voice raised my hackles.