Page 24 of Clash of Kingdoms
When Rancor couldn’t take Huntley’s stare anymore, he looked away.
Huntley reached across the table with the speed of a Golden Serpent and grabbed Rancor by the face, gripping his cheeks in his gloved hand and forcing his stare back where it should be. “Look. At. Me.”
Rancor’s terror rose to new levels. It was about to burst from his chest.
“That’s better.” Huntley returned to his relaxed position.
“Just get on with it and kill me?—”
“Be patient,” he said coldly. “Your time will come.”
Rancor glanced at the dagger between them once more, and as soon as he realized his eyes were where they shouldn’t be, he looked up again.
“You planned this moment for twenty years. That’s a long time. A long time to dig through the mountain to the other side. A long time to forge an alliance with an enemy that will likely kill us all. All because I granted you mercy?”
“You took our lands and our food?—”
“You mean I stopped allowing you to feast on my people like deer,” he snapped. “And I took back the land you took from us. Get your facts straight.”
“What do you want from me?—”
“I want to know what I did to deserve that torture. For you to take my only daughter, my fucking pride and joy, my entire reason for living.” His voice rose like he didn’t give a damn if anyone heard him in the camp. “To break me down to tears…to kill my spirit…to make me look my wife dead in the eye and tell her everything would be okay when I wanted to slit my own throat to make the pain stop. Tell me what I did to deserve that.”
Rancor dropped his gaze.
“Bitch, look at me.” He slammed his fist down on the table.
Rancor obeyed.
Huntley raised his fist to his chest. “I did nothing to deserve that—because no one deserves that.”
Rancor’s expression hadn’t changed, but inside his chest was a swirl of so many emotions that I couldn’t tell them apart. It was a cloud of dread and terror mixed with regret, but I suspected he didn’t regret taking Harlow…only getting caught.
“Answer me.”
“As I already said, you took our food source?—”
“Then leave,” he snapped. “Sail away to lands full of the blood you seek. But you decided to forge an alliance with an enemy so powerful they can destroy this world from the inside out. You would do that to your savior…for food?”
“I’ve been hungry for twenty years, Huntley?—”
Huntley grabbed the dagger off the table and stabbed the point into the wood. “Call me that again and see what happens.”
“My apologies…King Rolfe.”
“You were hungry for twenty years, so you decided to kill my daughter and let these demons destroy all of humankind. Now, if this plan is successful and we’re all dead, what will you eat then?”
Rancor kept his stare on Huntley, but it shifted slightly, as if to remain steady was too difficult.
“Am I missing something, or is this the stupidest plan ever?” he snapped. “I wouldn’t put it past you, because you were stupid enough to think you could take my daughter and get away with it.”
“I didn’t take her.” He turned to regard me. “He did. And yet, he stands here as your ally.”
“Because he saved her from whatever cruelty you had planned. I owe Aurelias my life for what he did for my daughter. Don’t change the subject?—”
“He betrayed me. What makes you think he won’t betray you?”
“Because I’m the hero trying to save my people and you’re the villain trying to destroy them. Whatever hope you had that this plan would succeed is now gone. So, tell me what I want to know, or I’ll slice you into pieces to get you talking.”