Page 28 of Wicked Enemy
The guy behind me pushed the sword higher up underneath my chin, forcing me to tilt my head back.
White leveled a commanding stare on me. “If you lie to me again, I will take it out on your flesh. Understood?”
“Yes,” I forced out.
“Good. My sources tell me that this Levi Arden rules the south side of Malgrave and that the healer is his. They also tell me that Arden rules with an iron fist, which means that he would never let just anyone use his healer. So, let’s try this again. What’s your relationship to Levi Arden?”
“It’s…” I didn’t even know how to categorize it myself, so how the hell was I supposed to explain it to this maniac? In the end, the best I could come up with was, “Complicated.”
A slow smile spread across his lips. Then he raked his gaze up and down my body in a way that made my skin crawl. “You’re fucking him, aren’t you?”
I refused to be embarrassed, so I just retorted, “Not anymore.”
“But you have?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” He slid another gaze over my curves. “Well, looks like I still got some leverage then.”
The men behind me chuckled. I wanted to punch their teeth down their fucking throats, but I forced myself to just remain sitting there. The blood on my forearm was starting to dry at the edges of the wound now.
Outside the windows, bright sunlight filled the lush green landscape and birds chirped merrily. And as I sat there on my knees with a sword at my throat and a fucking worldwalker as my captor, I couldn’t help but feel as if nature itself was mocking me with its annoying cheerfulness.
Metal clinked as White tossed the handcuffs to one of his men. “Lock her to the bed for now. I’ve gotta make another trip to Malgrave.”
“Yes, master,” replied the guy who caught the manacles. “May I ask what you’re going to do?”
“I’m going to leave a note.”
Confusion marred my brows, but I said nothing as I was hauled to the bed and thrown down on it. The injured man moved my hands up to the wooden bars that ran the length of the headboard, and then the guy with the handcuffs snapped them shut around my wrists, trapping my hands above my head.
From across the floor, White watched me with scheming eyes. “If Arden wants his precious fuck buddy back alive, he’s gonna have to trade his healer for her.”
Fear exploded through my chest like poison.
Levi was never going to agree to that trade. Even before I had betrayed him, he would never have traded Gemma, the only healer in the entire city, for someone like me. And now, after I hurt him worse than anyone had done since Callan Blackwell faked his death, there was not a chance in a million years that he would ever come for me. In fact, I was pretty sure he would even raise a toast in White’s honor if he did kill me.
Letting my head drop back down against the lumpy mattress, I stared up at the dark wooden ceiling while a heavy numbness spread through my limbs.
White was going to kill me unless Levi made the trade. And Levi would never agree to it. Which meant that no matter what I did, I was going to die here in this cabin sometime in the next few days.
Chapter13
Abang echoed throughout my throne room as I slammed the doors shut behind me hard enough to rattle the chains in the ceiling. Exhaustion and rage and frustration swirled around me like storm clouds. Slapping my palms together, I summoned a sheet of metal and hurled it straight into the wall.
Another loud crash reverberated through the air.
“FUCK!” I screamed.
I knew that I should have kept my cool, because exploding like this made me look weak and out of control, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. Everything was slipping through my fingers. In the span of a week, I had lost almost everything I had spent years building up from scratch. My power. My Court. My elite dark mages. My spy in the constables’ headquarters. And now all of it was going up in flames.
Within seconds of my embarrassing meltdown, Shinji was hurrying across the floor. His dark eyes quickly swept across the empty room behind me, noting the absence of our people. But thankfully, he didn’t comment on it or ask what had happened. Because if he had, I was pretty sure that I would have beaten him within an inch of his life, even though none of this was remotely his fault.
Instead, he stopped a few strides away and clasped his hands behind his back before saying, “What would you like me to do, sir?”
Weariness crashed over me. It was so heavy that it threatened to pull me under and never let me resurface again. Using every ounce of willpower I had, I dragged in a deep breath and forced the exhaustion aside as I replied, “I don’t know. They were caught before they even made it out of the building. And now Ben’s been captured too.”
“Shit.”