“Well,” Scythe said quietly. “If they weren’t already here, they certainly are now.”

Screams sounded, faint and few but heart stalling all the same. “We need to help them.”

“Too many,” Scythe said, scenting the air and watching the smoke. “And you’re without shoes and clothing.”

“That doesn’t…”

Hooves pounded from within the woods to his left, and Scythe immediately pulled me close before we could greet the enemy racing toward us.

We warped back to the towers. To the very dining hall we’d left mere hours ago. There was no longer blood on the floor and table. The breakfast dishes had been cleared and replaced with a lunchtime feast.

Scythe tensed as the king of Vordane turned from the window and eyed us both with a growing smirk. “How lovely of you to finally join us.”

THIRTY-THREE

Scythe

“What are you doing here?”

“Rude,” Dade said, scowling with a twitch of his arrogant nose.

Opal, at his side and dressed in a flowing gown of gold and crimson, made to speak when footsteps neared the doors behind us.

I pulled Aster aside before they were flung wide open.

Rorn entered with an embarrassing number of wolves trailing him. They picked posts along the walls while Theenon stared at me as though he were seeing a ghost. With a slight shake of his head, the steward bowed toward his king and closed the doors upon taking his leave.

“It would seem your prisoner has returned,” Dade said, humor thickening his tone.

“Indeed,” Rorn said. “Let us now get to the reason for this visit, king, so that you can take this rogue mutt of yours back to his hovel and away from my wife before I’m left with no choice but to kill him.”

Dade said nothing, but Opal bit her lips as though tempted to laugh.

Looking at Aster, his gaze filled with icy promise, Rorn clipped, “For my patience has come to an unshakable end.”

My hackles rose, and I stepped forward.

Aster gripped my hand, halting me. “There’s been another attack,” she said, then released me to tighten her robe.

I’d have protested if it weren’t for the fact I wanted her to make sure the asshole never saw her body again.

He kept her waiting, and Dade raised a brow as his amused gaze flitted between all of us. Done with selecting a handful of nuts from the platter on the table, Rorn asked impassively, “Where?”

“The town of Curmin,” I supplied roughly.

Rorn stilled.

He turned slowly, a knowing gleam in his eyes as he dragged them over me with his jaw working too hard as he chewed. He looked at one of his wolves. “Inform Jyll that there’s been another.”

“Another?” Aster queried as though this were news to her.