She shivered at the chill that ran through her at his distance, both physical and emotional, and it even made her eyes burn with tears that fell down her face quickly and into the water below. It took a few moments, but before she knew it, there were guards lined on both sides of the river, waiting for a command.
“The former voice of the Council has taken oaths against us. Oaths of loyalty to the Ironborn.” Coren announced, with despair in his voice, and anger. “She’s chosen her side, with the other animals. And she’s been given a message by me to take back to the so-called Ironborn Prince.” He looked up at the Forestborn that swarmed around them in the shallow water. “But even a broken messenger can deliver a message. Beat her and the Ironborn who accompanied her within an inch of what’s left of their lives and leave them where they’ll be found.”
Zara didn’t even attempt to reach for her clothes that drifted to the rocks by the time they were finished with their lovemaking, since she knew that it would look even worse for the Ironborn guard to find her body naked and broken. The guards let out a growl around her that made her shiver in a way that was perceived as fear, but was actually a shiver of pleasure at their unified hatred of her.
It didn’t matter what people felt as long as it was strong. Hatred or love, it all felt good to her. It gave her strength they would never understand. A few of them splashed quickly into the water to take her like a doll and drag her out by her arms and her hair. She struggled so that it would make them even angrier, but nothing would stop them now.
As they dragged her away, she caught one last glimpse of Coren’s eyes watching her go. I love you. He said without a trace of pity or remorse in his eyes.
She whimpered and looked away as they dragged her through the sticks and the grass, scratching up her body every which way that they could. Once they had dragged her back to where they had first seen her, where Lea was just waking up from the first beating, they threw her down next to Lea.
Lea tried to get up, she tried to defend Zara somehow as soon as Zara’s body was close enough, but both of her legs felt broken, and she could hardly move without being in blinding pain herself.
It was more than an hour that the Forestborn spent picking at the two of them, mostly by way of the thorns and vines that they brought cascading down from the trees all around them, pummeling them both and leaving Zara bloodied from head to toe. She had one arm broken in several places, and was lucky to have been left with only that. Her hair was mangled, she had splinters over every inch of her completely-exposed skin, and Lea wasn’t much better off, though she did manage to kill two of the guards near the end of the abuse. Even with their friends dead, though, the Forestborn were under orders not to kill the two of them, and so at that, they took a few last slices at Lea for good measure and then retreated into the trees.
* * * * *
Zara slipped in and out of consciousness several times as the two of them laid there, clinging to what little life they had left. It felt like an eternity before she was awakened by noise, by people yelling something that she couldn’t quite make out. It could have been the Council guards back for more or the Ironborn guards. She wasn’t sure who she wanted to see more.
As it turned out, it was a mix of Ironborn, Stoneborn and Earthborn eyes that she could see through the red haze that clouded her vision, but it was the Ironborn that were actually trying to get her situated as gently as possible, and William, the elder Guardsman, that covered her with his own long jacket. “Lie still. It’s alright. We’ll get you back inside and cleaned up in no time.”
They were the last words she heard before she passed out again, only to wake up on a bed that was much softer than iron, or at least it felt that way. If it was under the control of an Ironborn, it could have felt like water and she wouldn’t know the difference until she saw it. She coughed a few times from her throat feeling so dry, but she tried to call out, and her words just came out as a raspy whisper. “Nick?”
Right here. She could feel his voice in her mind as his fingers took hers and closed her good hand around a tin cup that was cold to the touch with the water inside. Slowly. His voice was calm, but there was enough fire raging beneath them that she felt for a moment as if she was talking to a Fireborn.
She took a few drinks and coughed some more before she turned her head slowly to look for his gaze. “Nick.” She said softly. “I…they…Lea. . .” She whimpered softly. Is she okay?
Don’t try to talk. Lea has healed from worse. Don’t worry about her. She’s alright, and well cared for.
We hadn’t gotten to the river. Just outside of it when they attacked Lea. She shook as she tried to hold his hand, hot tears running down over her wounded face. Council guards. All of them. And my former master…he found me. He knew you took me, that I swore myself to you.
Coren was here? Himself? Why? It was the closest Coren had gotten to their compound since the troubles began months before, and it was far too close for Nick’s comfort.
Because of me, because of all
