A grim smile pulled at my lips, despite everything. Earlier, I’d silently promised myself that I would pay them back for what they’d done, and now they were here to collect on that oath. Sara was a princess, and she was my woman, and I would bring her justice.
Painful, punitive, uncivilized justice.
I crept up behind the one nearest to me, grabbed him from behind and slit his throat with no more care than stomping a cock roach. The familiar gurgle of exsanguination, and the smell of the blood, brought back a thousand memories of battle, threatening to plunge me into mindlessness, but I kept my focus and moved on to the next man.
This one put up a better fight, but I made short work of him and dropped him with a twisting stab to the heart.
The other three froze at the sound of his dying, while the hostage squirmed on the garden path. His feet had been hobbled and I could tell from his noises he was gagged under the hood. I spun my knife in my hand and broadened my stance, stepping out of the shadows and into the dim moonlight.
“Which one of you motherfuckers wants to go to hell next?”
One leapt forward, and I cut him down with a slice across his face that left him bloodied and screaming on the ground.
The next used the moment of distraction to make his attack, but I delivered my foot into his solar plexus, then again into his miserable balls and he doubled over as I brought my knee up to connect with his nose with a crunch and a scream.
The last of them turned and tried to run, but in three strides I was behind him, and ran the knife through the back of his throat. As he lay dying, I returned to the two I’d dispatched, and slit both their throats, silencing them for good before I wiped the knife on my britches and turned each man over, checking their faces.
As I’d thought, they were the Clan Johnston bastards. But their captain wasn’t among them. Fuck.
If he wasn’t here, that meant there was one more man that knew our secret, and it was clear they weren’t about to keep it to themselves. I searched the bodies and found a folded scrap of parchment, on which was scrawled a hasty note.
Bring the princess back alive. Angus Johnston.
I knew Angus. He was the youngest son of the Johnston chief, a cruel bastard but a good strategist.
His forces were stationed ten miles or so to the west. I surmised that his men must have told him what had happened, either in full or leaving out the part where they tried to rape the princess. He saw the opportunity to “rescue” her and return her to the king. After that, Clan Johnston would have every reason to attack us and take our lands, and they’d do so with the king’s full support.
Things were fucking falling apart.
I dragged the hostage out of the shadow of the magnolia into the moonlight, and pulled off his hood. Staring up at me was the bloodied and bruised face of Sara’s father, in way worse shape than he’d been when I leveled him days ago. Someone had kicked the ever-loving shit out of him. I yanked the gag free and he coughed and sputtered in a pathetic heap at my feet.
I crouched beside him, keeping my knife blade in full view. “What did you tell them?”
He spat out a mouthful of blood and broken teeth. “Nothing.”
What a useless son of a bitch. I put the point of my knife to his forehead and dug it in, just deep enough to make a trickle of blood slide down his face. “Do I look like a guy who likes to repeat himself?”
“Okay, okay,” he babbled. “I told them everything. They’d seen the mark on her. I told them I’d been paid off to take her when she was a baby. I’ve always known who she was. They planned to take both me and her to the king, after killing you first.”
Still with my knife point on his forehead, I glanced over my shoulder. “Bad plan. Worse execution.”
“Listen. If you keep quiet about this, I’ll cut you in on the stipend I get every month for keeping her. I’ll help you bury the bodies. I’ll say nothing. No one will know. You can even fuck her sometimes…just do not spend inside of her. If she were to bear children…the mark is hereditary. Her real mother had one as well. It could be passed on and if it was in view…”
I hated him. Fucking hated him.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said, and shoved the gag back into his mouth. I stared down at him, trying desperately to resist the very real urge to eliminate this fake father problem from Sara’s life.