Very deep voices. Cast with drumming excitement, as if a benefit had fallen into their clutches.
She was it.
As she gathered her strength, she was under no illusions of what they were going to do to her. Soon. And as she drew herself together, she shied away from thoughts of her Manuel . . . of how, if these males had their way, they would spoil her many times over before they murdered her, taking what rightly should have been her healer’s—
Except she could not and would not think of him. That cognition was a black pit that would suck her in and trap her and render her defenseless.
Instead, she pulled at the threads of memory, melding the images of the faces of her kidnappers with what she knew from the bowls in the Sanctuary.
Why? she wondered. She had not a clue why the one with the ruined lip had set upon her with such hatred—
“I know you wake.” The voice was impossibly low and heavily accented and right next to her ear. “Your breathing pattern has changed.”
Lifting her lids along with her head, she shifted her eyes unto the soldier. He was in the shadows beside her so she could not see him properly.
Abruptly, the other voices silenced, and she sensed many stares were upon her.
So this was what prey felt like.
“I’m hurt that you remember nothing of me, female.” At that, he brought a candle close to his face. “I have thought of you every night since we first met. A hundred and a hundred ye
ars afore.”
She narrowed her eyes. Black hair. Cruel eyes of dark blue. And a harelip that he had obviously been born with.
“Remember me.” It was not a question, but a demand. “Remember me.”
And then it came back. The small village on the edge of a wooded glen. Where she had killed her father. This was one of the Bloodletter’s soldiers. No doubt they all were.
Oh, she was definitely prey, she thought. And they were looking forward to hurting her before they killed her in retaliation for taking their leader from them.
“Remember me.”
“You are a soldier of the Bloodletter’s.”
“No,” he barked, putting his face in hers. “I am more than that.”
As she frowned, he just backed off and paced around in a tight circle, his fists cranked tight, the candle dripping wax onto his curled hand.
When he returned front and center afore her, he was in control. Barely. “I am his son. His son. You stole from me my father—”
“Impossible.”
“—unjustly—What?”
Into his stuttered silence, she said loudly and clearly, “It is impossible that you are his son.”
When her words registered, the blind fury in his face was the very definition of hatred, and his hand shook as he lifted it up over his shoulder.
He slapped her so hard she saw stars.
As Payne righted her head and met him in the eye, she was not going to have any of this. Not his mistaken belief. Not this group of males sizing her up. Not the criminal ignorance.
Payne held the stare of her captor. “The Bloodletter sired one and only one male offspring—”
“The Black Dagger Brother Vishous.” Hard laughter echoed. “I have heard well the stories of his perversions—”
“My brother is not a pervert!”