The Offering (The Pledge 3)

I’d barely made it two steps into the tent when I saw her. “Brooklynn!” I rasped, and struggled to break free from Niko’s grip on my bad arm. But he wasn’t letting me get away that easily. Apparently, one escape attempt made me a highrisk prisoner.

The jostling aggravated the pain, but I refused to give Niko the satisfaction of seeing me wince, so I bit it back, hiding my discomfort.

Brook was in the same situation I was, except that, even though she looked like she’d been through the wringer—her clothes ripped and covered in ash, her face swollen and bruised and cut—she was being held back by guards on either side of her and iron restraints that shackled both her wrists and her feet.

“I killed twelve of ’em before they got me,” she crowed, her chest puffing boastfully. Of course, she said that right before she caught an elbow to the side of her head from one of the masked warriors beside her.

She staggered slightly, looking as off balance as I’d felt right after the blast, but she came up quickly, prepared to fight all over again. She threw her body at the soldier, but he cuffed her again, this time with the back of his metal-studded glove.

The blow sent her reeling into the waiting arms of the soldier on her other side.

“Stop them. No more!” I shouted, my voice sounding hoarse as it ripped from my sulfur-scorched throat. And still Niko held me back.

Brook refused to stay down. She was in no condition to keep fighting, and she was in no position to wield any real power over these warriors. She was their prisoner, and they could batter and abuse her all day long if they wished. Because she had no other recourse, she spat a mouthful of blood at her captors before turning to me. “I’m glad you’re alive. We were worried about you,” she told me, her voice matter-of-fact, as if we’d just bumped into each other in a park or at the market and were chatting amiably.

I gave her a curious look. “I’m . . . glad you’re alive too,” I said, sounding like it was a question and not a statement, and feeling nothing short of ridiculous for making small talk with her here. I didn’t bother pointing out the truth of our predicament, that we were standing in the queen’s tactical command tent. “How did you find me?”

“We,” she corrected. “How did we find you?” She grinned then, revealing blood-tinged teeth that made me want to frown back at her. “We have an army out there.” She fixed her pointed gaze on each of the soldiers at her sides, and then on Niko, before looking to me once more. “We’ve got this, Charlie.”

“No. You don’t, actually.” It was Elena now, entering the tent with a dramatic flourish.

It was immediate, the hatred I felt for the other queen, resurfacing as quickly as if it had never faded, practically choking me as I glared at her.

Brook’s gaze narrowed, and her lips curled upward. She looked the way she used to, when we were in the clubs and she’d set her sights on a guy she planned to toy with. “You have no idea what you’re up against,” she practically purred.

Elena looked equally confident as she approached Brooklynn, appraising her in a way that she hadn’t Eden. “I heard you caused quite the brouhaha. Killed a lot of good soldiers.” She reached a manicured finger out to Brook, and then pressed it beneath her chin, lifting Brook’s face to inspect every bruise, cut, and abrasion. “You’re arrogant. I like that.” Brook jerked away from Elena’s touch. Her voice when she responded was so deadly low, I could barely hear it above the ringing that continued to resonate in my ears. “You’re gonna die today.”

Elena leaned closer and seized Brook’s chin in her hand, squeezing it hard. Her voice was equally ominous when she answered, “Funny. I was going to say the same thing to you.” I gasped at Elena’s words, and Niko’s hold on my arm tightened, causing a stab of pain to explode up from my injured elbow.

Elena whirled to face us then, still clutching Brook’s face. Her cinnamon-colored eyes sparkled when they fell on Niko. “This is going to work, isn’t it, my love?” she begged, and I realized how mad she looked. Utterly insane. “I think this time our little queen here won’t have any qualms about what needs to be done.”

I felt Sabara’s confidence swell into something I could no longer dispute, and it made me hate Elena all the more. The queen was the reason Eden was dead.

She was the reason I was here, while my best friend was being used to force me to make the toughest decision of my life.

Could I really sacrifice anyone else? I’d already watched Eden die. Could I do it again? Was keeping Sabara inside me worth losing someone else I cared about?

But what choice did I have? Nothing had changed, had it? I couldn’t set Sabara free just because it was Brook’s life at stake instead of Eden’s. One life wasn’t more valuable than the others, was it?

Suddenly I wanted to tell Brook everything. I wanted to tell her about Elena and what she’d done to Eden. I wanted to tell her about Caspar and his followers, and the blast that had killed so many of them. I wanted to tell her about what I’d done to the soldier, the one who’d come into my tent to collect me when the fighting had started. How I’d shot him and stolen his weapons.

His weapons.

I’d lost his gun in the blast, but that wasn’t the only weapon I’d taken from him.

I squirmed, trying to make it seem as if I were shifting on my feet. But it was enough to confirm what I’d hoped. I still had his knife. Tucked in the back of my waistband. Sabara read my thoughts just as quickly as I’d formulated them, and I knew hers at the same moment.