Nor did he attempt to make her.
Still mired deep in stewing, Adalia at first didn’t realize that the carriage had begun to tip. Gradually, the weight heavy around her, the center of gravity shifted beneath her backside, so slowly that by the time she knew what was happening, she was helpless to do anything about it.
Toren had no such problem.
He launched himself across the carriage and grabbed her, wrapping her against his chest just before her body flew off the bench, weightless in the air for a moment.
The embankment was steep—she had seen that out the window as they had turned onto this road. And the last thought she had before Toren shielded her head, blocking all sight of everything but his black coat, was that this was going to be painful.
The weightlessness lasted only a moment, and their bodies hit the side of the carriage, tossed from wall to floor to roof to wall as the coach rolled over and over. His grip not faltering, Toren blocked her from the blows the entire way down.
The last crash was deafening.
And then nothing. Silence. Splintering wood creaking. Silence.
Toren’s arm around the back of her head went slack, and she shifted. Instant, bruising pain invaded every muscle.
If she was in that much pain—Toren had to be pulverized from head to toe. And he was still. So very still.
No. Heaven no. Please.
Fear gripping her, she forced herself to move. Wedged against one of the carriage benches, she lifted her head awkwardly to find his face, only to see blood creasing his brow, his eyes closed.
Before she could even poke him, reach her hand up to his face, wood creaked above her.
The coach door. She could hear it being yanked open above her head. Their driver. He could help.
She tried to twist, looking up.
A figure blocked the daylight from above. A man she didn’t recognize.
“Aye, she be movin’. Hold me leg.”
The man rustled above her. Adalia squinted, trying to see who it was, trying to untangle herself from Toren’s limbs enough to turn fully upward.
“We be watchin’ ye, lil mouse.” A burly hand came down at her.
She realized just before his thick fingers wrapped around her head what he intended.
Her head slammed into the wood of the bench.
The world went blank.
{ Chapter 19 }
He could still feel her body on top of him. As long as Adalia’s body was on his—safe—he could stay in the darkness. Just a minute more.
His arm moved.
The sensation was odd, as he hadn’t moved it. Had he?
His arm flopped wildly.
Shaking. Someone was shaking his arm.
Adalia?
He focused on his chest. It was cold. The space in front of him where she had been—cold. She wasn’t on top of him.
His arm shook again.
Against the weight of blackness that fought to stay in his mind, Toren cracked his eyes open. It took a long moment to focus on the person above him. A person straddling him. Awkward.
What was around him? The coach. He was still in the coach, flattened against the inside of the crushed vehicle.
“Adalia?”
“Sir?”
“Adalia? Where?”
“Sir. Ye are awake? Yer driver be sittin’ near.”
Toren reached up to grab the sleeve he could see swinging above his head. He forced himself to focus on the man above him. “My wife?”
The man, thin, wore farmer’s clothes and looked down at him, bewildered. “There be no lady here, sir.”
Toren pushed off the side of the carriage to sit upright. Pain sliced down his back and around his side. A rib, probably two, out of place.
Light as a feather, the man hauled himself upward out of the open carriage door above Toren.
Brutal pangs lancing through him with the slightest movement, Toren bore down, shoving all pain to the deep recess of his mind. He didn’t have time for pain. Not when he didn’t know where Adalia was.
He crawled up the broken interior of the coach, following the farmer up and out with not nearly as much grace. Dropping heavily onto the ground next to the overturned carriage, Toren looked up the embankment. Steep. The coach must have rolled at least four times on the way down.
The farmer bent, balancing on his haunches next to where Toren sat. “Ye ain’t lookin’ well, sir.”
Some semblance of coherent thought finally firing through his brain, Toren grabbed the farmer by the back of the neck. “Where the hell is my wife?” He looked around, screaming into the oncoming darkness, “Adalia.”
“It is just ye here, sir. Ye and yer driver.”
“Adalia.” His voice thundered over the cacophony of birds at dusk.
Mr. Benson staggered around the end of the coach. His driver looked worse than Toren felt, blood covering half his face. “I only just awoke, Your Grace. And she is not here. We were run off the road, Your Grace.” Leaning against the upturned step of the coach, Mr. Benson glanced at the farmer and then looked back to Toren. “There are tracks.”
“What kind of tracks?”
“Two men. Two horses. Down here by the carriage. And this, Your Grace, stuck on a shard of the carriage.” Mr. Benson tossed a balled-up cloth at Toren.
Toren caught it with one hand and unfurled it. A sleeve. The black sleeve of Adalia’s dress. Torn. A waft of blood hit his nose. He dropped the cloth to the ground, nodding to Mr. Benson as his entire body pulled itself into steely efficiency. “You know what to do.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
Toren hauled himself to his feet as his look swung to the farmer.
“Do you have a lantern, man? A torch?”
“I have a lantern on my wagon.”
“I am taking it. Get it now.”
The man turned and started to run up the grassy hill next to the road. Within a minute he was back to Toren, the lit lantern swinging as he handed it over.
“Horses. We need horses,” Toren said to the farmer.
“Yes, Yer Grace.” A bob of his head and the farmer scampered to the hill.
Toren stalked over to his driver, holding the lantern by his head. Mr. Benson shuffled along the ground on his hands and knees, his fingers moving over the upturned dirt.
“Do you have it, Benson?”
Mr. Benson looked up at Toren. “Yes, Your Grace. I believe I do.”
“We move.”
Breaking through the crust that had formed along her lashes, Adalia opened her eyes.
The bright light of flames across the floor assaulted her pupils. It took a long minute for her eyes to adjust to the glow.
A dirt floor. No. A stone floor covered in dirt. A fire.
The smell, dank and putrid of death, seeped into her brain from the floor her cheek was pressed against.
Haltingly, her senses came back to her, filling her mind, identifying just where and how she had landed.
The last thing she remembered was the carriage rolling down the bank by the road, her body wrapped in Toren’s arms and legs as they were tossed about the interior of the coach.
And then they had landed. Landed, and what . . .
The man. The man who knocked her head into the bench.
And Toren—he was still. Not moving.
Panic seized her chest. No. He was fine. He had to be fine. He would not leave her. Would not die. He had sworn as much to her. Said he would always protect her.
He couldn’t have died. No.
He had to take care of the twins.
She gasped a breath, trying to calm her panic.
Where in the bloody hell was she?
Lying on her side, on the floor, she tried to move. Pain shot down her arms, all her movement denied. Blast it. Her arms were stretched high above her head, her wrists tied together around a wooden leg. She craned her head up between her arms. The leg was attached to a table. A beastly thick table above her. And her left sleeve was missing.
/>
Every muscle aching, her head now pounding, she tried to pull her legs upward. No. They were not moving either. She looked down her body to find her ankles tied to the far wooden leg of the table.
Stretched out like a pig to be roasted.
Aside from the missing sleeve, her clothes were still intact. Thank the heavens for that.
“Look. The mousey moves.”
Her head tilted, her eyes following the sound of the rough voice.
Twisting her neck along her arm, she searched the room, and her eyes finally adjusted well enough to see. Vaulted ceilings, the stone of them crumbling and pockmarked with time. She was deep in the undercroft of an ancient castle or abbey.
She saw the boots first, worn, moving across the floor toward her. And just behind them, someone else.
Theo.
Her sharp intake of breath cut through the dank air.
Theo sat across from her next to the fireplace, tied to a chair, bare from his waist up, not conscious. Blood splattered his body. Cuts, lines of flesh boiling—singed. His dark-blond hair hung past his face in long locks—clumps of muck meshing the strands together. His jaw looked wrong—crushed in on the left side. She stared at his chest, willing it to move. They wouldn’t have brought her here to him if he was dead, would they?
No. Impossible.
She stared longer, her eyes drying out. Breathe, dammit. Breathe.
A flicker of a movement. The tiniest of breaths.
The boots stopped in front of her face, blocking her view of her brother. Adalia wiggled, trying to crane her neck so she could see past the boots.
The man attached to the boots dropped to his haunches, fully blocking Theo from her sight. The bastard poked at her cheek. “Your brother is sleeping again.” His gravelly voice sliced into her ears, making the pounding in her head intensify. “Never knew one to fall to blackness as much because of the pain. A mite weak, that one.”
Instant indignation flared through her, the need to defend her brother’s character instinctive and seemingly ignorant of the fact that she was also tied up and at the mercy of the man in front of her.
Her eyes dropped to the floor between them, concentrating on the ridge of dirt made by his boots. This wasn’t the man who had gone after her in the wagon. This one was more refined, his accent odd, English not his native language.
“Watch him carefully, mouse.” The man’s thumb pointed back over his shoulder to Theo. “You will be needing to speak to him when his senses come back about him.”
Talk to him? Talk to him about what? About how he was alive? Not dead? She still had not wrapped her mind around the thought—even if Theo was currently sitting five steps away from her. Beaten to grotesqueness, but still there. Still alive. Still breathing.
The man stood, his boots spinning in the dirt before her eyes. He walked back across the room, stopping by the hearth to pick up an iron poker and then nudge the tip of it into the fire.
Her look drifted to Theo. The horror that he had lived through during the past months was evident all over his body. But still alive—a miracle. Or hell on earth. They were keeping him alive for a reason, and she didn’t imagine that bastard by the fire wanted her to have a pleasant chat with Theo about the weather.
The fat leg of the table wedged between her forearms, she twisted her wrists with as little movement as possible, testing the knot of the rope binding her hands together.
Tight. And every shift of her hands made the ropes dig into her skin. She turned her attention to her legs. Her boots were gone, the rope looped around her ankles, holding her legs together. She bent her left knee, trying to wiggle her foot free. The rope didn’t budge.
A scream—tortured and curdling—echoed in the stone chamber.
Her look whipped to Theo. Wide awake, he was frantic, pain rolling across his face.
Then she saw it. Skin still sizzling on his chest. Flesh bubbling. The poker the man had been tending the fire with was raised in front of Theo, still glowing red.
The putrid smell of burning flesh hit her nose, making her gag.
Theo’s eyes landed on her. He stared at her for a long moment. Too long. And then recognition hit him. Hit him with a blast that sent his head shaking, sudden tears streaming down his face.
“No, Theo. No.” Words failed her as she yanked her limbs, desperate to free herself, to go to him and hold him, take away his pain.
His breathing becoming rapid, Theo’s arms strained against the ropes holding him captive to the chair, and he looked up at the man, who had turned back to the fire and was shoving the tip of the iron poker into the blue of the flames.
“No . . .” The one word came from Theo’s lips, strangled as though he hadn’t spoken in weeks.
The man at the fire looked to Theo. “We had hoped for one of your wee nieces, but your sister will do nicely.”
Adalia’s mouth went instantly dry, brutal terror coiling down her spine and invading her body. The world slowing, disbelief seized her, his words flooding her mind—she would do nicely.
The man took a step backward, pulling the poker from the fire. He looked at it with a nod, its black tip glowing a molten orange-red.
No. He couldn’t mean . . .
Holding the poker tip in front of him, he brushed it in front of Theo’s eyes—close—but not close enough to burn. A taunt. And then he continued across the room to her.
No.
His boots edged closer.
No.
Her eyes could go nowhere but to the waning glow at the tip of the poker.
“You know exactly how this feels, dung heap. Now your sister will feel the brunt of your pain.”
“No.” The choked word came from Theo.
Adalia’s look flicked desperately to her brother. He could barely keep his head up. Yet he fought it. Fought the pain. He had suffered beyond what anyone should have to suffer for whatever he had refused to tell this man during the past months. And now she would be the end of it.
Theo would do anything to save her, and she knew it.
Her eyes flew around the room, desperate for anything to help her escape. The table above her. Maybe if she could yank a leg out, the table would fall. It would crush her, yes, but Theo would not be forced to make an impossible decision.
“You say no, yet I don’t hear you talking, dung heap.” The bastard’s gravelly voice stayed even, almost as if he were bored with the idea of sizzling away Adalia’s flesh.
She yanked as hard as she could on her arms, pulling the leg. Nothing. Not the slightest creak of the wood. She jerked with her legs. The same result.
The bastard took his last steps to Adalia, stopping in front of her. He turned himself slightly to the side, giving Theo a full view of the red-hot poker hovering above his sister.
“No.”
“No what, dung heap?”
The bastard lowered the poker in front of her face and then close to her neck. Heat radiated from the tip, near to burning her bare skin by mere proximity.
Her neck bared and vulnerable, she twisted, a trapped animal frantic to escape, a whimper stuck in her throat. Frantic and helpless.
“Are you going to tell me before I burn her perfect skin? Or after you have heard her tortured screams?”
The poker dipped closer. The tiny hairs along her neck crisped, burning, the smell making her retch.
“No. Don’t.” The garbled words came out of Theo in a cough.
The bastard looked down at her, a vicious smile snarling his lip.
He was going to enjoy this.
Adalia gasped a breath, bracing herself, her eyes closing against the horror of the iron near to searing into her flesh.
A whoosh of air. Metal clanking.
Embers sparked down onto her neck as the poker went flying through the air. Her eyes flew open with her scream at the sharp pain, even as the embers quickly fizzled on her skin.
The poker sailed through the air and clattered down to the stone in front of her. Shouts, screams�
��a scuffle that had two men struggling fiercely for control, until the bastard who had been about to burn her was flipped onto his back.
A fury of fist after fist came down upon the man, blood splattering, until his head fell to the side, his body motionless.
The man on top of the bastard stilled, looking over at her.
Toren.
His brown eyes savage, the ferocity of his face, his body, made her heart stop. A second that seemed like a lifetime. It wasn’t until he moved that her body jolted into motion again.
He was to her in an instant, a knife pulled and cutting through the ropes at her feet and wrists within seconds.
He paused as she drew her limbs inward, curling against the pain coursing through her muscles after the unnatural stretch they had been subjected to. She could feel him watching her. But she was fine. Fine. Or she would be in a moment.
“Toren—Theo, get him,” she managed to grit out through the pain.
“Can you walk? We have to get out of here—Benson has two upstairs he is holding off.”
“Get Theo.”
Her words were barked, and Toren finally jumped from her side. “Yes.”
He ran to Theo and started sawing through the ropes holding her brother to the chair.
Adalia rolled onto her back, staring at the rough underside of the table, bearing down against the pain of blood rushing into her limbs.
A clank sounded next to her, cutting through the heaving breaths she was taking. The poker rose from the ground.
The bastard had woken up and grabbed the iron. The tip raised high to swing, he was headed straight for Toren’s back.
For one instant Adalia’s world stopped.
Not Toren. She could not lose him. And even if she screamed out, the bastard was too close, and Toren would only turn into the swing of the poker at his face.
She had nothing. No knife. No gun.
Nothing but her body. She could stop him for only a moment, but it would have to be enough.
Scrambling to her feet, pain ravaging her every movement, she lunged, diving low, ramming herself into the backs of the bastard’s legs.
He grunted as they both toppled forward, the poker flying out of his hand.
She hit the stone floor, rolling, just as Toren turned from Theo, knife high in his hand.
Of Valor & Vice: A Revelry's Tempest Novel Page 20
