Page 11 of Shadowborne: Reckoning

“The one you must b-be hunting,” he rasped, struggling now, trying to get me to release his arm. I didn’t. But I did give him a little more air. “That’s the only… only explanation… why they’d have you out… out of Vosgaarde. Right?”

I was stunned speechless. My body hummed with the need for revenge, for retribution, for safety for Bren.

“Donavyn,” Bren whispered. “We need—”

“Your orders had nothing to do with a mole,” I snarled through my teeth.

Ruin tried to nod, but he couldn’t move without restricting air. His eyes bulged for a moment and I felt him swallow against the back of my thigh.

He must be the mole, my vengeance insisted. I hadn’t even spoken to the king about that suspicion before he left.

But the ugly side of me couldn’t deny that the timing was all off. Ruin had been in the castle when the first suspicious reports were received, in an entirely different kingdom. And even after he left, they came through sources he didn’t know, and from locations he hadn’t been.

“I learned… in Draeventhall…” he said hoarsely, eyes blazing, but he’d stopped struggling against me. “That’s why you’re here. That’s why I’m here. We’re on the same hunt.”

In the silence that followed that moment, I could hear my own heartbeat thudding in my head.

Kill-him. Kill-him. Kill-him.

And in counterpoint, my conviction and my honor.

Be-wise. Be-wise. Be-wise.

I muttered a curse. Ruin’s eyes widened, but I ignored him. “Bren,” I graveled, “Pull the chair into the middle of the room. Get the hair tie leathers I left in the drawer, and two of my belts.”

She hurried to do as I’d instructed without question. Ruin’s eyes narrowed. “What are you doing?”

I let my lip curl back from my teeth, let him see the utter contempt in which I now held him. “You and I are going to have a little chat,” I muttered. “Don’t be nervous, Ruin—if you’re one of the good guys, then we’re on the same team. And we don’t hurt people who are on our team… right?”

I felt a grim sense of satisfaction when his eyes flickered to Bren, and he didn’t answer.

That’s right you little cuntcake… I’m on her team now.

5. Necessary Evil

~ DONAVYN ~

Ruin sat, flatly staring at me from the slatted chair normally left in the room for a man like me to sit and put on his boots. Thank God it was solid wood.

I’d used one belt to strap his arms and chest to the chair back—tight enough that I hoped his arms lost blood flow—then looped a second around his ankles, locking them to the legs of the chair. Leather ties kept his wrists knotted together and tied to the belt at his chest, curtailing any use of his hands.

My skin hummed. I burned with the urge to take Bren’s blade and cut his throat—fantasizing about doing it slowly, so he first saw me coming at him with the blade, then had time to feel the cut, to feel his lifeblood draining from his veins in—

“You take your fucking eyes off her,” I growled as Ruin’s gaze warily followed Bren, who was straightening the room so there was no evidence of our fight.

He snapped his eyes back to me. I prayed he didn’t have time to see the red spread in Bren’s cheeks.

She’d barely spoken since I stopped strangling him. But I could feel her in the bond.

I would commend her later. Outwardly, she looked cool. Collected. Under control.

Inside, she was falling apart.

Fear, rage, and desperation made a coiled creature in her heart, battering at her ribs. And under it all, a creeping dread—the weight of self-loathing, self-doubt, self-recrimination…

I shoveled reassurance at her through the bond, but had to keep half my heart walled off.

The half that burned to kill him.