Page 45 of Remmen

“Mestyn is… a mess.” It might have been a violation of confidentiality to say something, but at that moment I didn’t care. I laid out what was bugging me, and Remmen didn’t try and push it aside.

“He’s been a problem for a while,” he admitted. “Moving against him feels very… final. But if he’s putting the community at risk, putting you at risk, that’s unacceptable.”

“I think he was just trying to scare me.”

“You will always be safe with me,” Remmen vowed.

He kissed me, and I let myself get lost in him.

It was late when I forced myself out of Remmen’s bed. He reached out a hand and tried to pull me back down, and I went with a brief kiss before getting back up.

“I have to go,” I said. “Before people start waking up.”

He groaned, but he didn’t fight me on it.

The town was dead quiet at that hour. The forge had gone cold, the animals had settled, and there was nobody out but me. Half the windows were dark. It was cold enough to see my breath, and the whole place smelled like hay and rain that hadn’t come yet. I walked with my collar up and Remmen still warm on my skin, absurdly relaxed.

Remmen had firmly put Mestyn’s threats out of my mind. So when he stepped in front of me on the empty street, at first I didn’t register the threat.

Then I saw the shape of his cruel smile and my heart started thumping madly.

“Hello, lovely,” said Mestyn. “You’re out late.”

CHAPTER 19

ANNE

It would have been easier if Mestyn had knocked me out. Or at least less embarrassing.

But I’d rather be embarrassed than terrified.

Mestyn was still too injured to do much, but he had an accomplice, and that accomplice clamped a hand down over my mouth before I could scream. It was late, but Remmen would come sprinting if he heard me.

So I gave him something to hear. I couldn’t see the man behind me. All I had of him was how big he was, one arm clamped across my chest and a hand big enough to cover half my face. I threw my weight against the arm and got nowhere. I stamped where a boot should be and hit dirt. I drove my elbow back into his gut as hard as I had in me, and he grunted, so at least something landed. It didn’t help. He just hauled me up off my feet until my heels were kicking air. Seven feet of minotaur. I’d have had better luck fighting the truck.

“Hurry up with that,” Mestyn said and waved us down the street where a beat-up truck was idling.

Something scratchy that smelled a bit like hay came down over my head and I couldn’t see anything else.

They threw me in the truck bed, and a heavy hand pinned me flat by the back of my neck. I couldn’t see a thing. The sack let in nothing but old hay and dust, and every breath pulled some of it into my mouth. The engine caught and we started moving. I felt every rut come up through the flatbed, in my hip, my cheek, my shoulder, and with a knee in my back I couldn’t brace against any of it. I tried to count the turns anyway, like that would do me any good tied up in a barn. Left out of town. A long straight stretch. Then the road went rough, nothing like the streets in town, and rattled my teeth. I stopped needing to guess. There was only one place out past the good road. The farm.

The truck stopped and hands hauled me up and out by one arm like I weighed nothing, which to them I did. My knees hit the ground when they dropped me. Someone dragged me backward over the dirt by my wrists. My shirt rucked up and the ground scraped the skin off my back, and I couldn’t get my feet under me to stop it.

Then they hauled my arms up over my head. Rope went around both wrists, rough and fast, and cinched tight. When they let go, my arms stayed up there, tied to something I couldn’t see. A post, maybe. A ring in the wall. I pulled and it held and wrenched my shoulders at an angle they didn’t want to go.

Someone knelt on my shins and roped my ankles, winding it around and around and knotting it off, each loop tighter than the last, until my legs didn’t feel like mine anymore. Tied up in the dark with a sack over my head and strange hands shoving me around like livestock, I heard myself make a sound I hated.

I couldn’t see any of it coming. A hand landed on my ankle and was gone. Rope bit where I didn’t expect it. My breath went short and fast against the inside of the sack.

“Get out of here,” Mestyn said to his accomplice.

Who was it? Hesk? It couldn’t be Rauf. At least I hoped not. I’d spent hours out on the farm, but the dynamic out there was too complex for me to divine in just a few visits, especially when they were determined to keep themselves hidden out here.

I heard hoofsteps fade away and Mestyn yanked the bag off of my head. I gasped in a deep, involuntary breath and was assaulted by the scents of the farm.

Manure, thick and close. Wet straw gone sour. Animal musk, and under it rotting silage, and the cold dirt smell of the floor against my cheek. I’d smelled all of it a hundred times out here, on my own two feet, my bag on my shoulder, a way home whenever I wanted one.

“There’s no use struggling.” Mestyn took a step forward, like he meant to crouch in front of me, but he winced and then leaned back against the wall. He was well enough to no longer need to stay at the clinic, but he wasn’t healed.