Page 6 of Hellbound

The earth beneath her boots was choked with brush, fallen logs, and tangled undergrowth. She picked her way around the massive oak and beech trees. Their ancient, gnarled trunks were so wide that the hollows could swallow her whole.

As she ventured deeper, her head swiveled back and forth looking for threats, but she found herself woefully surrounded by trees that seemed more like animals than flora.

Knots in the wood like curious eyes, their dark centers following her as she trudged on.

Ragged, wet breathing broke the numbing silence.

Ksenia whirled around to find the source of the blood.

Not Danika.

A goat, staked to a tree trunk, its body gutted but somehow still alive.

She cursed, then fell backward into the mud at the grotesque image of its rectangular pupils and distended tongue, covered in blood from its horned head down to its cloven feet.

The commotion sent birds soaring overhead, fleeing the canopy with squawks and cries. She dug her fingers into the mud and pushed herself to run, dagger dropping in her haste. Her slick boot sent her crashing into another tree as she tore away from the body.

The forest line was dim in the distance.

The mud sucked at her shoes, holding her firmly with each frantic step.

Her bondsense picked up a blood-curdling noise that rattled in her skull. This one sounded dark and disembodied—booming like a cathedral organ through her ribcage.

A hellbound blade. She knew the difference the way anyone knew the difference between a scream of fear and a scream of rage.

Soulbound blades sang. Hellbound blades howled; fed deliberate cruelty which corrupted the weapon. Kill by willing kill, until bloodlust was all it knew.

The sound echoed and reverberated off the trees and back at her till she had no idea which way to go, and it was a miracle she reached the edge.

“You shouldn’t have returned.” An even voice broke through, and she spun on her heel to face its owner, brandishing her empty hand in defense.

A half-lidded but intense gaze sharpened with lethal precision on her, and she froze before a tall figure silhouetted against the rain. His eyes were a startling green—like moonlight striking an emerald’s surface, brilliant but cold. The rain had plastered his sable curls to his forehead, and she could see his aristocratic cheekbones casting shadows down his face.

She bolted.

He caught her collar and yanked her backward, tearing a scream from her throat.

After a decade on the run, the cat had finally caught the mouse.

He turned her to face him, and her gaze snagged on the gold brooch at his shoulder. An emblem reserved for one person only: Bohdan Saranov, the captain of the Envorsen, an elite, fearsome guard that surrounded Karsan. He was scarcely a year older than her at twenty-eight and was desperate to prove his worth as the king’s bastard son.

His illegitimacy had done nothing to blunt his ambition and everything to sharpen it into Karsan’s most ravenous instrument.

“The bastard himself,” she spat, writhing in his grip.

“I had expected more out of you.”

She screamed and kicked, but he held fast and forced her back into the forest. His green eyes dulled the deeper they went.

They reached a clearing in the dense wood, where moonlight and rain punched through the canopy, and there stood a lean man.

Ksenia froze.

King Karsan Saranov was disarming, like a common garden snake, unremarkable in height and thin in musculature. His balding, wheaten hair pulled at his nape, and his washed-out, blue eyes ran cold.

Ksenia had evaded him all her life, but she knew royalty the moment she saw it.

A delicate circlet rested on his brow, and gold rings adorned each finger. But most of all, that suffocating air of entitlement wafted from his fur-lined cloak.