Page 96 of The Champion

She moved to stand before him, her body rigid with anger. “Have you turned craven? My master said that you were the coldest, most efficient killer of all of us who were sent out. What are you waiting for?”

“What master?”

She stiffened. “You were lucky. They sent you out alone. The rest of us have those we know watch us. I take my orders often from their messengers.”

A sick feeling went through Ganymede. “Why have they kept themselves from me?”

“They assumed you would complete your mission. Why haven’t you?” she insisted again.

“Why do you care? I thought you and your friends wanted him to live and marry Rowena.”

She scoffed at that. “Think you I want her married? ‘Tis bad enough I return home to the loving bosom of my family,” she spat those words with a hate-filled tone that chilled him. “As soon as my father learned I was no longer virgin and wouldn’t command a high price since I had been used, he quickly ushered me off to her house so that he wouldn’t have to look at me and feel shamed for what had happened because he was careless.” She glared at him. “Unlike you, I traded one prison for another. The last thing I want is to see Rowena married to a man who will never stay put in this country. He’ll be off on adventure while we are forever locked in Sussex, so that she can train her milksops and their idiotic poetry.”

“Elizabeth—"

“Nay!” She pulled away from him. “Don’t touch me and don’t use my name. I never want to hear it from your lips.”

He let his hand drop. “Why didn’t you just kill Stryder yourself?”

She curled her lip. “I tried, but he would never be alone with me.”

“So, you killed another Brotherhood member to get to him?” he asked, trying to understand her motivation.

“Aye. Roger was the one who raped Mary.”

Ganymede winced as he recalled the night the Brotherhood members had fled the prison. A small group of them had been sent to set them free. Instead, they had taken their pleasure of them and then left them locked in their cells while they returned to the others with false tales of how the whores were all dead.

For years he had hated all the Brotherhood members. Who wouldn’t? After their escape, those of them left behind had been ravaged by their enemies.

Mary had died during one of her punishments. She had been a timid woman. Small and delicate. They had crushed her like a frail flower.

To this day, Ganymede lived only to have enough strength to return to their prison and kill the ones responsible. Unfortunately, he doubted he would ever have the chance.

“I took great pleasure in killing Roger,” Elizabeth snarled. “And I would have taken greater pleasure in seeing Stryder die, too.”

“He suffers enough.”

She snarled at him. “What do you know of it? There will never be enough suffering where he is concerned. We are the ones who suffered most back then and still do. Tell me truthfully, is there a night that goes by where your nightmares don’t haunt you?”

“Nay,” he lied. “I gave enough of my life to those demons. I refuse to give them anymore.” At least he tried his best to live by that. During the light of day, it was easy.

It was only at night, when he slept, that he couldn’t banish the nightmares.

“I’m happy for you,” she said snidely. “I can never forget what was done to me. Know you, that I can’t even have children now? They brutalized me so savagely after the one time I was pregnant at their hands, that in all this time, I have never conceived again. Never!” Her eyes sparkled with unshed tears.

Ganymede wanted to comfort her, but he knew she was past that. Nor would she welcome his touch and the unwanted emotions it would no doubt evoke. For years, he’d listened to the women as they suffered through their pregnancies in their holes and had even helped to deliver some of their babies.

Elizabeth, in particular, had had a difficult time birthing her son.

“Is your son still in Outremer?”

She nodded. “They hold him as guarantee that I will complete my mission. I shudder every time I think of him in their care. There’s no telling what lies they are filling his head with. Or what they do to him.”

Rage filled him. But her son would only be around four or five years old. The last thing he needed was to spend anymore time with their enemies.

“I’ll get him for you.”

She laughed aloud at that. “As if you could. If you return, they’ll see you dead. Indeed, I know I am right and that Kalb al 'Akrab is here to kill you.”