Scythe doesn’t touch me, wise enough to heed Burrows’s warnings. But his gaze is so heavy, I can almost feel it scoring into my flesh as he slowly sets my dress to rights, his dexterous fingers making easy work of the ties. I’m not certain why he bothers—in a few moments, I’ll be a pile of embers—but I’m oddly relieved I’ll not spend my last moments on this earth with my body exposed for the amusement of strangers.
“The torch,” Scythe barks suddenly, his free hand extended blindly to his left. “Bring it here. I need the light.”
A young recruit steps forward, arm shaking as he extends the torch. I try to struggle as Scythe brings it close to my face, but my bindings hold fast. The flame is unbearably bright and scorching hot. My skin prickles with the promise of pain and, for a moment, my mind blanks with panic.
He’s going to set me aflame, right here, right now.
My eyes close involuntarily, shutting out my enemy’s face, myinescapable fate. Yet the torch never moves closer. Instead, there is a low growl of exasperation as Scythe finally releases the noose at my neck. Air floods down my throat, bursting into my screaming lungs. My ragged gasps are met with chuckles from the watching soldiers.
“Hardly worth hanging her,” Burrows remarks. “She’s half-dead already. Waste of perfectly good rope, in my opinion.” A gob of spit shoots in my direction. I do not bother to look and see where it lands. I’m too busy trying to catch my breath.
I’ve barely had time to pull in a full gulp of air before a large hand clamps down on my left shoulder and shakes. Scythe’s impatience is evident in every snap of his wrist. My bones rattle with the force of it.
“Your eyes. Open them.”
His command hardly registers over the roar of my pulse between my ears. The grip on my shoulder tightens to the point of pain. I’ll have more bruises by dawn—if I am still alive at dawn.
“Open them.”
I do as I’m told, peering at him through narrow slits. Torch held aloft, the commander glares down at me, frightening in his intensity. He’s massive—barrel-chested and so tall, he blocks my view of the rest of the world. A nightmarish figure. It takes every bit of my faltering courage to hold his gaze as it burns into mine.
Does he want to look me in the eyes as he strikes me down? Watch the light leave them as his blade slides between my ribs?
I refuse to blink. If this is my last moment, I should live it eyes wide open. I brace for the pain, but then—
Scythe’s stern-pressed mouth goes slack, just for a moment, a slip he covers so fast, I wouldn’t have seen it at all if he weren’t standing so near. However fleeting, I see…something that looks almost like shock.
Can it be shock?
“Impossible,” he whispers with a bleakness that sends a chill skittering down my spine.
“What was that, sir?” Burrows asks from a few paces back. “Couldn’t quite hear you.”
“Nothing.” Scythe’s voice is back to its normal brusqueness, but he does not turn to face the captain. He’s still looking into my eyes, searching for some hidden revelations encoded in their depths. His own eyes are unreadable. Two dark pools, reflecting nothing but flickers from the flaming torch in his hand. It would be easier to guess the thoughts of a statue.
Our gazes hold for a prolonged beat. His fingers, still gripping the torch, tighten infinitesimally. In the stillness, I feel rather than see him take a bracing breath.
“Shall we string her up, then?” Burrows asks tiredly. “It’s nearly midnight and we’re off to the southern front at first light. King Eld has called for reinforcements. Seems some Nythian rabble at the borderlands are making troub—”
The captain never finishes his sentence. The wordtroubleis halfway out his throat when the commander’s sword enters it, severing his windpipe in one clean stroke. I had not even seen Scythe reach for the weapon sheathed across his back. Nor, it seemed, had any of his comrades. The sheep are wholly unprepared for the wolf unleashed in their midst.
Burrows’s head has not yet hit the ground when Scythe whirls around—torch in one hand, sword in the other—and drives his blade through the two nearest soldiers with no more effort than a pair of shears snipping flower stalks in a garden. Another spin and two more men hit the dirt, their limbs crumpled petals.
Five dead in a single heartbeat.
By the time the remaining soldiers realize what is happeningand begin to scramble for their own weaponry, it’s too late. Scythe is a blur, moving so fast it’s hard to track his movements, let alone block them.
One soldier takes the blazing torch to the face, his harrowing screams keening into the night. Six more take small, precisely thrown daggers to the neck, dropping like stones as their lifeblood pours into the earth. The others, who turn and flee into the cover of the dark wood as fast as their legs can carry them, he hunts down and eliminates with the practiced ease of a natural killer.
As Scythe stalks his doomed prey, for the first time since my capture, I find myself alone. Still lashed to the tree, the ground around me littered with the bodies of the men who made me their prisoner, I’m too terrified to be relieved. In the sudden quiet, I think my heart will beat right out of my chest, cracking through my ribs and falling to my feet.
My gaze sweeps the shadowy encampment, wide with horror. The corpse closest to me is barely more than a boy. His eyes are open, fixed sightlessly at a night sky he can no longer see. Was he the young recruit I overheard asking for advice, mere hours ago? I suppose it doesn’t matter, though I can’t help the pang of unwarranted sympathy that squeezes my heart.
He would’ve happily watched you hang, Rhya, I scold myself harshly.When did you become so weak?
I do not have time for foolish sympathies—even for the collateral damage of an innocent. Bigger problems are looming. For though Scythe has killed my captors, he is no savior. Of that, I’m certain.
I count less than five minutes before he stalks back into the clearing, his cloak billowing behind him like a reaper from the old tales, helmet gleaming dark silver in the midnight moon. With grim efficiency, he retrieves his daggers from the jugulars ofthe fallen soldiers, returning them one by one to their slots in the bandolier strapped across his chest.