“Robert, please—”
“Ah-ah, wife. No tears on our wedding night.” His belt jingled as he yanked the strap through the buckle.
“Stop it. Stop it this instant.”
He didn’t stop. He fisted and lifted my skirts.
I shoved my dress back down; he smacked my hand aside.
I screeched, bucking and writhing. But he was stronger, parting my thighs with his knee, struggling with the buttons on his breeches.
Every part of me became ice, panic seizing my chest. Robert forced his mouth onto mine, tasting of liquor and hate.I sank into the dark recesses of my mind, where I couldn’t feel him putting his hands where they didn’t belong.
A dagger.
Ineededa dagger.
I had it in me to kill him.
I hadn’t escaped the Dullahan, the Phantom Queen, and Tearmann to become a victim to this weak, pathetic excuse of a man.
Robert bloody Trench would not be my downfall.
Fire collected in my belly, swelled through my core, my chest, my limbs.
I need a bloody dagger.
Something cold pressed against my palm. My fingers instinctively tightened, then jerked forward. Robert stilled, his eyes blown out. Warm wetness dribbled onto my hand.
When I let go, something clattered to the ground.
A dagger with a curved blade.
I shoved against Robert’s heavy shoulders.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t stumble. Didn’t cry out.
He slumped onto the heavy stones and did not rise again.
I searched the darkness for some sign of Tadhg or Rían—any Danú who could’ve shifted me the dagger. No eyes glowed from the darkness. No shadows shifted. Whoever had come to my aid must already be long gone.
I didn’t stop to see if Robert was dead. All that mattered was that he didn’t follow me when I ran out of the alley . . . straight into one of his friends.
I shrieked. The tall one caught my cloak.
The shorter one disappeared back into the alley. “She killed him, mate! The bitch killed him!”
Shit.
Think, Aveen. Think.
I reached for the clasp on my cloak, letting it fall away, and ran as fast as I could. Footsteps thundered at my back. Two men in red uniforms rounded the corner. Airren soldiers. My saving grace.
“Help me! Help me!” I cried.
Their heads swung toward us. When they saw me, they drew their swords in unison. “Stop at once!”
The footsteps came to a halt. Robert’s friends lifted their hands. One of the soldiers, with gold pins in his lapels, asked me what had happened.