23: KNOW YOUR HUSBANDS
989 Words
PHEEONA.
I woke up groggy, head pounding so hard it felt like something was actively trying to split my skull open from the inside out. For a moment I had no idea where I was, no concept of time or place, just pain and the dull throb of something warm and sticky along my temple.
Then it came back.
Memories trickled back slowly, one by one, sliding into place like puzzle pieces I didn't want to assemble but couldn't stop myself from finishing. Where I was. What had happened. Why my head hurt this much.
I realized I was being carried. My body jostled with every step, shoulder digging uncomfortably into whoever's grip held me, and I forced myself to stay completely still, breathing shallow, eyes shut, hoping desperately that whoever this was hadn't noticed I was awake yet.
We'd been walking for a while. Long enough that my legs had gone numb from however they were positioned, long enough that the air around us had shifted, grown cooler, damper, the kind of cold that came from being deep inside a forest with no fire and no shelter.
Eventually I was set down.
My back pressed against rough bark, uneven and biting through the thin fabric of my dress, and I felt hands working quickly behind me, looping something tight and scratchy around my wrists, pulling until it bit into my skin.
"That'll keep her immobile," the man said when he finished, satisfaction clear in his voice.
I didn't move or react.
Minutes passed without conversation. Just the sounds of bodies shifting around me, settling onto the ground, someone coughing quietly, someone else muttering something I couldn't quite catch, until eventually it all went quiet, the forest settling into the particular silence that came right before sleep claimed people who thought they were safe.
Then, a while later, someone spoke, voice low and tired. "Get some shut eye, okay? We've got a long day of work ahead of us."
Hours passed.
I drifted in and out, never fully asleep, never fully awake, listening through the haze as three of them stayed up, voices low and tense, clearly arguing about something that had started going badly wrong somewhere along the way.
"This was a bad idea," one of them muttered, the words tight with frustration. "The agreement was to take her in the chaos. No one would notice, we'd be out of Ashenbane before sunrise. Now? By tomorrow, security's going to be impossible. How the hell are we getting through that?"
Nobody answered him right away.
I kept still. Kept quiet. Kept my breathing as even as I could manage despite the panic clawing steadily up my throat.
Behind my back, I'd been working the restraints against the rough edge of the tree bark for what felt like hours now, sawing slowly, carefully, every small movement calculated to look like nothing at all. The rope was loosening. Fraying. Not enough yet. But getting there.
If I could slip away while they slept, that would be a gift from the goddess herself.
But leaving Ashenbane with these people—even if they somehow managed to actually pull it off, even if their plan held together long enough to get me across a border my husbands had likely already sealed twice over by now—wasn't an option I was willing to risk. Whatever waited for me on the other side of that border with men this disorganized couldn't be anything good.
Blood from the wound on my head kept seeping down into my eye, stinging sharp every time it pooled, blurring my vision every time I blinked it away. I didn't dare reach up and wipe it. I couldn't risk the movement.
One of them suddenly tensed, head snapping toward the treeline. "I hear something."
He stood, brushing dirt from his knees, and walked off into the dark to check.
The moment he was gone, one of the remaining two leaned in toward the other, voice dropping even lower. "He's too worried. And what can we even do at this point anyway?"
"We can leave," the third said, urgency cracking through his usually steady tone. "Run. She's wounded. What if we can't get back to base before they find us? What if this whole thing falls apart right here?"
A sound cut through the dark. Sharp. Close.
One of them shot up immediately, whispering into the trees, his voice carrying just far enough for me to catch the name. "Reese?"
Silence answered him.
"Reese?" he tried again, voice climbing higher, unease bleeding into every syllable.
Nothing.
He looked down at the man still seated near me, shoulders tense. "I'm going to check."
He walked off into the dark without waiting for a response, leaving just the one man behind. Alone. Glancing around with growing, visible nerves, his eyes darting toward every shifting shadow like the forest itself had started closing in on him.
He stood eventually, restless, unable to sit still any longer.
He started waking the others.
Groggy, confused voices rose around me, low and irritated, asking what was wrong, what was happening, why they were being shaken from sleep in the middle of the night when nothing had changed.
"We need to move," he said, voice tight, sharper than before. "Something's wrong."
He started toward me, clearly intending to grab me, haul me up, get all of us moving before whatever had spooked him caught up to wherever we were.
He never made it.
The moment he got close enough that I could see the whites of his eyes in the dark, his expression shifted, shock flooding every line of his face in the half-second before an arrow buried itself straight through his chest with a sound I would never, for the rest of my life, be able to forget.
He dropped to his knees right in front of me.
And then his lifeless body fell to the floor.
- Writer
