Page 21

I push myself up in bed, biting back a yelp at the intense pain that flares across my back.

“Why am I here?” I ask.

“I won’t let you die.”

Again, I don’t know whether him saving me is a kindness or a curse.

It’s obviously a curse, you dumb bimbo. He ain’t saving you to romance your ass.

“You shot me, then tied me up and dragged me through the snow.” Just saying those words forces a shiver through me.

His blue eyes are steady on me. “I did.”

I roll a shoulder, the joint achingly sore.

“My arm was pulled out of its socket,” I say, remembering the excruciating sensation.

He gazes at me for a long moment, looking every inch the damnable angel, then nods.

I glance down at myself. My shirt is gone, replaced by some stranger’s—a large woman with an outdated wardrobe, judging by the garish floral print of it.

Someone saw me topless. My eyes slide to Pestilence, who’s staring at me passively.

It was probably him, which means that he’s now seen both my vagina and my boobs.

Ugh. Why me?

I move my hand, the action feeling constrained. Pushing back a sleeve, I notice that my wrists are bound in soft white linen. I thumb one of the bandages.

Had Pestilence tended to me?

I remember the vicious way he yanked the arrowheads out of my back.

There’s no way …

My attention is distracted by the horrible throb of my back. I sit forward, to take some of the pressure off, and I feel cloth dig into the skin of my stomach.

Lifting up the edge of the shirt, I stare at my torso, which, like my wrists, is wrapped in layer upon layer of bandages.

I run my thumb over the linen. “Who did this?”

Pestilence levels me an unreadable look.

“You?” I finally ask.

I feel my blood burning beneath my skin with horror and embarrassment and … something else at the thought of him ripping away my clothes and mending me. I try to imagine him cleaning and dressing my wounds, and I find I can’t. I don’t want to.

His lips thin. “Remember my kindness.”

“Yourkindness?” I say in disbelief. “You were the one whoinflictedthese wounds.”

And you’ll do it again and again and again until it breaks me.

Gah, he was right when he promised me suffering.

His upper lip ticks, like he’s fighting a grimace.

Pestilence stands, his large frame looming over me. “Don’t try to escape again, mortal,” he warns, and then he leaves the room.