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Thisis the man who has been blackmailing Eryx?

“Aye,” says Sarkis. “Yet there’s no master in here.” He burps loudly and strides toward my bed.

I leap off the other side, my stomach sinking as my heart tries to pound its way out of my chest. Why are these men here?

For the first time, I wish that Eryx didn’t sleep so far away from me. These men are here for him. Not me.

“Why are you in the duke’s bed?” Sarkis demands of me. “He been tupping you?”

“You do not get to barge into my room and ask lewd questions.”

The man takes another step forward. “I’ll ask anything I like of you.”

“Yeah,” another says, “cooperate or we’ll do you in like we did that butler fellow.”

Damasus. “Have you hurt my staff?”

I come around the bed, thinking to pass them all and check on Damasus and the rest of the household, but an arm snakes around my waist.

“Where do you think you’re going?” one of the men asks.

Another says, “You’re already dressed for bed. Best you climb back into it, and I’ll follow.”

I try to twist out of the arms that hold me, but they’re tight like a vise. A flare of panic rushes through me. I claw at the face of the man holding me.

“Ah,” he shrieks, finally letting go and raising a careful hand to his marred flesh. I back up to the far wall, putting as much distance as possible between them and me.

“Damasus!” I call out. “Damasus, can you hear me? Are you all right?”

“She scratched me!” the man I struck says, turning a bleeding face to Sarkis.

“You shouldn’t have touched the lady,” their leader returns. “That’s not why we’re here. We need to find the monster and deal with it.”

“Maybe this will help.” Another nameless man steps forward out of the crowd. I press myself against the wall of my room until my back hurts, but I can’t stop him from getting within reaching distance.

He slaps me across the face.

I gasp as I flinch away from the blow, my hand hovering over the stinging skin.

“You need to scream for us, lady,” he says.

“What?”

“I said scream.” He grabs my hair, pulls me up by my roots, and Iwhimper and gasp at the pain, trying to kick outward, but the angle is wrong, and I can’t make contact.

“Don’t think she cares for your methods,” another brute says. “Let’s try mine.”

I scream before the knife makes contact with my skin, but once it does, my voice turns more shrill. He starts at my wrist, raking the steel upward slowly and deliberately while the other man holds me in place.

I fight back with all I have, twisting and thrashing. When that doesn’t work, I try to go limp, but they’re too strong. My pained exclamations are the only constant as that knife makes a path upward, my voice increasing as he presses the metal ever deeper.

And then a shadow moves in front of me. The man with the knife goes flying against my wardrobe, wood cracking before he hits the floor. The man holding me is startled and turns, finally releasing my arms.

I’m too scared to look at the damage. The pain seems to come from everywhere on my forearm, and I feel the blood oozing downward, dripping from my fingers. My screaming has turned to sobbing, and I can barely see through my tears as another one of the brutes goes flying up into the ceiling, smashing through the hanging chandelier before denting the plaster. Another man breaks his fall when he comes careening back to the floor, and glass rains down atop them both.

The shadow continues to move impossibly fast. It flies toward the man who’d been holding me in a hard-to-follow streak. The next thing I know, he’s airborne and shattering the glass of my window before disappearing outside.

Now I’m not the only one in the room screaming.