Page 34 of The Big Bad Duke (The Shadows #9)

But Gideon only laughed louder, the sound echoing off the stone walls. “You take orders from the lowest of the low. You abducted a duke, and your orders are to what? Be my nursemaid? You’re not even allowed to actually hurt me. Why would I be scared of you?”

Leila watched in fascination as Gideon continued his verbal assault, his voice growing more confident and mocking with every word.

“And as far as your pathetic excuse for manhood goes,” Gideon continued, “you stick it anywhere near me, and I’ll twist it right off. I promise you, tiny thing that it is, I won’t even break a sweat doing it.”

The second guard couldn’t help himself—he let out an involuntary snort of laughter at his companion’s expense. Leila could see how it infuriated the first man even further.

In his rage and humiliation, the first guard shoved his companion hard, and the two began arguing.

Leila looked around the cell, searching for any way to defend herself. No stones lay close to her, no sharp objects. The only weapon she had was her shackles.

She didn’t have time to form another thought before the men’s argument faded, and the first guard, his face still burning with embarrassment and fury, turned back to her.

He was touching himself again—rather, yanking at his length—and she could see that Gideon’s taunts had somehow made him more aroused, not less.

Then he froze as something small and hard struck him directly on the head.

Leila blinked in confusion, watching as the man slowly and menacingly turned toward Gideon. What had just happened?

“I was right,” Gideon said, genuine wonder in his voice, as if he hadn’t quite expected his plan to work. “This bread really is like a weapon.”

He’d thrown the piece of bread she’d given him! Leila felt a strange sense of pride at Gideon’s resourcefulness.

But the guard’s reaction was the opposite. With a rageful growl—desperately trying to pull his trousers back up while maintaining some semblance of dignity—he rushed toward Gideon.

“No!” Leila cried out, but it was too late.

The man began kicking Gideon, his boots connecting with ribs, stomach, shoulders—anywhere he could reach. The chains rattled violently with each impact, and the grunts of pain that escaped Gideon made Leila whimper helplessly.

The second man joined in, and they both assaulted Gideon, who curled up on the floor to protect himself. Leila could hear the sickening sound of boots meeting flesh and see Gideon’s body jerking with each impact despite his attempts to shield himself.

“Stop!” Leila screamed, trying desperately to gain their attention. “Stop hurting him! I’ll do whatever you want, just stop!”

Better her than him.

She couldn’t bear to watch him suffer for her sake.

But her pleas only seemed to encourage them, and the situation spiraled rapidly from bad to worse.

One of the men reached into his boot and pulled out a short dagger.

A desperate scream tore from Leila’s throat.

What followed were the most agonizing seconds of her life, watching in helpless terror as the blade was raised above Gideon’s curled-up form.

She tracked the glint of the dagger with her eyes, trying to see where exactly Gideon lay, whether he was conscious, whether he could defend himself. Her heart felt like it might burst from the sheer terror of watching someone she cared about face mortal danger.

This was worse than anything they had planned for her all along. “Take me instead!” she cried. “Leave him alone!”

Fortunately, Gideon somehow managed to knock the blade from his attacker’s hand, sending it skittering across the stone floor.

The dagger slid in Leila’s direction, though it was still too far for her to simply reach it.

Taking advantage of the fact that both men were focused entirely on their assault on Gideon, she flattened herself against the floor and stretched her legs toward the weapon.

Inch by agonizing inch, she dragged the blade closer, her heart hammering as she waited for someone to notice what she was doing. Finally, she grasped the hilt and quickly hid the weapon beneath her body.

At that moment, using his chains as weapons, Gideon managed to trip one of his attackers. Leila couldn’t see which one in the darkness. The man went down hard, his head striking the stone floor with a sickening crack that echoed through the cell.

The remaining guard let out a yell of pure rage and began kicking Gideon with renewed vigor, his attacks becoming even more vicious in his fury over his fallen companion.

But before the situation could deteriorate further, the sound of running footsteps echoed from the corridor outside. Two more men burst into the cell, their faces masks of alarm and anger.

“Oi! You daft bastards!” one of them shouted, grabbing the enraged guard and physically dragging him away from Gideon’s battered form. “We wasn’t told to kill ’em!”

They helped drag the unconscious man with the head injury from the cell while trying to calm down his companion, whose rage seemed to have consumed him completely.

As the commotion died down and the cell fell back into relative quiet, Leila found herself staring at Gideon’s form in the darkness.

Her heart thumped loudly in her chest. Her eyes refused to look away from his unmoving body.

Was… was he dead?

* * *

Gideon slumped against the cold stone wall, his body a symphony of pain and exhaustion.

Every breath sent sharp spikes of agony through his ribs, and he could taste the metallic tang of blood trickling from his nose down to his split lip.

His left eye was beginning to swell shut, and a persistent ringing in his ears made it difficult to focus.

However, as he took a mental inventory of his injuries, he realized with satisfaction that the damage wasn’t as severe as it could have been.

The darkness of the cell had worked in his favor, making it difficult for his attackers to land precise blows.

More importantly, the guards had been either drunk or completely incompetent—possibly both.

Their kicks, while painful, had been sloppy and poorly aimed.

They’d tangled themselves in his chains more than once, stumbling over each other in their eagerness to inflict damage.

Half their attacks had connected with nothing but air, and even when their boots found their mark, they had missed his vital organs.

At least, he didn’t think they had done any permanent damage. His lungs burned with every breath, his head throbbed, and his entire body ached—but he could still think clearly enough to analyze his situation. He could sit upright. He could breathe.

During the assault, he had managed to protect his head by tucking his chin and raising his arms, using his forearms to block the kicks while simultaneously employing the chains as both shield and weapon.

The iron links had served him well—he’d used them to distract his attackers, tangle their legs, and trip them when the opportunity arose.

The memory of the fight played through his mind in fragmented pieces. The satisfying thud when he had successfully tripped the first guard, sending the man crashing to the stone floor, made him smile.

He was alive.

Battered, bloody, and exhausted—but alive.

They would have killed him, he was sure of it, if not for the timely arrival of the second set of guards.

Now he knew there were more than just the two loathsome men who had been bringing them their meager meals. The cell was under more extensive watch than he’d initially assumed. Or perhaps they had simply been fortunate, and this incident had occurred during a changing of the guard.

Either way, it was valuable intelligence—something that might prove useful if they ever managed to escape this place.

He let out a low groan, partly from pain but mostly in the hope that vocalizing his discomfort might somehow make it feel less intense.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t lift a finger to help me if I got hurt,” Leila’s voice cut through the darkness.

His head still pounded, so he couldn’t make out her tone. Was she joking? Or was that an accusation in her voice? Gratitude?

Yes, I lied. So what?

He had wanted to be cruel when he said those words, had wanted to hurt her the same way she had hurt him with her deception. And obviously, he had succeeded.

The truth was simpler than his wounded pride wanted to admit.

He would rather die than let anyone hurt her.

Anyone, it seemed, except himself.

He shifted against the wall, trying to find a position that didn’t send fresh waves of pain through his battered body.

“What makes you think that’s what I did?” he asked.

She didn’t answer. In the silence that followed, he could hear the soft rattle of her chains as she moved. The sound was different somehow, not the usual resigned shifting he had grown accustomed to, but something more purposeful.

He was too weak to wonder much about what she might be doing. His eyes drifted closed of their own accord, and he found himself leaning more heavily against the stone wall, letting it support his weight as consciousness began to ebb and flow like a tide.

He drifted in and out of awareness, caught in that strange liminal space between waking and sleeping, where pain became a distant, manageable thing.

He might have been sitting there for minutes or hours when he became aware of a gentle touch on his face.

Soft hands cradled his jaw, and the unexpected tenderness of the contact made his eyes flutter open. Through his swollen lids, he could make out Leila’s form crouching before him, her face close to his in the darkness.

She raised her hand, and he caught the glint of metal in the dim light.

The dagger.

She had managed to retrieve it and keep it hidden.

“They didn’t notice that you kicked it over to me,” she explained, her voice barely above a whisper as she began working on his shackles.

The metal of the blade scraped softly against the iron, and he could feel the vibrations of her efforts through the chains.

“Can you move?” she asked, her attention focused on the lock mechanism as she manipulated the dagger’s point.

Gideon took a careful mental inventory of his body, testing his limbs cautiously. Everything hurt, and he felt as weak as a newborn foal.

“Not very well,” he admitted, his voice barely a whisper.

She nodded, not seeming surprised by his answer. Her hands never paused in their work on his restraints.

“Then you need to rest,” she said, her tone practical but gentle. “But not for too long. They will figure out that they left the blade eventually and will come looking for it. Or worse, the Cardinal will arrive, and then we’ll never get out of here.”

“How do we leave?” he asked, then flinched as a particularly sharp stab of pain shot through his ribs.

“I have a plan,” she reassured him. The shackles gave way, releasing his wrists from their iron prison.

He flexed his fingers and rotated his bloody wrists, relishing the freedom.

“Does that plan involve me getting up?” he asked weakly, trying to add a humorous lilt to his words. “Because if so, it might just fail.”

It must have worked because she chuckled softly at his words.

“Rest first,” she said, and then he felt something cool and damp pressed gently against his face. The sensation was so unexpectedly soothing that he couldn’t suppress a small sigh of relief.

“What is that?” he asked, leaning instinctively into her touch.

“Just a wet cloth,” she answered. “My way of preserving water.”

In his battered mind, he didn’t quite understand what she meant. But the cloth was blessedly cool against his fevered skin, and her touch was infinitely gentle, and that’s all that mattered.

She shifted closer to him, and he found himself leaning against her slight form, drawing strength from her warmth and presence. Her free hand came up to cradle the back of his head, her fingers threading gently through his matted hair.

“Rest,” she whispered, and the word carried with it all the permission he needed to let his guard down, to stop fighting the exhaustion that threatened to claim him.

“Yes,” he answered, his voice barely audible even to himself. “But not for too long.”