Page 18 of The Chains You Defy

The backroom was surprisingly spacious and featured several tables prepared for gambling, although the furniture was unused at the moment.

The stale smell of cold tobacco, ale, and foul body odor had imprinted itself deeply into the walls. Curling my nose and dragging half of my upper lip up in disgust,I adjusted my breathing so I didn’t suffer too much under this olfactory challenge.

If I remembered correctly, gambling of all kinds was strictly forbidden in Ivreiana, so this den was highly illegal. Surely, I’d heard about the why in one of the many lessons about Galanta’s nemesis—my grandfather’s words, not mine—I just didn’t care enough to pull out the memory from the back of my mind, especially not when the first face I spotted made me see red, and the vibrations inside of me boiled over.

The cadence of my warning growl would have raised the small hairs on the arms of anyone sane, and I wasn’t able to stop baring my teeth as my feet propelled me to the cause of my outburst.

Someone would die tonight.

“You. Boy. What the fuck areyoudoing here?”

“Helping to fixyourmistake. Didn’t I tell you from the beginning that Naya was safer with Rewi and me?” The village boy who had envisioned Nayana as the mother of his children glared at me as if he wanted to kill me as much as I yearned to annihilate him.

Sword or dagger?

Gritting my teeth so hard they hurt, I reminded myself that Naya would be even more cross with me if I sent her so-called friend to an early grave. There wasn’t one amicable undertone audible as I snarled at him. “No one wantsyou here. Leave.”

“Actually, I asked them to join us,” Fig chimed in, and my wrathful glower zeroed in on him. First, the sleeping draught—and now he was burying a blade into my back? I was more than tempted to rip him apart at this very moment and barely held on to the last shreds of my sanity.

“Hello, sexy man.”

My head spun around, and my eyes narrowed as I spotted the woman called Rewani, who prided herself on being Naya’s best friend—as if—from her pathetic hometown. Maybe she’d had that status back in the day, but the spot had been taken over by me months ago, and I could only hope the woman was aware of this. Otherwise, she could join the boy six feet under.

“I’m not happy you lost Naya.”

“Well, guess what? I’m not ecstatic she ran away and got herself kidnapped either.”

“You knew she’s a flight risk.”

“Stop speaking as if you comprehend past events better than I.” Glaring from Rewani to Bryon, my face contorted into a feral visage. I wasn’t even trying to subdue the predatory energies coiling around me like an invisible force field.

“Dion, calm down.” Antas put his hand on my shoulder. “You will need your strength for later.”

“I contacted the two because they arrived in Ivreiana a while ago, and they’re the only contacts we can trust.” Fig intervened and almost casually positioned himself between me and the two humans.

Fucking pricks, all of them. They could consider themselves fortunate that I was so disgustingly weak at the moment.

I was about to snarl some more at everyone when the door opened, and a man with deep red hair wearing a thick beard of the same color entered the room. His stocky build couldn’t fool me. He had more than enough muscles, and the way he moved with trained agility told me he wasn’t harmless, even if his face seemed friendly and open. The clothes he wore were of excellent quality, but what tipped me further to the edge of insanity—more than the presence of the boy—was his leather armor, which bore the sigil of the King of Merchants.

My chest rumbled from another low growl, spilling over my pursed lips as I realized for whom the human male was working. I’d rip him apart in proxy for the real enemy, hoping violence would keep me together long enough until Perran Feroy himself was at my mercy.

My fingers twitched as I imagined how I’d tear off his limbs with my bare hands and force his own blood down his throat and nose until the liquid flooded his airways so his heart, brain, and lungs would collapse at the same time.

The man’s eyes roamed over everyone present and eventually settled on me, in total disregard for the danger he was in. Was he displaying stupidity or bravery? “Good, my message reached you. I’m Nancy Ajutor. And you’re Dion, aren’t you?”

“Who wants to know? Your boss? I’ll carve my name into your bloody, broken torso and send the remains back to him piece by fucking piece as a declaration of what his imminent future will hold.”

“Oh, please don’t. Perran has no idea I’m here. If he had any inkling, I’d be dead already.”

Everyone, not only me, regarded him suspiciously, and I prowled over to him, stopping in his personal space, my teeth on full display. “Explain.”

“There isn’t much to disclose except that I want to aid the young woman currently locked in a cell under Perran Feroy’s headquarters. Luckily, I was able to gain an inch of her trust, so she told me your name.”

I grabbed his shoulders and shook the man so hard his bones rattled. And yet, he wore a brave face. “Then bring us there instantly.”

“Believe me, I would if I could. But storming the compound with only so few people is far too dangerous. What I can do is give you information—everything I know—and I can help you from the inside, but you need to tread carefully. Feroy’s place is crawling with guards, mercenaries, and outlaws. There have been reports of countless gruesome murders along the trail he traveled on, so he expects the men who have an interest in his prisoner to appear sooner or later in an attempt to rescue her. Since she hasn’t answered any of his questions, he hopes to get more insight from you. So he tripled theguard staff around the mansion, and some of his new employees he’d bought right out of prison.”

Pride bloomed in my chest and warmed my heart upon hearing that Nayana had stayed quiet, even if doing so had been unnecessary. Feroy could just as well knowwhoandwhatwas coming for him. I didn’t give a single flying fuck.