"Since when do we kill children?" Rowe said from behind the fire, his tired eyes deeply unhappy with Cael.

  "Since we got the bloody king's daughter." Cael’s eyes were locked in on M.

  M quietly dropped his sword without protest. Leo shook his small head hard at him, as if to say I’m sorry.

  Sera was taken aback by this unexpected event, who are these two? She thought to herself.

  Pike pounced on M from behind, but one man wasn't enough, M’s body strength was exceptional. Edric had to come help and together they drove him down. Then quickly dragged him in front of the tree. M could try and break free, but he knew it was too risky, Cael still had Leo, knife at his throat.

  “Let’s just kill them both and be done with it!” Bram shouted angrily.

  Suddenly, Cael’s eyes widened in excitement. "What if he's the princess's guard?” Cael looked M over with his calculating muddy eyes. "We could get paid even more for the ransom!"

  “How can we know for sure?” Wilas questioned quickly.

  "Let's just ask her. Bram! Remove her cloth."

  Bram removed the cloth from Sera's mouth and dropped it on the floor, Edric pulled M's hood back.

  "Is this one of your guards?" Cael questioned.

  Sera looked down at M for exactly one second. Then, "Yes! He is." Her purple eyes were bright and quick and entirely committed to the lie. "Hadrian! Didn't I tell you to stay by me at all times?!" She had definitely rehearsed this tone on actual guards.

  Smart. If she had said no, M knew, these men would have killed him without discussion.

  “Tie his hands up quickly!“ Cael ordered, knife still on Leo’s throat. He knew M was strong, just by looking at him and he was not going to take any chances.

  "Why the fuck does your guard have a child with him?" Wilas said, his brow furrowing.

  "It’s his squire!" Sera said with energy while looking at Leo. "Matthew! It was far too dangerous for you to come." She shook her head with convincing disappointment.

  M’s hands were now fully enveloped in ropes.

  Cael nodded, “Tie the kid to the tree as well.” he said as he threw Leo to Wilas.

  "But where's his fucking armour?" Wilas questioned again, glaring at M as he swiftly tied Leo to the tree as well. “And why’s the child wearing peasant clothes?!”

  “We… Needed to blend in.” M swiftly made up a lie on the spot.

  Sera nodded hard.

  "Our location might've been exposed." Cael said looking around the camp’s surroundings.

  "It hasn't," Sera said with certainty, pulling her chin up. She sighed. "Hadrian is a lonely man…" A small frown crossed her extraordinarily expressive face. "He barely talks to anyone, let alone gives anyone information, he hates all the other guards."

  The kidnappers laughed except Cael and Rowe.

  “We did not want to hurt any of you.” M tried explaining as he tugged on his ropes. “Just wanted to-”

  “Shut your trap!” Bram hissed. “We don’t give a fuck what you wanted. Tryna be honourable my ass.”

  Edric rapidly tied M to the same tree as the princess. He noticed a silver ring on M’s left hand. He swiftly slid it off M’s finger and dropped it into his pocket without a word. So quick not even the other’s had noticed he had taken something from M.

  “Give it back.”

  Edric didn’t look at him.

  “Give my ring back.” He repeated, tone much darker. The promise he had made to Maria sitting in the back of his mind.

  Edric slapped M across the face with his open hand. The sound of it cutting through the camp. “He’s just speaking gibberish.” turning to the others while trying to act clueless himself.

  Now all three of them were tied to the same tree, Sera in the middle of the tree. M to her right, Leo to her left. Their hands next to one another.

  "Wilas! Take that disgusting black horse and put it with the others." Cael ordered. It was clear he hated horses for some reason.

  Wilas did as he was told and walked to the black beauty. He tried tugging on K's reins but got nowhere. K reared so suddenly and magnificently that Wilas stumbled backward. The horse’s hooves came down and he reared again, eyes wild even for a horse.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

  "I can't!" All of them quickly went to the horse to try and subdue it. It took a good few minutes before they could even lay hands on K properly. Leo giggled watching the scenes unfold, six grown men being humiliated by a horse.

  Sera glanced at the laughing child sharply. “Don’t show your teeth child,” Sera whispered elegantly to Leo. “They’ll know you’re not nobility.”

  Leo's giggling stopped. He ran his tongue over his teeth self consciously.

  "Are they really yellow?" He whispered back with a frown.

  "Dreadfully," Sera said, looking straight ahead.

  M’s majestic horse reared again and again, enormous and furious, but there were too many of them and in the end three grabbed the reins at once and hauled and tied him heavily alongside their own horses.

  Even for men this strong, subduing K was noeasy task.

  They walked back to M, towering over him.

  "Look at his eyes," Bram said, his blunt face going strange.

  Cael looked at M's mismatched eyes for a moment. Then his gaze dropped slowly to the green cloak and stayed there.

  "Take his cloak off," Cael said. "I need to see if he's got anything under it."

  "No." M's eyes went wide. The word came out quiet but stripped to its bone. "Please… Don’t. Not that."

  Sera looked at M in surprise. She had thought him brave, had revised her opinion of him upward considerably in the last ten minutes. But seeing him beg like this for a piece of clothing, she looked at him a bit confused. His face wasn't brave at all now.

  "Please don't!" M shouted, powerlessly. The expressionless face that had sat on him through everything was gone. What was left was dread, naked and unguarded. "Anything but that!"

  Pike stepped forward and ripped the cloak off M's shoulders, then unstrapped his scabbard, patted down his body, checking for anything hidden. He then found the coin pouch inside the cloak and held it up.

  "Getting all nervous for a few coins?" Bram laughed loudly. "Pathetic."

  M's face was awful now. Breathing rapid, eyes too wide, the look of a man who knew exactly what was coming but couldn’t stop it. "Please," he said again, his voice stripped of everything except the begging. "Just put my cloak back on me now. That's all I ask."

  Leo stared at him. That story couldn't have been true, he thought. Could it?!

  "You tried to free her," Cael said, his scarred lip curling. "No."

  They all stared at M then… it came.

  "AAAAAAAaaaAAAAA—"

  A sound with no warning. Tearing out of M's chest as though it had been compressed there under enormous pressure and the cloak was the only thing containing it in. It was worse than a scream. It climbed immediately past the point of any human throat should reach and kept going, fracturing at the top into something disgustingly wicked, bouncing off the trees and pouring out into the forest in every direction until even the birds went quiet. The sound was LOUD.

  It hurts, it hurts, it FUCKING hurts. Like a million WORMS eating me from inside, like I’m swimming in FIRE. M's body had stopped belonging to him. His back arched away from the tree in a bow that should not have been possible, the ropes sawing through the skin of his wrists as he convulsed against them. His heels drove into the dirt over and over, his head cracked back against the bark again and again without stopping, every tendon in his neck standing out like rope, every vein visible and straining, his mouth stretched so wide his jaw looked like it might leave him.

  Leo's body seized. He slammed back against the tree. His face wrenched away and then turned back, the sound was so loud, he needed it to stop. Jaw shaking violently.

  The story was true, Leo thought. It's true it's true it's true.

  Even Sera came apart. She looked at M as her face opened up in shock. She pulled at the ropes with both hands on pure animal instinct, the body trying to create distance from a sound which was not right, not natural, and was not something the world was supposed to contain.

  Bram stood with his massive flat-nosed face emptied of everything. His mouth hung open slightly. A large man made small by a larger scream.

  Edric stumbled backward three steps and sat down hard on a root with both hands over his mouth, his soft brown eyes wide and fixed on M.

  Wilas had his sword out. He didn't even know when he had drawn it. There was nothing to draw it against. He held it because he needed to hold something while M's voice climbed and climbed and would not stop.

  Pike was shaking his head slowly, eyes wide in disbelief of the sound.

  Cael had not moved. Face sharp and calculating as always.

  "Put—" M's voice cracked completely. "BACK ON ME— AAAAAAHHHHH— PUT IT BACK ON ME—"

  "Put it back on him," Rowe said calmly. Barely audible.

  Nobody moved, they were all frozen.

  "He'll bring every guard and soldier within this forest down on this camp," Rowe said, louder now, pushing the dark hair back from his tired hollow face, letting what was in his eyes be seen clearly. He looked at Cael. "Put it back on him." he said with a bit more fury.

  Cael held the green cloak out toward Rowe, without a word he took it. Rowe crossed to M and crouched then drew the cloak back across M's shoulders, with both hands, pressing it flat, smoothing it carefully into place.

  The horrific screaming descended. Fragmented into ragged broken sobs, then shuddering gasps, then long uneven breaths. M's body released itself slowly, the convulsing easing, his head dropping forward onto his chest.

  Silence settled over the camp.

  "What in god's name was that…?" Edric whispered.

  "Didn't know the king hired freaks…" Wilas said aloud.

  Cael looked at the cloak for a long moment. Then his dirty-water eyes moved behind him to K, still tied with the other horses, the black horse was trembling faintly, pulling at the rope that held him, trying to escape.

  Something shifted in Cael's face.

  He walked to K slowly, drawing a knife from his belt. He took hold of K's bridle with one hand then brought the blade up slowly to his flank.

  M's head jumped up instantly.

  Cael wickedly smiled, it was the worst thing in the camp, worse than the knife.

  "Don't… Don't do that please." M’s voice had nothing left in it except despair.

  Cael slowly pressed the knife into the black horse's flank.

  The blood quickly came dark and quiet, a single thin line running down the black coat. K couldn't rear anymore. The fight had gone out of him. K made the saddest of sounds, it hurt. A sound low and miserable, that no horse should ever make. "You scream like that again," he tilted his head, "and I make your horse bleed even more." But Cael had no idea that M did not scream of his own free will. That the sound had been torn out of him against his will.

  Bram burst out laughing first, loud and ugly. Wilas grinned and shook his head. Even Pike allowed himself a slow, cruel smile. Edric looked away. Rowe neither said nor did anything.

  M held his gaze. His hands behind the tree were shaking so hard he could feel the rope vibrating against his wrists. His red eye had begun to burn brightly, glowing. He was ENRAGED. His jaw was set so hard the muscle jumped in his cheek repeatedly. He hurt my horse. He HURT K.