“Maddie—”
I beat his sweater into his chest, got up on my toes and screeched, “Where are the other two?”
His fingers began to curl on my biceps and he started, “Maybe we should—”
I pulled from him, moved blindly away and saw it.
Tracks and drag marks in the snow leading along the front of the house and around the corner.
I sprinted that way, following the tracks. I raced down the side of the house, into the back garden, past a pretty gazebo, a large greenhouse and into the forest beyond where I saw two torches lighting the outside of a small outbuilding.
Without hesitation, I ran to it and stormed in.
There was a man hanging by his hands from a hook. He was shirtless and bleeding profusely from a variety of wounds as well as a serious pummeling he took to his face.
Hans and Remi were standing close to him.
There was another man, also shirtless and bleeding, tied to a chair in the center of the space.
Derrik was standing behind him.
Laures was working him.
When I arrived, all the men looked to me in surprise and they kept their eyes on me when I stomped straight to the man in the chair, shoving past Laures and I bent, getting right in his face.
“What did you do to her?” I shrieked.
A hand came to rest on my shoulder and I heard Remi whisper, “Maddie.”
I shrugged it off and wrapped my gloved hand under the man’s jaw and shoved it back.
He grunted but I dropped my face back to his and screamed, “She’s just a little girl!” I got closer, my fingers curling deep into his flesh. “You monster! What did you do to her?”
“Mad—” Remi tried again but I whirled and shot past him.
My hand darting out, I nabbed the knife on Laures’ belt.
“Bloody hell.” I heard Hans mutter but I didn’t hesitate.
No, I didn’t.
I didn’t hesitate or think.
I was f**king focused.
I turned back to the man in the chair, held the point of the knife to the hinge of his jaw and demanded, “Who sent you?”
The man’s eyes held mine and he said nothing.
I pressed the tip into his flesh, he pushed back against the chair and I screeched, “Who sent you?”
He again said nothing.
Controlled by emotion, still burning inside and out, I took the knife from his jaw and sunk it violently into the flesh of his shoulder.
He let out a pained grunt that didn’t register on me.
I just pulled the knife out to three simultaneous masculine “bloody hells” and one “by the gods” and returned it to his jaw.
“Who sent you?”
Then suddenly I wasn’t in his face anymore, neither did I have the knife.
I was, instead, pressed back deep into Apollo’s body with his arm around my belly.
And then, with Apollo, we leaned forward as he flashed the knife out.
And that was when I watched the gaping, red gash across the man’s throat slither open, blood pouring down his chest. He sucked in a breath, got zero air and an instant later, found his death with surprise in his eyes.
I had no reaction to this. I also had no time to have a reaction.
Without hesitation, Apollo turned both of us and we were across the room like a shot. He held me to his front as he held the knife to the man hanging on the hook’s throat.
“Now you know I will not waver,” he growled. “Who sent you?”
The man was staring with big eyes at the freshly dead man in the chair but when Apollo pressed the knife to his throat, his eyes shot to him.
And I watched them grow cold.
“The queen is just,” he announced bizarrely.
“The queen is not here,” Apollo returned.
“She’ll not be best pleased, you dispense justice in your gardener’s shack,” he stated and I finally looked around.
Yep. We were in a gardener’s shack.
I turned my head, tipped it back and aimed my eyes at Apollo’s stony face. “Honey, I bet I can make him to talk with those hedge clippers.” I threw a hand toward the man’s crotch. “He won’t be needing that in prison.”
Apollo spared me a glance as I heard Laures chuckle but just as quickly as he looked at me, he looked back to the man.
“Information or I get my lady some hedge clippers,” he shared.
The man’s eyes grew round for a half a second, before he covered it and declared, “I demand a trial.”
“You’ll not sit in prison, doling out information for leniency,” Apollo shot back. “You talk here, or you die here.”
Nice. That was a good line.
“You’re already to answer to Queen Aurora for coldblooded murder,” the man retorted, tipping his head toward the man in the chair.
“The queen is just,” Apollo whispered. “But she also lost her husband to the schemes of traitors.”
The man blanched.
Goodie.
Now we were getting somewhere.
Apollo moved back to target. “Who sent you?”
The man said nothing.
“Again, who sent you?” Apollo repeated.
The man remained silent.
I watched the staring contest from close up.
It was scary. It was also frustrating.
“For God’s sake, would someone just get me the hedge clippers?” I snapped.
Apollo again looked down at me. A second later, he pulled me away from the man but pushed me gently to the side and I found myself not held by him but—I looked up—by Achilles.
“Take her to the dower house,” he ordered. “Stay with her.”
“But—” I started as Achilles rounded my waist with an arm and started pulling me away.
Apollo’s eyes sliced to me.
“Dove,” he said softly. “Go.”
I glared at him. Then I glared at the man on the hook.
I transferred my glare back to Apollo and blew out on a sigh, “Oh, all right.”
Apollo’s eyes moved over my face but I lost sight of him when Achilles turned me to the door.
I was out the door but it wasn’t yet closed behind me when I heard him say, “Hans, hand me those clippers.”
The door banged shut.
I smiled.
Chapter Thirteen
Lioness
In my crazy dream that was tinted blood red, I heard Apollo order from far away a growling, “Leave us. Now.”
My dream drifted to some ruins around a pool filled with blood when I felt my cloak that I’d wrapped around me to keep warm after Achilles finally got me to lay down thrown off.
I blinked.
My skirts were tossed up.