nna

ling ring around my stone table, their steel

e flabby jowls of her florid face quivering with vicious delight. Beside her, the treac

against the stone table wi

where this vile creature had withheld my crusts of bread and gleefully driven

break the inner doors and surround your master's daughter with weapons? What, did Co

ss must have knocked her wits against the river rocks! This old servant belongs to Lady Deloris! I take commands only from the a

re you standing there for? Take this wild animal down! Pin her arms, clamp the iron gag between h

s scraping the stone as two burly men st

lted my head, looking straight past the iron tru

ted hall with the weight of ancient law. "By feudal decree, even Concubine Deloris is nothing more than a vassal bound by blood-contract ben

med guards that she had no legal rank as a true Lady struck her deepest, most humiliating sore spot. "Eliann

ry eyes and whimpering, "Madam, you see how she barks! I offered prayers and

e plucked from a wandering tavern troupe before crawling into my father's bed. Singing, weeping, and playing th

pale, their chests heavi

u insolent little bitch!" she snarled, dropping all pretense. Rolling up her thick woolen sle

the air before my forehead, my rig

drove my thumb into the major nerve cluster beneath the

AC

splintering bone echoe

ony as the fractured bone tore through the meat of her forearm! Her immense weight c

d in absolute shock, their grip

breaking a breath. Sadie-who had secured the side passages and slipped silently ba

sweat from my knuckles, looking do

ast. "Give her twenty slaps across the mouth. Beat her unt

ha shrieked through foaming lips, "I am Lady Deloris's

I murmure

hoisted Martha up by her thick collar like a slaughtered sow, and drove her o

P!

isoned needles, and cold cellar beatings. Within seconds, twenty savage blows landed cleanly. Blood, pink saliva, and s

p, her face swollen into a grotesque, purple ruin, glassy eyes

rrified silence f

g backward in sync, completely paralyzed by the cold-blooded brutality. Deloris

ttered beyond repair. She turned frantically to the dozen guards. "What are

ngle gua

someone who had climbed out of a charnel pit-washed over every man in the room. The lead guard took one look into m

y into the corridor shadows, lowerin

authority had evap

eward, who was trembling like a leaf behind

r Kristal and Sixth Sister Beatrice are not kneeling on this floor before the blood o

he hitched up his long tunic, stepped over his groaning wife, and sprinte

lutching her chest as if s

ble, leaning my cheek against my knuc

own the outer gallery, and Kristal Stanley swept into the courtyard alongsid