Bride Behind the Mask

Chapter 9: Bittersweet

Seeing as I'd hoped for 1k reads when I started writing this story, I am so amazed with the support I've received thus far. Regardless of whether you vote or comment, I am thankful all the same to every one of you who has spared minutes or hours of your time to read my work. Again, I dedicate this chapter to a random commenter in thanks: @jwgw912.

Chapter 9: Bittersweet

And those were Drake's last comprehensible words of murmur before he fell victim to a blanket of darkness and shards of pain.

The ceiling rocked. The room rocked. His whole body rocked, making his insides squirm.

"Don't you dare throw up again. This carriage stinks enough as it is."

Drake wanted to turn his head to that annoying voice, but his muscles refused to obey his command.

"You trained your men well, I'll give you that. Staving off our Jeds for that long? I'm rather impressed."

He blinked twice in agreement. Did that mean they were alive?

"When I got there, the big one was holding off two with his axe," she continued.

Romund? What about the others?

"The rest were all dead."

He hated her apathetic tone, but it didn't stop him from closing his eyes and mourning for each of his men. Fulke, Rewis, Jurqay and Gery. They were more than just warriors who fought for him; they were his friends.

"The Guild kills, Drake Rohan. We do not save lives... often."

'Twas true they might have saved him. Yet instead of simply giving him an antidote, the she-devil chose to use that painful, half-arsed acupuncture to halt the flow of toxins instead of simply eradicating them from his body. He grunted in disagreement.

"My orders were to keep you alive, but there was certainly nothing along the lines of ensuring your bodily comfort. I could care less if you lost a limb or two," she scoffed.

Bloody bitch-devil.

"I was told to pass on a valuable piece of information, though. Someone from the Court of Lyons offered the D'Arcy scum fifty thousand gold for your head."

D'Arcy? He thought the Guild's former second-in-command had died long ago. He wanted to ask about Isabella too, but...

"Westdawn was a trap. One you fell right into, idiot. Now, since you owe us for your life and that precious information—"

Ugh, he knew they kept him alive for something.

"—you shall be our bait."

Her last words were accompanied by the crank of a lever and a violent kick to the side of his ribs, and he couldn't stop himself from rolling out the open back of the moving carriage.

Just before his head made impact with the ground, he heard a man shout "Dawn! Did you really have to do that?" and her responding cackle...

For a week he'd slipped in and out of a raging fever. Amelia looked on helplessly as Drake twisted and turned restlessly in bed. She laid a hand over his forehead, and immediately drew back from the burning heat that emanated from him.

From her own diagnosis, and that of two other healers that William had called in from nearby towns, there were remnants of curare still in his blood. They could not identify the species of curare he was afflicted with, and though the antidotal elixirs they'd given him had helped, the poison was subsiding slowly.