Winterskin (Book One of Wrath & Winter)

Beholden to It: Part Three

I shouldn't even let myself go back to Grams. I should just drag myself onto the outskirts and die.

But somebody needed to take care of them. Somebody needed to break their body so that the girls could eat.

On the outskirts, little cabins staring at me like a horde of twinkling bats eyes, my heart dropped even further.

Why were they outside?

Gram stood white-faced. Eva and Maddy were tangled in each other's arms.

It struck me. Struck me harder than a shield to the face.

We were being raided.

When Maddy and Eva saw me, they ran. Sprinted with tears gushing down their faces. Barely at the cabin's threshold, they collapsed into my arms and threatened to tip me over into the snow. They didn't seem to care about the blood, the broken bones.

Gram might as well have been a statue made of ice.

A commotion erupted from the inside of the cabin. The door hung from its hinges like a dangling scrap of skin. A bench slammed into the back wall. Gram's cauldron went flying. Colliding with wood before it rolled and thumped to its lumpy side. Cups and bowls danced out of the way of the Montbereau Guard.

I was broken. I was beaten. I pushed the girls toward Gram and limped inside.

"Get out."

Two shieldbrothers rampaged through the house. Holding up glass vials of something only to dash them against the ground. Stomping through the hearthfire and crushing up our coals. Destroying whatever was delicate enough to be trampled underfoot or thrown.

"I said: get. Out!"

And I flung myself at them. There was nothing else I could lose. Suffer to lose.

I wouldn't let Montbereau burn Gram and forget the rest of us in a dungeon. I wouldn't let them trudge up something they could use against her. Declare her a witch.

A round shield splintered in my face. Something cracked—my nose, my jaw? And I was sent tumbling backward. Arms windmilling. Tired legs giving up. Sending me crashing to the floor.

They don't even bother with words. They just go back to tearing our home apart.

I can't let them. I can't lose her too. I've suffered enough.

I've suffered.

I grab the closest thing to me—a destroyed piece of the bench that used to reside beneath the cloak hooks. It props me up and I drag it to the closest Guard. Fling it at him with all my might and it clips his ankle. Sends him spiraling to the floor. He caught himself with a grunt. Propped himself up on his forearm and sneered at me.

This was when I knew.

The vampire might not have killed me, but they would. I was lower than dirt to them now.

He removed his ax. It glinted in the soft light of the dawning morning. He tossed his shield to the side and it rolled toward his comrade, who was still removing objects. Still throwing things—pieces of our lives—to the ground as if they were trash.

The Guard charged me. Forced me against the nearest wall and held the blunt side of his ax against my neck.

He wouldn't waste a perfectly good sharp side on me.

He'd bludgeon me.

To death.

Right then, noise from the other side of the cabin stopped. Half a breath passed between us as a body flopped to the floor in harried silence that made my mouth go even drier. Then, he surfaced. Placed both hands against the guard's neck.