Page 65 of Blood Beneath the Snow

Deadly at worst.

If the Hellbringer was asking for a death sentence, it wasn’t my business to do anything about it. I shrugged off the gnawing unease and allowed myself to enjoy the warmth. Maybe I would wake in the morning to find a dead body keeping watch over me.

I chewed my lip, confused as to why a killer would offer me not only survival but comfort. There was no one else around to witness such an act of kindness. No one to impress.

Did the Hellbringer care what I thought about him?

No,I told myself, pushing down the part of me that desperately wanted the opposite to be true.Mass murderers don’t care what their enemies think of them.

I pulled the thick fabric of his cloak to my face and breathed in deeply. The scent of pine and fresh snow was intoxicating, straight from my dreams. It must have been what triggered my lustful subconscious. It reminded me of home. And beneath it was a smell I couldn’t identify—something unique to the Hellbringer. Rubbing my thighs together offered me no relief, and I refused to do anything in front of him that would come back to bite me. Muttering curses under my breath, I settled in. It was going to be a long night.

The muscles in my armsburned and my breaths rattled in my lungs. Painstakingly, I lowered myself to a position parallel with the ground before pushing myself back up into a plank again.

I dropped to the ground, exhausted. The cold stone felt amazingon my burning skin. Push-ups were cruel—probably the reason the Hellbringer kept making me do them.

“You complain too much,” he’d told me that morning. His order before he left for the day was “Do one hundred push-ups in silence.”

He didn’t vanish in time to miss the obscene gesture I threw him.

I rolled onto my back and stared at the ceiling. Two nights ago I’d taught the Hellbringer a traditional line dance. The same one I’d learned at Halvar’s when I was barely a teenager, finally learning what it meant to be Nilurae and royalty, despised by my family. The Hellbringer would never know how much those simple steps meant to me.

Two nights ago I’d had a highly inappropriate dream about the man, too. And now I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The dream served to confuse me more than anything, and over the past few days my frustration had only built. My body made certain to remind me I hadn’t found release that night, and it made my stomach far too eager to swoop at even a hint of decency from my captor.

The only thing keeping me sane was allowing myself permission to reminisce as I fell asleep. Knowing I’d be able to imagine him touching me brought a perverse sense of relief that allowed me to focus during the day. I hated it but accepted it grudgingly. There was no other way to keep my head on straight.

Between snatches of lustful imaginings, I began to wonder what more lay beneath the general’s mask. I hadn’t forgotten my determination to level the playing field between him and me; despite our few moments of camaraderie, I still knew next to nothing about what made him tick. But I had no clue where to even begin my search for answers.

Prone on the floor, cheek pressed against the cool ground, I made a list in my mind: Lurae of death. Powerful general. That was all I knew.

Terrible sense of humor. Rude and bossy.

I smirked. Couldn’t forget to add those to the list.

Glancing around the room, I carefully took everything in again, hunting for some clue about the Hellbringer’s origins. I’d already searched the place, but then I’d been looking for any means of escape. Now I was looking for signs of life. My eyes traveled over the lanterns, armoire, fireplace, shelves. Nothing here spoke of his identity.

It was like my thoughts had summoned him. He appeared without warning and the soldier with him disappeared instantly, leaving me alone with my captor once more. “I brought you dinner from camp,” he said, holding up a basket of something.

In a matter of minutes I was enjoying a bowl of stew while the Hellbringer sat across from me. My mental list returned to the front of my mind. Time to add to it. Without preamble I spoke. “Tell me something true, Hellbringer.”

He stilled in his chair, tension lining the set of his shoulders. Before he had the chance to derail my line of questioning with whatever fact he deemed most worthy of sharing, I asked a question. “Do you live here?”

Did I sense a flicker of emotion in the silence, hidden behind the skull mask? “When I am participating in the war, yes.”

“Why don’t you stay with your legions?”

I waited for him to answer, but as the quiet dragged on for a minute, I moved on. “If this is your home, don’t you want the bed? Why do you let me sleep there?”

He shrugged. “The bed is simply a formality. I’m used to sleeping on the floor.”

Used to sleeping on the floor? Was that from being at war for so long, or some kind of ruthless upbringing? To be the cause of mass homicide…surely something in his childhood must have gone horribly wrong to put him in such a terror-worthy position.

“How old are you?” I fired the question at him in between bites of stew.

“How old do you think I am?”

“I don’t know. It’s impossible to guess with your whole…” I gestured to him, trying to indicate his armor and the mask. “You could be an old man for all I know.”

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