Page 84 of The Enemy's Daughter

My stomach cramps. I’m going to be sick.

Liam’s rough fingers grip mine. They feel foreign and wrong in my hand. “I haven’t stopped looking for you since you went missing. I’ve searched everywhere except the one place I couldn’t—here. I suspected they had you. It’s the only thing that made sense after I found Midas. It wasn’t until their guard we captured broke and gave up your location, that I finally let myself hope.”

Oh, bleeding skies.What has he done in my name?

My body trembles under the weight of my mistakes. I shouldhave found a way to tell Liam I was safe and wouldn’t be coming home. I could have stopped this.

Maybe I still can.

I pry my hand from Liam’s calloused fingers. “I’m sorry, Liam. I can’t go with you.”

“What?” His head tilts as his blue eyes spark with disbelief. He towers over me, much taller than Tristan. His broad shoulders are covered with dirt. “Why not?”

“My father—there’s so much you don’t know.”

“We don’t have time,” Liam says. “Explain it on the way.”

I take a step back and shake my head, then nearly lose my balance, the drug in my system making an inconvenient resurgence. “You go. I can’t.”

His face goes slack with confusion. “You want me to leave you here?”

I blink several times to clear my mind. “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m married to Tristan,” I say softly, with a gesture Tristan’s way. I watch as my words hit Liam like knives thrown from my own hand. It feels awful to betray him and the future that was planned for us, but I see no other option. “It’s complicated. I didn’t want it at first—”

Liam shakes his head. “No.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice nearly cracking. He has every right to be angry.

“No,” Liam repeats, but this time he draws a blade from his belt. He marches toward Tristan, then in one devastating heartbeat, slits Tristan’s throat.

Tristan grits his teeth through his gag as a red line splits openalong the side of his neck. His pain is mine—fire and agony. The cut begins to bleed. Then dark purplish blood spills onto his shirt.

“There,” Liam says. “You can’t be married to him if he’s dead.”

28

My body won’t move. I’m nothing more than a block of wood as Tristan fights against the bindings on his wrists, his anger and frustration building to toxic levels.

I can’t heal this. There’s no healing this.

Liam is unrecognizable as he strides back to me. He wipes the blood from his knife on his pants like it’s nothing more than the dew from wet grass. This can’t be real. There isn’t a shadow of regret on him. Where is the man who couldn’t stab Farron Banks?

His gaze burns into the side of my face. “It’s okay if you don’t want to watch.”

A scream starts from deep in my belly, building like a rumble of thunder and growing until I’m so full of noise I could split in half. I’ve never felt more powerless. Hopeless.

Liam’s hand brushes my back, and I jerk away as if I’ve been branded. It snaps me out of my prison of shock, and my feet finally unstick from the floor.

Shoving past Liam, I run to my husband and splay my hands over the wound, desperate to stop the bleeding. But it’s useless. I’museless. With a sob, I adjust my hold on him, but his hot blood flows between my fingers and won’t stop won’t stop won’t stop—

Creatorhelp me.

Clamps. My head lifts. We need clamps!

Spinning to Dr. Henshaw, I pat his chest, searching for the clamps he told me he always carries. I find nothing. Why forget them today of all days?

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