Page 25 of Bonds of Pain
Darius clears his throat. “If you two are done with your little drama, I’d appreciate?—“
“Shut up,” Maya and I say in unison.
A smile threatens the corner of my mouth. “You still haven’t answered my question. What do you want to do with that knife?”
“I want answers.” She shifts the blade slightly, its point now directed at my chest rather than my throat. “Why did you really bring me here? You could have interrogated him yourself.”
“I have. For hours.” I glance at Darius, whose bruised face tells its own story. “But I wanted to see what you’d do when faced with the uglier side of palace life.”
The knife twitches again. “Testing me?”
I shrug. This little back and forth is more fun than I thought it would be. Maybe she’ll stab me, after all. “Let’s say I’m evaluating you. Sounds better.”
The knife lowers slightly. “And if I’d started cutting him up?”
“That would have told me something about who you are.”
Her eyes narrow. “And now?”
“Now I know you’re not a sadist. But I still don’t know if you’ll be an asset or a liability here.”
She considers this, then pivots back to Darius, knife still in hand but no longer pointed at me. “Who paid you to let the attackers in?”
Darius sneers. “Like I’d tell an Omega bitch anything.”
I remain quiet, curious to see what she’ll do next.
Maya steps closer to him, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “You know what’s interesting about Omegas? Everyone underestimates us. They think we’re just for fucking and breeding.” She trails the flat of the blade along his cheek, not cutting, just threatening. “But we notice things. Like how your right eye twitches when you’re scared.”
She’s bluffing. If he had a tell, I’d have noticed it already, but Darius’s confidence still obviously falters.
“I’m not going to cut you,” she continues. “I don’t need to. You’re already terrified of what Prince Logan will do when he finds out you betrayed him.” She leans in closer. “But I could put in a good word. If you tell me who hired you.”
I suppress a smile. She’s more underhanded than I gave her credit for. Logan won’t give a shit about saving a traitor, no matter how prettily she asks for mercy.
Darius’s eyes dart between us. “You can’t protect me from the hangman’s noose.”
“Maybe not,” Maya agrees. “But a lot can happen between now and the end.”
He spits at her feet, just barely missing the mark as she takes a hasty step back. I surge forward, ready for a violent reaction, when she motions me back.
“If that’s how you feel, then I guess we’re done here,” she says with a sigh.
I watch Maya extend the knife toward me, her slender arm outstretched. There’s something different in her eyes now, a hardness that wasn’t there before. When I reach for the blade, she pulls back.
“Actually, I’ve changed my mind,” she murmurs.
Before I can process what’s happening, she pivots back toward the bound guard. Her arm swings in a wide, vicious arc, the blade flashing in the dim light. For a split second, I think she’s going to attack me. My muscles tense, mind rapidly assessing options to defend myself without hurting her, when the blade’s trajectory continues right past me.
The knife plunges down between Darius’s legs, embedding itself in the wooden chair with a solid thunk, just millimeters from his groin.
A blood-curdling scream tears from his throat, echoing off the stone walls. His entire body convulses against the restraints, chair legs scraping against the floor as he tries to escape what he clearly thought was imminent castration.
“Fuck!” he shrieks, his face drained of all color. A dark stain spreads across the front of his pants, though not the red of blood. The pathetic son-of-a-bitch pissed himself.
I remain perfectly still, calmly reassessing everything I thought I knew about Maya Tantamount.
I don’t think she has ever looked more beautiful than while pressing the edge of a knife blade against the tip of this idiot’s dick.
