The Hunchback's Reluctant Bride ✔

28 | Bargains

Vadde tumbled out of the water, crying.

People hurried to clean her feet then bound them; someone tended to her back.

She simply bawled.

"Move her," Aggu instructed.

Matax, now fair skinned and towering over them, looked from Vadde's pathetic frame resting by the wagon, then back to Aggu again, brows creased in confusion and disgust.

"You'd let him do that to her? But you're one of us."

The moonlight caught Aggu who stepped toward him, meeting him face to face.

"What I am, is the wife of a giant. And if you think my methods are questionable, then I'd invite you to take it up with my husband."

Matax clenched his jaw. He let out a sigh then raised both hands. "It won't do any good. Her wings were never used. She cannot yet fly. Maybe she never can."

Vadde floated before him, and he examined her back.

"Especially with what he's done to her wing."

Aggu ignored him and brought a sheet to cover Vadde from view. "Shaza," she said, "are you listening?"

"M—ma'am. I...far be it for me to tell you how to run your house, ma'am, but we succubuses don't work well in deception."

"Deception? Let me remind you that it'll be you dead with a giant's child in your womb if this doesn't work!"

Shaza quieted. Finally, she squeaked out, "Right."

Aggu told Matax, "You may go—"

"The hell I will. You left me under that table for three days! And I don't leave this bitch until I am paid—"

A hand struck him.

Vadde couldn't see what was happening, but Shaza's gasp resounded.

"Ma'am, how'd—how'd you get it to shrink down like that?"

Aggu grunted. "That is its actual size. So long as his wings aren't bound, that is what he'll revert to. Here." Matax now returned to his previous prison, she said, "Take this jar and put it in the house. Whatever my son does with it, is his business."

"Y—yes, ma'am."

Something must have caught her if the scream was any indication.

"Oh, and let me not remind you that I've buried far more helpful people than a succubus."

An eerie silence came and then a slow voice. "Ye—yes, ma'am."

Within minutes, the wagon was in motion and Vadde fought to calm. Each time she closed her eyes, Wyrn's cold, unfeeling face came to her with a shiver.

The aching in her feet resounded throughout her entire body and the sobs came back again.

Aggu said nothing as they traveled past the river and into the woods. Vadde wasn't versed enough in the area to know which path she took, but there must have been a road of some kind if they could travel this way.

She wanted to demand the woman release her. She wanted to admonish the betrayal, but one thing didn't come to mind, going back to her hunchback.

The first day, that was all she could think. And she'd screamed at Wyrn's gigantic form until her throat was raw. He said nothing. He did nothing to acknowledge her.

And now this.

"I hadn't expected you to make it this far," Aggu grumbled, annoyed. "And I'd more than put out the effort."