PROMISE

CHAPTER 11

They'd barely made from the hall and into the Keep courtyard before they were stopped.

Empees. Four of them, all armed and armored. As though they'd been expecting a fight to come their way.

"Whoa there, Bastard," said one the guards. "Feeling a little jumpy?"

Lilith stepped toward the guard. "Don't call him that."

The man's expression went hard. "I'll talk to criminals any way I want."

"Criminals?" Lilith bristled. "We haven't committed any crime."

Malevolence glittered in the same guard's eyes as they fixed on Lilith. "You exist, don't you?"

The guard's voice was pure hate, and the sound of it shot adrenaline through Hain's body. He felt the sluggishness from the hall slough from him like a snake shedding its skin.

"You're to come with us," the lead guard said with his eyes on Lilith. Hain could see sergeant stripes along his shoulder. "Now."

"Come with you where?" Hain said, and managed to keep his voice steady as he did. "And by whose order?"

The sergeant's focus broke from Lilith just long enough to answer. "His Holiness, the Bishop."

Hain's blood quickened at the mention of the man. He was about to speak, to tell the guards exactly what he thought about the Bishop, when Lilith spoke up.

"Check your orders again, Sergeant" she said. "The Bishop just ordered us to our quarters. We're to stay there until the Quorum concludes."

Lilith's voice was pure authority, and Hain could tell it had an effect on the three lower ranking Empees. The sergeant though seemed unfazed.

"That true, Bastard?"

"Of course." Hain could hear the fear in his voice, and he hated himself for it. "All of it. Totally true."

The sergeant peeled his eyes from Lilith. Hain saw the violence boiling within them, even before the guard sank his fist into Hain's gut.

Hain folded smoothly as creased paper, his head jerking toward his waist like a stick snapped in the middle. The breath ripped from his lungs and he crumpled, the cobblestones vaulting toward his face with a vicious thwack that set off fireworks behind his eyes.

Hain shut his eyes against the throb in his gut and his face. One of the guards shouted over him, and Hain thought the man sounded pained. His head swam, and time seemed to pass in fractured shades of red and black, like watching the world through a kaleidoscope.

"Don't hurt him!"

That was Lilith's voice, Hain realized through hazy thoughts. Her words sounded strained around the edges.

"Mind yourself, and we won't." It was a man's voice, but he sounded nasally, like someone sick with a cold. "But you keep fighting and I'll hurt the bastard bad enough that he'll pray for death."

"You'll do nothing like it, fool," said the sergeant. "You heard the Bishop's orders. He wants them alive and unhurt."

"But this damned girl broke my nose!" said the first man in a whining, nasally tone.

"I don't care if she stuck you like a pig, you don't get to touch her. The Bishop's got plans for these two."

The Empee's words rang in Hain's mind like shouted voices in a cave. The Bishop's got plans.

Hain wrenched his eyes open despite the pain in his head. Lilith stood a few paces away from where he lay, her forehead smeared with crimson. Two guards flanked her, their arms locked to hers, while a third held his sword a finger's breadth from her throat, his chin bathed in red like a bloody beard. Even from the ground, Hain could see a crooked bend in the man's nose. Lilith must have headbutted the man when he'd come too close.