My hand darting out, I nabbed the knife on Laures’ belt.
“Bloody hell.” I heard Hans mutter but I didn’t hesitate.
No, I didn’t.
I didn’t hesitate or think.
I was f**king focused.
I turned back to the man in the chair, held the point of the knife to the hinge of his jaw and demanded, “Who sent you?”
The man’s eyes held mine and he said nothing.
I pressed the tip into his flesh, he pushed back against the chair and I screeched, “Who sent you?”
He again said nothing.
Controlled by emotion, still burning inside and out, I took the knife from his jaw and sunk it violently into the flesh of his shoulder.
He let out a pained grunt that didn’t register on me.
I just pulled the knife out to three simultaneous masculine “bloody hells” and one “by the gods” and returned it to his jaw.
“Who sent you?”
Then suddenly I wasn’t in his face anymore, neither did I have the knife.
I was, instead, pressed back deep into Apollo’s body with his arm around my belly.
And then, with Apollo, we leaned forward as he flashed the knife out.
And that was when I watched the gaping, red gash across the man’s throat slither open, blood pouring down his chest. He sucked in a breath, got zero air and an instant later, found his death with surprise in his eyes.
I had no reaction to this. I also had no time to have a reaction.
Without hesitation, Apollo turned both of us and we were across the room like a shot. He held me to his front as he held the knife to the man hanging on the hook’s throat.
“Now you know I will not waver,” he growled. “Who sent you?”
The man was staring with big eyes at the freshly dead man in the chair but when Apollo pressed the knife to his throat, his eyes shot to him.
And I watched them grow cold.
“The queen is just,” he announced bizarrely.
“The queen is not here,” Apollo returned.
“She’ll not be best pleased, you dispense justice in your gardener’s shack,” he stated and I finally looked around.
Yep. We were in a gardener’s shack.
I turned my head, tipped it back and aimed my eyes at Apollo’s stony face. “Honey, I bet I can make him to talk with those hedge clippers.” I threw a hand toward the man’s crotch. “He won’t be needing that in prison.”
Apollo spared me a glance as I heard Laures chuckle but just as quickly as he looked at me, he looked back to the man.
“Information or I get my lady some hedge clippers,” he shared.
The man’s eyes grew round for a half a second, before he covered it and declared, “I demand a trial.”