Stone Cold

Chapter 40

THANK YOU,

Thank you so much, my lovely readers for being so patient with me. It has been an year since I started writing Stone Cold. What casually started out as just an experiment has turned into an extremely important part of my life. We're close to hitting 2M yet it feels like it was only yesterday when I was screaming around for getting 2K reads.

You guys made this happen. I owe it to you all.

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“You have told him everything. Have you not, dearest daughter?”

Like a hissing snake, his unexpected question lunged at her, baring its deadly fangs in her face.

Bit by bit, like puzzle pieces assembling together to form a clearer picture, his intentions were unravelling before her, disclosing his hidden motives to her panic-stricken gaze. Gulping inaudibly, she passed a quick glance at her surroundings, quickly scanning the objects in her proximity to find a potential weapon.

‘If I jab the corner of a thin book in his carotid hard enough, will it buy me enough time to run out of here?’

In the solitude of that murky room, the only sound accompanying her was the drumming of her own frenzied heart, banging itself rapidly against the bars of her ribcage.

‘Ares hasn’t returned which means the villagers must still be surrounding him. Gabriel wouldn’t harm me here with so many people around. Would he?’

Her loosening hold on the shelf instantly tightened again as she kept her back facing him, hiding her rapidly moving eyeballs from his scrutinizing gaze.

‘I should wait for to him to say whatever’s on his mind—assess the circumstances before saying or doing anything.’

The freshly formed bruise in her side hurt with every movement her ribs made, coupling with the suffocating query still hanging in front of her, making it more and more difficult to breathe.

“Well, it is for the better—the trust, I mean.”

Surprising her with its sudden appearance, his apathetic voice resembled the touch of cold fingers, lightly scratching the back of her neck with their sharp tips, causing her frozen state to break as she impulsively took a step back away from him before slowly turning her head to glance sideways at him as she heard him continue talking to her,

“You broke our deal to gain his trust, I assume.”

Not assenting to his words, she remained peering up at him through the tendrils of hair hanging loose in front of her vision, motioning him, without words, to keep speaking,

“I requested of you to hide the truth because I fear for my daughter’s life. She is too small to survive in this cruel world alone,”

His shoes produced a light squeak, making her brows furrow as she realized he had started walking towards her,

“I’m well aware of the lord’s generosity. That much of a control, especially for a royal, is remarkable to state the least but,”

The chilling tone that his voice had taken caused her to whirl turn around swiftly and stare directly into the eyes of the man, now standing barely a feet away from her,

“No matter how strong a chain is, there always exists a strain under which it falls apart. Everything, living or dead, has a breaking point.”

Although unbelievably cold, his voice had a magnificent effect on its listeners. It demanded attention whenever it resounded through the empty room, flaunting the well mastered grip he had on the art of words. There was no doubt in him having the town charmed in such a short amount of time. He had been successful in creating an aura of authority around him—an invisible cloak like that of a king’s mantle, trailing after him wherever he went. On top of it all, his eyes played the role of the main culprit in all this. Albeit being the same as hers, they resembled steel instead of storm, gripping the person staring into them with a deadly hold.