Chapter 16 · The Contract-Cutting Axe

"Get away from my husbands."

The black axe was already coming down.

I drove my palm into the ice, and the bone ring around my wrist snapped open with a sharp crack. White splinters raced beneath the frozen river. The axe blade struck the surface where Varan's boot had been a breath earlier.

The impact split the ice from bank to bank.

Varan caught my waist and dragged me back against his chest. His armor scraped my spine. Heat poured off him, but his breath hitched against my ear.

"You call that getting away?" he growled.

"You were standing under an axe. I was fixing your stupidity."

Kaiser stepped over the widening crack, one hand pressed to the black mark burning across his collarbone. The marriage contract had tied all three of us together. The axe had been forged to cut through that tie.

The enemy commander lifted it again.

"Move, little bride," he said. "The contract dies before you do."

I looked at the axe head. Black bone. Silver runes. A strip of red cloth tied beneath the blade.

Morton colors.

My stomach twisted, but my voice stayed hard.