“Let me out, you cowards!” I shouted. I actually hoped that they could not hear me, but it felt really good to yell. Somehow it made the fear that was crawling up my spine seem less intense.
As I heard heavy boots clomping overhead, my false sense of bravado quickly drained and was replaced with terror. The door flew open and three disgusting-looking young men walked down the stairs.
“’Ey ‘ey, fanny’s awake,” one of them said.
He was bald and probably the least ugly of the three. That said, he still looked like he had been beaten around the face with a stick for the formative years of his life. The dumb look on his face only implied that it had given him brain damage.
I glared at them. “What do you want?”
One of them laughed, and the other two joined in out of habit.
“We just want you to stay still and quiet, little faun. The rest will happen on its own,” another one, a hairy one with a lazy eye, said.
“What do you mean, ‘the rest’?” I asked. “Wait. What value am I to you guys? I haven’t done anything.”
“No, but we know your husband has one of them lizard-people in his house, and that’s illegal,” one of them said.
“Highly,” another one agreed.
I closed my eyes, fighting the headache and an overwhelming urge to vomit on their shoes. Last I recalled I had no husband, nor a lizard. My eyes shot open. They thought I was the innkeeper’s wife, and they intended to blackmail him because of Levent.
“We don’t have any money,” I said. “Why abduct me?”
They looked at each other for a moment.
The bald one then said, “You mean ‘kidnap’?”
I grit my teeth. “Yes.”
“So we can kill the dragon-guy for ourselves!” They all nodded and smiled. “We’ll be heroes!”
I laughed. One of them tried to join in before another elbowed him in the side to make him shut up. I wished my hands were untied so I could wipe the tears that welled in my eyes.
“What’s so funny?” the bald one said, stepped forward and grabbing my chin