“No. We fight.”
As the skirmish raged on, fatigue began to set in. Soldiers were dropping like flies, which was concerning, as Jarryn hadn’t started out with all that many to begin with.
Leander finally pushed himself up from the ground, dagger hilt still in hand, ready—if not entirely willing—to use the weapon. He wanted to be with Jarryn, that was all that mattered.
But, try as he might, he could not shrug off the obligation to submit to Jarryn’s arcanely imbued order.
With a sudden burst of energy, Jarryn and his captain executed a breathtaking combination of martial manoeuvres, disarming their opponents in a seamless motion of clashing steel.
But there were more to come. Jarryn’s force lay scattered, either dead or incapacitated on the ground. With heavy breaths, Jarryn glanced around, a shadow of sadness and despair passing over his face as he took in the scene of carnage before him.
“We will lose if we continue, my prince.”
Leander barely caught the conversation between the other two men over the shouts and grunts of fighters on both sides.
Leander found himself, in one moment, on the ground. Cade had pushed him out of the way of a wayward arrow. His back had hit the ground first, such was the force with which he was shoved out of the way of harm. Winded, he struggled to gasp in shaky breaths.
In those five seconds, he had lost sight of his lover.
“Jarryn!” Leander called out and he suddenly stopped moving. The fog had lifted from his mind.
He had been compelled.
The compulsion had worn off.
His head hurt. But Jarryn could be... if the compulsion had worn off, was he injured? Was he dead?
“We need to go back!”
He started to move, pushing the branch out of the way.
“Wait, what?” the soldier grabbed him again. “Stop. Be quiet or they will hear us.”
Though clearly younger, the soldier was significantly stronger than Leander. It wasn’t hard for him to halt the demigod’s efforts.
“We need to go back,” he repeated, borderline hysterical now out of fear for Jarryn. “Let me go, he could be hurt, we have to go help him.”
He didn’t stop in his efforts to leave the woods, he kept pulling, kept shouting. He needed to get back and this imbecilic soldier seemed immune to, even uncaring about, the very serious probability that something had happened to the prince he had sworn to protect.
“My job is to keep you safe. The prince commanded it. Stop!”
There was a sharp thud to the back of his head, and even Leander’s desperation to return to Jarryn’s side was not enough to protect him from the darkness that quickly overwhelmed him.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Returning to Saeren was the easy part. The surviving soldiers in Jarryn’s retinue, numbering six, had escorted Leander back with complete haste. What had taken seven days in leaving had only taken two and a half in returning. They rode their horses into the ground, with Leander and the soldiers each having a common goal: regroup and save Jarryn.
The difficulty was that Leander was not a free man.
A slave entering the city without his master was a concern in and of itself. That slave being a fallen demigod was of greater concern.
The remaining soldiers had agreed to Leander’s plan: they would wait in the forest outside the city limits while Leander entered the city to enlist the help of Verin and, with any luck, Venser.
So he came alone to the gates of Saeren. He was, as expected, immediately impounded by the City Watch. They searched him for contraband, then did a secondarysurvey to confirm it was him by checking for his brand. With no Jarryn in sight, and the full knowledge that they had both been seen leaving Saeren in each other’s company a mere week ago, the Watch were at a loss as to what to do with him.
It was Leander who suggested returning him to his family to decide what to do and, given Flavian’s influence and power within the city, the Watch jumped on the solution.
Conveniently enough for Leander, Verin was the only member of the family at home when Leander was brought manacled (yet again) to the front door. Verin had stared at his younger half-brother for a long while before nodding to the guards and taking formal custody of the masterless slave.
