“You will kill us. Yes, I understand.” My dry voice telling him I was bored with his little show of power.
Apparently, he didn’t like that because he shoved me forward, “Go.”
I went over to Rykon first, knowing that even if he was mad at me, he would be the most logical about this. I bent down, looking over my shoulder to see who we were dealing with, but they all had muslin wraps around their head and faces, concealing their identities.
“Rykon,” I whispered.
He only stirred a bit but didn’t wake up, then he mumbled, “Em, Em, don’t leave. I can’t stand another one leaving us.”Us?Did I hear that right?
I didn’t have time to make this nice, feeling eyes watching me intently. I shook his shoulder, tone firm, “Rykon. Get up.” His eyes flew open, and he pushed up on his forearms. His eyes flicked down at my arm in concern. I shook my head, telling him I was physically fine. “We have some visitors, deadly ones,” he started to look over my shoulder, “they would like us to go with them. If we resist,”
“We die?” He finished for me and I almost laughed. My lip twitched, finding humor at the most inopportune time, and nodded in confirmation.
“I need to wake up the others. Can you help me with Zayden and I will get Ajax up?”
He eyed the people behind me before he whispered, “Are you sure you don’t want me to take Ajax? He will not take this lightly.”
I whispered back, “Since it was your turn to be on watch I think it would be best coming from me.” He looked me in my eyes, trying to apologize for his failure but that wasn’t going to help us so I shrugged. “It’s done, but this was always going to be the end result.”
He looked back down at my arm, and I knew he wouldn’t let it go until he saw it with his own eyes. I unraveled the wrap quickly as I stood. He followed me up, keeping his eyes on my arm until I showed him what I knew was going to be there. The wound had sealed up completely. No blood, no scabbing, but there was a ripple of skin where the rope had been, almost looking like a flesh-colored snake was wrapped around my arm.
His eyes were intent as he took a finger and lightly traced the scar. I inhaled at the touch, a pleasurable sensation working its way up my arm and straight to my heart. He pulled away, not wanting to hurt me, but when he saw my face, looking down at my mouth to see me panting, desire sparked in his eyes. We both leaned into each other, just a breath apart, until the bowman reminded us what was really happening around us.
“Let’s go, you two,” he barked impatiently.
His voice broke our stare off as we both backed up a step. He went to grab his bag but that short surrey little thing came and got it before he could. I looked at the bowman with a raised eyebrow, nodding at the direction the child was taking our things. The bowman never took his eyes off me as he said, “If you do as you're told you might get your things back. All depends on her.”
Again with thisherperson. I would say that he was talking about their leader but I didn't want to make assumptions too quickly. I nodded and turned towards Ajax, not looking forward to my task.
Ajax woke up just like I imagined he would. As soon as he heard the tone in my voice, he jackknifed up, dagger at the ready. It took me a second to calm him down, to tell him that their weapons were most likely poisoned. That even if we fought, we could lose, and that wasn’t acceptable.
The little one in the hooded cloak that kept taking all of our stuff just held out a hand for his dagger. He almost swiped at the hand, but I grabbed it and handed it over. Whispering to him we will get it back. We will get it all back.
They had us all walking in a straight line, circling around us as we hiked down the mountain. Ajax demanded to be in the lead, looking at me like he wanted to be our first line of defense if something came at us. I didn’t fight him on it. It looked like he needed this, needed a purpose. Then it was Zayden, me and Rykon.
Zayden was already doing exactly what I wanted him to do, the whole reason I wanted him brought along, to talk to people. He just kept talking, even when they didn’t respond. I could hear him trying different subjects, looking at each person around him to see their interest. Once he found one that either smiled, scoffed, or looked at him, he would keep going on that subject. By the time we had gotten to the bottom of the mountain, I would bet good money that the two that were closest to him would be sympathizers for him if the situation arose.
Rykon and I did what we knew how to do best, keep quiet and observe. I watched their formations, how they moved and who was in charge of what. It looked like the bowman was the one in charge of the entire group. They all deferred to him and it seemed like he was the one that decided how we were treated. He also kept looking back at me, like he was checking to make sure I was still there. Smart man.
“Just think,” one of our captors who seemed to like to talk said behind Rykon in a whisper, “If Talican wasn’t on surveillance duty, we wouldn’t have even gotten to these people.”
The person he was talking to whispered back, “Ya. What I’m really interested in is what Hemlock is going to do. You never know with her. Sometimes, she is lenient and sometimes she flips out and cuts them to pieces.”
The first one questioned, “Kisha is worse than Hemlock in that department. Are you saying you don’t trust her?”
The second laughed. “Are you kidding? I trust her to keep us safe, but beyond that, you just… never know. That’s why her crew is just as important as her. They keep her on the straight and narrow.”
Someone by them hushed at them to shut up. I found it very interesting to learn that their leader was a woman. Most men I knew didn’t enjoy having to follow a woman’s lead. I will admit that she sounded like she had a few screws loose, which I’m sure helped, but I’ve dealt with worse.
After a couple of hours, we were being led around a sea of dunes. I didn’t know how they knew where we were because all of them looked exactly the same, also with the wind constantly blowing sand around the dunes kept changing their size within minutes.
Soon the surrounding people grouped closer together, and we circled this one large dune. As soon as we got to the other side, you could see a small opening, almost like it was the opening to a cave that was covered in sand.
As we got closer to the opening, I could see a shimmer of magic right at the opening. It was fae magic. I watched as the bowman stepped forward, wrote some fae words onto the shimmering surface and it went down.
“Move! You only have thirty seconds to cross the barrier.” He said and soon everyone was running inside. The guys looked at me and I threw my chin at the entrance. We need to get in here to see what we are dealing with. In the worst-case scenario, I will need to kidnap the bowman to get him to open it up again. Not impossible, but definitely a deterrent. This Hemlock seemed smart.
We ran in, barely making it across when the barrier shimmered back up, making a faint humming sound that I wasn’t able to hear with the sand and wind in my ears outside.
