“What if they’ve used magic?”
Leif’s frown deepened. He didn’t offer a counter argument.
“We’ll signal Amelia, then,” Connor said. “Let her and the drakes have a look and see if they catch something the wolves missed. Can’t drakes smell magic or some such?”
Reggie traded a look with Leif, whose expression was grooved with frustration, but who shrugged. “I don’t know what else to do. The only Sels we’ve detected are in that estate. There’s not any others for a twelve-mile radius.”
Reggie then looked to Connor, who nodded. “It’s the best we can do.”
With great misgiving, Reggie unshuttered one panel of his lantern, turned, and pointed it toward the distant hillside.
~*~
The burning in Amelia’s palm came with an itch, one she couldn’t scratch through the thick leather of her glove. Perhaps it was a good sign: wounds started to itch when the skin reknitted. She knew she shouldn’t pick at it; Mother had always reprimanded her for peeling the scabs off her skinned knees as a girl. But it itched terribly, and the burn was slowly tipping from noticeable to painful.
She tilted side-to-side on Alpha’s back, peering through branches up at the chateau. The windows still glowed; no signs of movement, not even a flag snapping up on the widow’s walk.
A sharp, hot bolt of pain shot through her hand, as though she’d grabbed a poker fresh from the fire. Her skin feltsinged.
“Gods!” She tucked her reins under her arm and peeled her glove off. It was too dark to see. She tilted her hand side to side; ran her thumb over the cut, but could find nothing obviously wrong with it. The scab was neat and cool to the touch. There was no swelling, no wetness of fresh blood or ooze of pus.
But itburned. The itch was lodged deep beneath the skin, unreachable, and as she passed her gloved fingers over her palm, the heat deep in the bones of her hand started to throb.
The wound had been inflicted in the Between, clearly with the use of magic. Had it left behind a magical infection? Had the emperor embedded some sort of spell in her flesh?
She heard the high, fast rhythm of her breathing and didn’t know if it was a reaction to pain, or simple panic.
Alpha tensed beneath her, head shooting upward, branches rustling and spring leaves sifting down in drifts as his horns tore them loose.
Amelia swatted one from her hair and glanced toward the chateau again.
Below it, halfway up the hillside, a single bright flicker of light glowed amidst the ink-black of the slope. The lantern. The signal. Either there were no guards on the wall or in the yard, or, more likely, the boys had dispatched them. In either case, it meant it was time to take to the sky.
Hand still pulsing, hot, painful, she scrambled to pull her glove back on—and dropped it. “Shit.” She heard it land somewhere in the tangle of undergrowth below.
There was no time to search for it; who knew how long her clear window for an aerial approach would last. She gathered her reins, the leather cool against her overheated bare palm, pressed Alpha’s sides with her heels, and managed to adjust her helmet just before he spread his wings, snapping branches, and launched them into the sky.
~*~
The most capable soldiers of the Southern company had gone with the generals to recapture the chateau. That left the…less adept behind to guard the camp. And Cassius.
Not that he minded, nor intended to take advantage of the situation. He was happy to sit on his cushion on the floor, bound wrists chained to a tent pole, while his two minders used a traveling trunk as a makeshift table for their card game. He knew there were two more stationed outside the open tent flap, the rumble of their voices filling the quiet spells when the two inside guards mulled over their next play.
Given his circumstances, it was a downright enjoyable way to pass the night. He was well-used to standing or sitting at attention for long periods, without any means of entertainment. The Aquitainians would have been well-within their rights to torture him for the sheer pleasure of it, but instead here he sat, waiting, less a slave than he’d ever been in his life.
For a while, he kept count of the seconds, trying to gauge how long it had been since Lady Amelia and the men had departed. But a raucous argument broke out between the card-players and he lost track. Before then, he counted off thirty minutes. He could estimate now that it had been another fifteen since then. He knew he wouldn’t be able to hear the clash of swords or shouting of men from way up on the hillside, but the drakes’ voices would carry: should anything go awry, he knew that they would scream, and that he would hear them. So far, he’d heard nothing of the sort.
A soft crunching of pine needles announced someone’s approach, and then the guards out front said, “My lady.”
“Good evening, boys. Mind if I have a word with our prisoner?” There was only one person it could be: only two ladies marched with the company, all the other women either camp followers, or former servants who’d joined up to serve the army since their lords and ladies were dead or captured.
“Um,” one of the guards said, and Cassius imagined them conferring with a series of glances.
“I suppose that’s fine,” the other said.
“Wonderful!” A moment later, Lady Leda swept through the tent flap, lifting her skirts up so they wouldn’t trail the ground.
Cassius’s experience with women up to now had been limited to the occasional glimpse of the empress or one of the young princesses from a distance at military parades. Even half a field away, he could always tell how terribly thin they were, their arms and legs like matchsticks in their fitted gowns, their necks spindly inside their high, jeweled collars. Cheeks so sunken their pale-skinned heads looked like skulls, the severely-slicked-back white hair furthering the morbid resemblance.
