“I might be from Legacia, but my country doesn’t claim my loyalty. If the Legacian guard did this, I’ll help you find justice. And if it was someone else, I’ll help you track them down.”
He stared at me for a long moment, his eyes searching my face as if he was trying to read a lie. “You’d really stand against Legacia? Against your own people?”
“They’re not my people. Not anymore.”
“Words are easy.” His voice was rough, skeptical. “What happens when you’re facing down Legacian soldiers? Men you might know, might have trained with?”
The question hit harder than I’d expected. “Then I guess we’ll find out what I’m really made of.”
He studied me for another heartbeat, then gave a brief nod. No glare. No scowl. No grimace. It felt like a win.
Chapter
Fifty
FLYNN
The whole power-binding revelation had fucked us all up in different ways. Grayson was pissed at the world, Pierce had gone back to being an emotional iceberg, and Teal was obsessing over every print Haven had left in the snow. At least I was keeping my head on straight.
Her footprints led us to a clearing with a cold firepit at its center and a seven-foot-tall stack of wood on its northern edge. Someone had spent some time here.
“What is that?” Teal pointed to a gruesome corpse.
Who cared about the scaly white monster covered in black blood? Haven was still missing.
“Did Haven kill that thing?” Teal wondered aloud.
I stared at its seven-inch claws. Clearly, she’d been in danger. My gut tightened with worry.
“You always overestimate her.” Grayson, who was still taking the whole binding-our-powers-thing badly, was in a mood.
It took everything I had not to tell him to get his head out of his ass. “We’ll see.”
Teal’s gaze fixed on three sets of hoofprints exiting the clearing. Three horses. And I’d bet my left nut that Haven was on one of them.
We followed their trail, intent on finding our missing girl.
I’d wanted her from the first second I saw her in that tiny parlor, all defiance and fire. The way she’d glared at us—like we were beneath her notice. Fuck, that had been hot.
But this—whatever it was I was feeling—was concerning. I felt sick. Actually fucking sick. Like I might puke if we didn’t find her soon. I couldn’t think about anything except her, and it was driving me crazy. I needed to see her face, hear her voice, and know she was okay.
The snow-filled woods had other plans. The trees were a pain in my ass, drooping with ice, dumping snow down my back, and smacking me with their frozen branches. It was as if the forest didn’t want me to find her. Fire warmed my fingertips, eager to burn its way forward.
I forced my magic to recede. Fire might burn the trees, but it would also melt Haven’s tracks.
In the distance, a crow cawed. I hated crows. Evil birds. A murder of crows. Not a flock. The creepy-as-fuck blackbirds were harbingers of doom.
I felt Teal’s glance and didn’t need to look to know he was frowning at me. The man worried too much. He needed to stop staring at me and start paying attention to the tracks in the snow. “I’m fine.”
“Are you?” He heard the lie.
In truth, I was losing my mind. Every second we spent following these tracks instead of finding her felt like torture. But admitting that would mean admitting how much she mattered. “Are you?” I countered.
“No. I’m not fine.” He spurred his horse forward.
His reply didn’t surprise me. Teal was honest. To a fault.Also, he needed control, and this situation was far beyond his ability to manage. Someone had fucked with our magic, and while that pissed me off, it devastated Teal.
I got it. He felt betrayed. Probably because he’d believed in the guard.
