Me? I’d believed in Teal. And Grayson and Pierce. So I didn’t give a damn about grand conspiracies or betrayals. My magic had been bound, and now it wasn’t. We could figure out who did it and burn them alive later. Right now, my priority was Haven.
“What if she doesn’t want to come back?” I blurted the niggling question. I’d seen the tracks in the clearing. She’d mounted that horse on her own.
Pierce pulled himself out of his dark funk and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“She crossed the border on her own. Whoever she’s with, she fought with them. Maybe she’s done with us.”
Teal, who’d ridden ahead and was just out of sight, called back, “She wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t she?” Grayson’s voice was bitter.
“Fuck!” Teal’s voice held a rare note of panic.
I spurred my mount into a canter, quickly catching up with him. “Fuck,” I echoed.
The stench hit me hard—blood and burned meat. It smelled like a battlefield after I’d gone wild with my fire. A few corpses were still smoking, melting the surrounding snow into black slush. Ash mixed with snowflakes, getting in my eyes and making them water. The whole place reeked of death and charred monsters.
“How many are there?” I stopped counting when I ran out of fingers. A few had died of stab wounds. The rest were blackened husks.
“What happened here?” Grayson demanded.
Pierce leaped from his saddle and prowled the site, hischilly eyes missing nothing. “Whatever these things are, they attempted an ambush.” He pointed out the way the bodies had fallen. The bloodied ones in the center of trampled snow. The burned ones on either side of the path. Whoever Haven was with, they’d been trapped.
Trapped until someone—Haven—had killed the monsters. Pride swelled in my chest. “Haven did this. She killed these things.”
“How do you know that?” Grayson scoffed.
“I just do. Haven killed them.”
Pierce picked his way around the corpses, his gaze now focused on the narrow trail. “Three sets of hoofprints. After they won, they rode on.”
“Then that’s what we do.” Grayson’s voice brooked no argument. Not that anyone would argue. We all wanted to find her. We all wanted her back.
Chapter
Fifty-One
HAVEN
“It’s my turn,” Remy said quietly, reaching for Grace as Zane prepared to mount his horse.
My turn. The words recalled Flynn claiming his “turn” to have me ride with him. But this was different. Remy wasn’t claiming Grace as property.
Remy settled Grace against his chest with surprising gentleness, adjusting his cloak to shield her from the wind. The baby made a soft sound and nestled closer to him.
Both Zane and Remy had refused my offer to carry the baby. I was disappointed, but a small part of me admitted they might be right. An experienced rider should carry her.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Talin.” For once, there was no snark in Remy’s voice. A low branch swept toward us, and Remy immediately ducked, his free arm coming up to shield Grace from the icy pine needles. The movement was automatic, protective—like he’d been guarding children his whole life. “Careful, little one,” he murmured against her blanket. “Can’t have anything happening to you.”
With something tight in my chest loosening slightly, I considered that I might have been wrong about him—perhaps there was more to Remy than a gorgeous sneering face and inexplicable hostility. “Isn’t Talin a three-day ride?”
“Yes.” His voice was cool without being condescending. Progress. Grace was mellowing him.
“What will we feed the baby?” We’d strained the last of the oats in Zane’s saddlebag and given her the gruel. “Is there another town anywhere near here?”
Remy looked down at the baby before exchanging a loaded glance with Zane. “Takir. But it’s out of our way.”
