“Your mother’s name?” Remy growled at her.
She returned her gaze to him and shrugged. “Hope Ford.”
Hope’s daughter. And she thought her mother was dead. I closed my eyes as if shutting my lids could block the coming shitstorm. I’d suspected this when Haven told me her last name. But now it was confirmed. We were well and truly fucked.
Chapter
Forty-Two
GRAYSON
The sky’s unrelenting gray made it difficult to gauge the time, but in my bones, I knew we had to turn back.
“Don’t say it.” Teal’s voice was an angry growl.
Someone had to be reasonable. “As it is, we’ll have to ride hard to make it in time.”
“So we abandon her?” Waves of fury rolled off Teal’s shoulders.
“We’ve been at this for hours.” We’d followed whatmighthave been the basajaun trail through the dense, snow-packed forest, but wind and snow had obscured its tracks. Really, we were just wandering a frozen mountain. We were never going to find her. Someone had to be reasonable, and it looked like I was the only candidate. “If we don’t turn back, our careers are over.”
His face twisted. “If we don’t find her, she might die.”
Teal needed to be realistic. They all did. I turned in my saddle and forced him to meet my gaze. “If wefind her and take her with us? What then? How long do you think she’ll last in Angelfire?”
“Fuck you, Gray.” Teal’s comment wasn’t a surprise. He was the one who wore his emotions on his sleeve. And somehow the shield had wormed her way past his defenses. He was emotionally invested in her. “I say we vote.”
Teal’s challenge had me stiffening.
Caspian, sensing my tension, danced beneath me.
Teal would vote to continue searching; that was a given. Flynn would follow Teal’s lead. As he always did.
“Pierce?” Of all of us, surely, he could put aside his emotions and examine the situation rationally. No matter what we did, Haven’s life was measured in weeks or months. Ours didn’t need to be.
“We continue searching. I owe her.”
Pierce was the only one among us who didn’t owe her. “What do you mean?”
“We destroyed her life, then let Drake whip her.”
“We had no choice!” A startled bird took off from the branch above me, earning me a face full of snow. I wiped away the cold. “She killed Smit. We had to bring her in. She took down Drake in a room full of guards. Of course there was a punishment for that.”
“Why?” Pierce’s question wasn’t naive. No, it was a challenge to one of the guards’ central tenets. Guards led. Shields did as they were told. Pierce shook his head as if I were missing the obvious. “We had a choice. We chose poorly.”
“Do you think she’s still angry with us?” Flynn’s question was beyond stupid.
I scoffed. “That woman holds tight to her anger. She’ll never forgive us. She’s made that clear.” My gaze traveled to all three of them, daring one of them to argue my point. They couldn’t. They knew I was right.
“You really think that?” Flynn sounded crestfallen and … sad, as if I’d snatched his most prized possession and broken it into a thousand pieces.
“Can you blame her?” Teal adjusted his reins, giving his mount a bit more head. “We failed her again and again and again.”
“She is a shield,” I bit out.
Pierce’s jaw tightened. “She’s a woman. We’re lucky she’s so strong. What we’ve put her through would have destroyed anyone else.”
Flynn rubbed his chest, the spot above his heart. “If we rescue her from the basajaun, do you think she’ll forgive us?”
