“I ought to do just that, but I confess, I find the task rather distasteful.”
Calliope blinked. “So you don’t intend to steal my life?”
His smile turned sharp. “Now, now. I didn’t say that.”
*
Violence raged inhis blood.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so furious. Perhaps the day he’d tried to kill his father but had got beaten to within an inch of his life instead. But he couldn’t recall such bone deep rage in his memories.
Killing rage, perhaps.
But not this deep, burn-this-damn-island-to-ash sort of rage.
The rain had thinned to a cold mist that slicked the earth as they reached a run-down cabin where the tracks stopped.
“Something’s off,” he said, and swung down before his gelding had settled. Everything was too quiet. Too abandoned.
Reaper and Drake dismounted beside him.
“I agree,” Drake said, dismounting.
“A trap?” Reaper asked, following suit.
Not a trap, but he felt it in his bones—the wrongness. “She’s not here.”
“You can’t know that, Max,” Drake said.
“I know.”
“Well, what now?” Reaper asked. “Do we still go in?”
Maxen’s jaw tightened, nodded. “Round the back.”
They slipped along the wall. The place looked unlikely to withstand a proper storm in its present state. Even the back door seemed tacked on as an afterthought, its planks swollen with damp, a rusted hook-latch the only thing tethering it to a warped post. Drake pressed it with a finger. The wood moaned in protest.
“This can’t be a hiding place, can it?” Reaper muttered. He shifted to shove the door open, but Drake’s hand shot out, clamping his wrist.Drake inclined his chin toward the base of the door.
Well, hell. A wire, thin as thread and taut as a violin string, ran along the sill and climbed the hinge. It vanished into a crack.
“Blackguards,” Reaper mutter. “Do you think someone is here?”
Maxen’s lip curled. “Let’s find out.” He pushed the door open and a glass shattered to the ground.
“What the devil are you doing?” Drake snapped.
“They’d have heard us approach on horseback.”
Drake grunted.
Maxen slipped a double barrel flintlock from his trousers and stepped over the threshold inside, his brothers at his back. Inside, the air hung heavy with age. However, there were other unmistakable scents. Sweat. A hint of cologne. Subtle, but he caught them nonetheless.
People had been here. And recently.
The cabin also wasn’t very big. A table and two chairs, which, by the looks of it, hadn’t been used in years. Dust coated all the surfaces, and yet no footprints. His gaze fixed on the only other room within.
Calliope.
