It hit him like a fist square chest.
There. She’d been there.
He closed his eyes, only long enough to master the rage boiling in his blood. Then he strode forward and stepped inside, gaze sweeping the chamber. In the center stood a single chair. A coil of rope lay at the base of it.
Maxen clenched his fists.
“Two,” Drake said behind him. “Two people were held here.”
Maxen followed his brother’s gaze to the corner, where an iron ring had been driven into the wall at shoulder height. Another rope lay discarded there, stained with smudges of blood.
He advanced to the chair and dropped before it.She sat here.His gaze hunted for even a drop of blood. A note was left on the seat. Oneword was scrawled across it.
Talon’s.
The same stroke as the note slipped beneath his bedchamber door. That wretched bloody miscreant. “Peregrine.”
Drake stepped up to the chair, retrieving the note. “This damn fool.”
“Is he brave, or does he have a death wish?” Reaper asked darkly.
“Why would they keep her here?” Drake asked. “It couldn’t have been that long.”
“To switch her?” Reaper suggested.
“And then tell us to find her?” Drake muttered. “Does that even make sense?”
“They wanted me to see their strength,” Maxen said, certain. “They wanted me to feel how they could touch me. That our walls aren’t impregnable.”
Drake cursed.
“Damn rats,” Reaper muttered.
Maxen took one last look at the chair before striding from the room. He passed the table he hadn’t given much attention to earlier and halted. There, pressed into the dust, lay the clear shape of a hand.
He set his own beside the imprint, his dwarfing it.
Hers.She had braced herself here. Left a clue.
That’s my girl.
She probably hadn’t known about the note Peregrine left.
Maxen slipped back out with his brothers. Rain fell as Maxen swung up on the gelding and gathered the reins tight.
“Talon’s,” Reaper repeated. “They want us out of our territory.”
Drake scoffed. “Fool’s thinking.”
“If it’s not ours, then we take it,” Maxen said. “We take it all.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Calliope perched stiff-spinedon the bed, every muscle pulled as taut as a bowstring. She ought to have learned how to use a bow and arrows and insisted on bringing them. Perhaps then she wouldn’t once again be in such a helpless position. She might even have put a few arrows through a few men’s hearts. At this point, why even own a pistol? Precious little good it had done her!
It would appear the Furys were leaving their mark upon her.
She hoped Maxen found the print she’d left behind. A reassurance that she was alive. Who knew what the man might be thinking, and she hated that she might be the cause for his worry. She shouldn’t have insisted on taking the boy’s place. Then none of this would have happened.
