He hadn’t grown up with her. Vega was cold. Vega wasruthless. She was everything Bridget dreaded facing. She’d managed to find a scrap of softness buried inside her. Once. But that had been years ago. She wasn’t sure if it existed anymore.
“Maybe Iwouldunderstand,” Cade said, the frustration bleeding through his voice, “if you’d just tell me about her. Or whatever it is about the past that’s making you push me away.”
The words hit harder than she expected.
Before Bridget could force an answer past the knot in her throat, Stellan appeared beside them with a quiet pop of displaced air. His horse snorted in protest.
“Is everything alright?” he asked, glancing between the two of them.
Bridget pulled her eyes from Cade and forced a tight nod. “It's fine.”
Lie.
“It’s not, actually,” Cade said. “There’s something Bridget remembers that she doesn’t want to tell me and I think you know exactly what it is.”
Stellan blinked.
“That’s why you just showed up back here, isn’t it?” Cade pushed. “She’s asked you to keep it from me too.”
Stellan stiffened. Just slightly. But Bridget saw it.
Guilt pricked the back of her throat. She hadn’t meant to draw Stellan into this. But there had been no one else she could confide in. There was no one else who knew what the bond really meant. What it could do. What it cost. And now, Cade, with his eyes narrowed in quiet accusation… The gap between them felt wider than it had in days.
Stellan opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak, a cry cut through the smoke-laced air.
“Over here!” one of the soldiers shouted, voice cracking with alarm.
Cade was already moving. He kicked his horse into a gallop toward the sound. Bridget followed without thinking, Stellan thundering close behind. The others snapped to attention and followed as the company veered sharply off the rocky path and into a copse of brittle, frost-scorched trees.
They didn’t have to search long.
Bridget’s stomach dropped at the sight.
Finn was slumped against a gnarled tree, arms bound tightly behind his back, blood caked around a gash at his temple. His head lolled to the side, unconscious but alive. The bark behind him was blackened in a perfect circle, burned with residual magic. His cloak had been torn and his boots were missing.
“No one cut his binds,” Deckard barked, holding up a hand. “Not yet.”
Cade threw himself off his horse and knelt beside him. “Finn?” he asked, urgency flaring in his voice. “Hey—Finn, look at me.”
Bridget dismounted, her fingers trembling. The bark behind Finn was charred black in a perfect ring. The ground at his feet was cracked, as though drained by the kind of magic Vega channeled. And Nylah wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Her stomach twisted.
He looked like Finn.
But it didn’t mean itwas.
“Wait,” she said as Cade reached to cut his restraints. “Don’t.”
Cade paused, blade in hand. “What?”
“There’s a chance Vega is still controlling him,” Bridget said, gaze fixed on Finn’s eerily still form. “This was too easy. There’s no way Vega just let him go.”
“He’s barely conscious,” Delphine murmured behind her. “Wouldn’t she need more strength to keep control?”
“If she lost control, wouldn’t Nylah be here? She’s had time to adjust the blood spell. And she’s done it before. I’d bet anything she’s still in there.”Bridget turned to Cade, heart pounding. “We have to test him first. Ask him something only Finn would know.”
Cade’s jaw ticked. “I don’t feel anyone else in his mind.”
“You didn’t feel anything with me,” Bridget reminded him. “Or Quinn.”
