Page 2 of Bryce

“I’m sorry.” He slid the mask up, over his head, and the blue eyes which looked up at me were large with worry. “Did I hurt you?”

The lad had a sweetness I couldn’t resist.

I patted his cheek with a smile. “Not a bit, dear, but you might hurt yourself if you aren’t more careful. Why not ask Alina or Ciera to take a pair of scissors to your mask so you can see better?”

Owen and Dallas waited for us in the library, the two of them deep in conversation.

“I don’t like the idea,” Dallas grumbled, folding his arms with a sigh.

“No more than I do,” Owen agreed.

“What’s the trouble?” I looked from one of them to the other. “I was enjoying a lovely flight, so it had better be good.”

Owen snickered. “Do you consider going on a journey with the lions Mary’s sending worth bringing your flight to an early end?”

A journey? My pulse immediately picked up speed, though I did everything in my power to appear unaffected.

“I cannot say I agree with this at all.” Dallas’s face was like stone. “It pains me to disagree with Mary, as she has done a great deal of good for us.”

“What does she have in mind?” Leslie asked.

Dallas scowled. “She believes it might be easier and might save a great deal of time if one or more of our number join the lions who plan to search for what is left of the Gwydions. We might be able to, in her words, flush them out. As if this were nothing more than a hunting expedition.”

“Aye, because that is what it is,” Owen reminded him. “This is a hunt. We wish to flush out our prey. If they sense our kind drawing near, they are bound to react.”

I challenged. “What do you think they’ll do when they know we’re advancing on them?”

“I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we arrive at it.” Owen looked at us one by one. “Mary has always known what is best, has she not?”

This did little to settle Dallas’s mind, that was clear, but my imagination danced at the notion of a new adventure. I could stand up to anything the sorcerers saw fit to place in my path.

“When do we start out?” I asked, only to be greeted by silence.

In Leslie’s case, a dropped jaw accompanied that silence. “You are truly in such a rush to be away from this place?”

My cheeks colored. So much for eagerness. “’Tis not that I long to be away. I long to feel useful. I long for something to do. You know I have never been one to sit idly by.”

“Och, nay. Not you,” Dallas winked.

“What?”

Owen snickered. “I’ve never imagined you to be so devoted to action. You’ve always seemed…”

“Idle?” I snapped. “Useless, perhaps?”

“No one believes that.” Leslie touched my shoulder, brushing my long, reddish-blond hair aside.

I shook her off. “They believe it about both of us, and you ought to find it as infuriating as I do.”

“What is this?” Owen’s head tilted to one side as he studied me.

I could not say, though I found myself startlingly close to a childish tantrum. If I allowed myself to give in to hot-headed emotion, it would only convince my clan of my uselessness. Rather than defend myself, I left the room with what little dignity I possessed still intact and hurried down the corridor to the room I’d inhabited since our arrival.

None of them understood. Not even Leslie. I had no place in the clan, nothing to distinguish me. Perhaps she didn’t know what it meant to long for more, and if that was the case, I envied her. I wished I could return to those days, when it had mattered not whether I ever found something worth venturing out of bed for.

Something beyond protecting a treasure.

Perhaps it was what we’d learned in the wake of Owen finding his mate, Molly, that had me feeling so deeply out-of-sorts. Was it true that there was no treasure beneath the mountain? That the Gwydions had stolen it, splitting it up amongst themselves? That they would have killed the clan, were it not for the spells the coven had placed on the mountain to protect it and those who called it their home?

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