Page 30 of Truth's Blade

“It worked, and just in time.” Caro rubbed her fingers together. “Felt really strange as it faded away.”

“The paints are a tool we can use, if we think strategically,” Melodie said. “And, maybe even more importantly, it is something that is no longer in the spell caster’s hands.”

Theo nodded. “That is definitely something I do like about it.” He tapped his knees, the movement fast and restless.

Melodie wondered if he wished they didn’t have to let the horses rest.

“We need to sleep. And we need to be ready for anything.” Theo stood. “I’ll take first watch. Melodie doesn’t have military training, so she doesn’t have guard duty. Caro, you’re second watch. Ivan is third. Gallain, you’re fourth. Jacinta gets a full night’s sleep, and that will rotate.

There were a few groans, but Melodie thought they were for show.

Within twenty minutes, everyone had set up their beds, and Theo left to do a walk around.

She was already half asleep when she heard a stick crack beneath a boot, and lifted her head to find herself looking straight at Theo. He was standing at the outer edges of light thrown by the fire, watching her.

She gave him a solemn nod, and he returned it, then turned away, disappearing into the darkness.

She snuggled down and breathed out, trying to quiet her mind. She was exhausted from the ride, but the combination of the strangeness of being back on the road after years of barely moving from the workshop, the strange feeling of fascination she felt for Theo, and the sickening thought of children in the hands of someone who meant them harm, rattled about in her head.

She heard a low feminine murmur, a deeper male response, then a log cracked and popped on the fire, and she was drawn back in time to the travels with her father, the groups they’d joined for safety, and the nights just like this, around the fire. And she slept.

CHAPTER 13

Viviane lookedup at the dark stone of the ceiling, at the wispy spider webs clinging to the corners, and forced herself to confront her new reality.

She had been captured. Bested.

Her mother and father had both told her and her little brother stories of how they had been taken—it was how her parents had met, in a dungeon in northern Kassia.

But she had never considered that it could happen to her.

She had been protected far more than she realized, she saw now. And it hurt her sense of strength and confidence that not just herself, but all four of them, had been so easily grabbed.

Theo and Uncle Rafe would be looking for them. She had a strange dream, one that she almost dared not examine too closely, where Theo had caught up to them, had circled around the fire where they lay, and then had been bested, too.

It was too terrible to think about, and the fact that he wasn’t with them now gave her just enough hope that it was a nightmare. Enough to calm the panic that kept rising up in her.

She kept reminding herself she was not without weapons.

This madman thought they were all magical. He kept muttering it under his breath. He didn’t know the half of it.

He had left them in their night clothes. He’d taken their other clothes, and their boots, too, fingering the cloak her mother had given her with thoughtful interest. She had lain helpless while he’d laughed out loud as he gathered it up. She knew her mother had woven all kinds of protections into it, but she hadn’t been wearing it when she had been taken—it had been in the middle of the night and she’d been asleep inside her tent.

They had all gotten filthy and wet while they built the bridge across the stream, and so most of their clothes had been hanging around the fire to dry.

It had been so much fun, that last day, they’d melded as a true team, and Vivi had the sense they would be friends for life.

When they’d sat around the fire before bed and played the secrets game, she had been so tempted to tell them the biggest secret of all.

She was very glad now she had not.

Their abductor must have been watching them, listening to them. He had struck moments after they’d climbed into their tents, and from a few of the comments he’d made, she was sure he’d been watching them the night before, too.

Because she kept quiet and never said anything to her friends, he didn’t know what she could do.

Although he knew she could do something. He thought they all could.

Her mother had said more than once that while her father was theoretically not magical, the way he moved—the way all the Cervantes moved—made her think their magic was built into their very bodies.

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