Page 16 of Within the Hollow Heart

She eyed him warily. “Ten minutes.”

He felt the edge of his lip tilt and gestured her closer with his outstretched arm. “I’ll take care to wake you precisely then.”

Having Jules snuggled against him in the warm sun untied the knot inside of Nickolas before the first few minutes were up. His own eyes became heavy, his arm gone limp around her, and the small garden sounds a lullaby to his ears. So when, sometime later, Jules shrieked, he startled from sleep like the world had exploded around him.

“Frederick!” she shrieked. “Frederick is gone!”

Chest heaving, Nickolas stared at the display of absolute terror in a person whose manner had seemed nearly unshakable in the face of greater foes. He stood, glancing around the bare spot of green they’d settled upon and landing on an empty cage. A dull-gray feather was all that remained where Frederick had posted himself in his earlier refusal to move. Dread sank in Nickolas’s gut.

“We’ll search the surrounding vegetation. If he left on his own, he can’t have gotten far.”

“I’ve already searched,” she said. “And what do you meanleft on his own? You said there were no predators here!”

He pressed his lips. The bird’s wing was too damaged; he could not have flown. There indeed was no sign of any other animal that might have approached. There was, however, a patch of matted grass in a size more like that of a human boot. “I’ll request aid from the Filmores.” If one of the ladies had played a prank, he would ensure they answered to their father for it, but Nickolas would find that bird.

Jules glanced at the manor, its wide row of high windows overlooking the garden. “There,” she said. “It will offer a vantage point of the entire space.” She grabbed Nickolas’s arm, and they moved toward the house with an urgency that drew attention. From both the upper and lower floors, Nickolas could see figures taking note of their approach. Inside, he gave direction to a member of the staff, and Nickolas and Jules were up the steps in a rush for the high windows. If they didn’t see anything of use, he would leave her there and go find Lord Filmore himself.

Nickolas was so set in his course that when they topped the final staircase and turned to find a gathering of figures, he stopped cold, entirely motionless, to stare in shock.

At his mother.

Jules’s step faltered a moment later, her gaze trailing from the stately woman centered before a balcony railing to the dark-clothed beast of a man at her left then the dark-clothed brute of a man on her right.

“Mother,” Nickolas managed. “What are you doing here?”

She gave him her most haughty countenance. “I might ask the same of you.” Her gaze flicked briefly toward Jules, only long enough to convey that the woman was utterly beneath contempt.

Nickolas stiffened. “We do not have time for this.” He might have hissedand on Filmore grounds, no less?for the woman had clearly lost her senses. She’d taken to kidnapping and trespassing in order to see her wishes fulfilled.

But they truly did not have the time. He took hold of Jules’s arm to lead her away. They had to find—

He froze again as his mother flicked a hand. Nickolas recognized the gesture; it was one he’d experienced countless times before. It spoke of retribution, and what swiftly followed was always the punishment for his disobedience. What came instead was far worse than any injury she’d offered before, because it would hurt not only Nickolas.

“I suspected you might say as much.” His mother’s tone was cold as the man beside her drew an object from inside his coat. “Which was why I have provided incentive.”

A chill silence swallowed the room, its bright windows and open space doing nothing to dampen the severity of the threat. Gripped within a cage of the giant man’s fingers was the stout feathered mass of a dull-gray bird.

“Frederick.” The word wheezed out of Nickolas, no disguise to his disbelief. Nickolas’s attention snapped to his mother.

Her expression held no remorse. “You will leave off whatever shameful foolishness you’re about with this girl and agree to marry Lady Carvell. Or you will both suffer the consequences.” Her tone made clear the consequences did not end there.

He took a step forward. The man shifted to hold the bird over the balcony.

Nickolas went rigid. Frederick’s wing was broken. He would not survive the fall.

Beside him, Jules stepped forward. “I warn you not to do that,” she said. Her words were only for the man, with no hint of acknowledgment for Nickolas’s mother.

“Shouldn’t have left your man behind,” the brute on Lady Brigham’s other side said. “Don’t think you’ll have much luck at stopping us on your own.”

Her man.The one who’d approached when he’d kissed Jules’s hand must have been a guard. But he didn’t understandwhyJules would have a guard. Nickolas glanced at her, but Jules’s attention was only on the beast holding her bird.

“What happens to you as a result will be worse than you can ever imagine,” she told the man.

There was such surety in her tone that even Nickolas felt uncertain, but his mother’s man was under orders. The beast glanced nervously at Lady Brigham. The lady in question said to Nickolas, “Agree now, or this will be the least of your worries.”

“I am your only son.”

“And I would never harm you.” Her brow lifted as she slid a glance toward Jules.

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