Page 30 of Brought to Light
He did neither, and when I handed his jacket back, he took it with a grunt of thanks and a few words about getting on the road. No tenderness. Nothing at all to mark the way we’d slept so closely, after being so intimately joined.
Callum couldn’t even kiss me, and I’d be sore from his hard possession of me for—probably the rest of my life.
I couldn’t muster so much as a smile. Oskar probably would’ve laughed, though. That was more his sense of humor than mine.
No one said another word for the next hour and a half.
Oskar reined in his horse as we reached the bottom of a small, sheltered valley between three hills. I knew every inch of this ground; I’d tumbled and ridden and run up and down every slope, picnicked under the spreading oak at one end of it, caught and released bright green and blue frogs in the pond at the other. We were nearly home, and this was the end.
“We need a plan,” Oskar said.
“Hard to make one of those without any intel,” Callum answered him. “Can we get down—dismount, whatever, while we talk about it? Fuck this.”
I couldn’t have agreed more. I’d rather have been riding Callum. At least that, even if it hurt nearly as much in my current well-used state, might’ve been worth the pain.
We led the horses to the pond to water them, and Oskar and Kaspar started to argue. Oskar wanted to leave Kaspar and me behind, with Kaspar using as much magic as he could to conceal us, while he and Callum mounted a full-on assault. They’d taken twelve of Lord Evalt’s men the night before, Oskar pointed out. And although Evalt possessed powerful sorcery, he didn’t have a huge army. He might only have the same number or a few more at the villa. And rumors had it that Evalt commanded his men through magical compulsion. We might not even need to kill all of them—killing Evalt could be enough to end it then and there.
“It would be better to circle around the villa and come in through the gardens,” Kaspar contended. “He might already know we’re here. We may have bought some time, eliminating his men in the ambush, and I cast what spells I could this morning to hide us from his crows. But the closer we get to him, the stronger his magic will be. If one of his crows flies overhead now, it’ll see us. Besides which, he knows we’re coming. We don’t have a choice in that, given his threats. No one who doesn’t live there knows about the gate at the bottom of the orchard. It’s hidden behind vines. We may be able to get in that way, and it’s certainly better than marching up to the front door!”
“If you’d rather skulk like a coward—”
“You’ve been telling me to skulk like a coward from the beginning, while you take all the glory!” Kaspar retorted. “Besides, we don’t know where Evalt’s keeping the hostages! How is it skulking or cowardly to take what little advantage we have, to try to see what we’re facing before we’re in the thick of it?”
Oskar began to argue vociferously, again, in favor of his own plan, and I stared down at the pond, at the ripples fanning out from my mount’s muzzle as she drank her fill and the way they made the leaves of the water lilies bob and dance. Callum’s frowning reflection caught my eye. Why didn’t he speak? He had to have an opinion. It wasn’t like him to hold it back.
But he stayed tight-lipped, his brow furrowed.
If he didn’t intend to offer anything, I had to. I’d had enough. We were wasting time. My mother would die within hours, and nearly everyone I knew and loved with her.
“Kaspar’s right,” I said—loudly. “We need to do something soon, and his plan is the best anyone has suggested. Unless there are better ideas?” I turned to Callum, hoping he’d take that as an opening, but he didn’t. He didn’t even look back at me.
“You’ve made your point,” Oskar growled. “The garden gate. But this isn’t how honorable men wage war. And you and Linden ought to stay behind.”
“Not a chance, and this is how men who want to live wage war,” Kaspar snapped. “Besides, we’re not at war and honorable men don’t take ladies hostage and don’t deserve the courtesies of a formal conflict.”
“We ought to go,” I said, feeling as if I’d been teetering on the brink of a cliff and had taken a step into free fall as I did. There was nothing else to say, nothing left to do but face the man who’d wanted me dead since he learned about my birth. “We need to go.”
Oskar, Kaspar and I mounted our horses again, but Callum shook his head as Kaspar offered him a hand up. “I’ll walk from here,” he said. “I’ve had enough horseback riding to last me a lifetime.” His words hung in the air, the implication that it might be a short one as clear as if he’d said it. “Anyway, I’ll take rear guard.”
“Suit yourself,” Kaspar said, and we were off.
Oskar rode ahead, with Kaspar and me abreast behind him, and Callum dropped back. When I twisted my neck to catch a glimpse of him, I found him pacing along about five yards behind, his gun out and his face blank.
The hills drew together at the northern end of the valley, creating a narrow passage leading to a rocky field where Lady Lisandra’s herdsmen often kept a flock of sheep. We rode through it in single file, Oskar, and then Kaspar, and then me, with Callum trailing behind. Our horses’ hooves thudded softly on the deep grass, and otherwise I heard nothing. It was as if we were alone in the whole world.
As Kaspar passed through the gap, I glimpsed the field spread out before us, empty of anything but scattered boulders and waving grass.
And the moment I passed through behind him, the air wavered as if we were seeing a mirage, and too many black-armored soldiers to count materialized, their bows and swords out and pointed at us. Oskar roared in rage and drew his sword, but they’d already surrounded him, the soldiers pulling him from the saddle and overwhelming him. My heart pounded and my chest felt like it’d frozen up, no breaths coming in or out—ancestors, this was it, they were going to kill me here, and I’d never see my mother again, never drink wine, or make love—and then Kaspar and I were on the ground, and my arms were pulled roughly behind my back.
The soldiers’ shouts of triumph echoed harshly in my ringing ears. But they didn’t kill me. Instead, they marched me away, all but dragging me across the field. I couldn’t see Kaspar or Oskar and—where was Callum? I twisted my head, trying to find him, but the men crowding around me filled my vision. One of them shoved me between the shoulder blades so roughly I nearly fell, crying out in pain as my arms twisted, my wrists held cruelly by the man behind me.
I kept waiting for the sharp reports of Callum’s gun, for the men carrying me away to fall one by one.
They didn’t come.
Callum didn’t come. He’d abandoned us.
Callum
