Page 31 of Brought to Light
The second Oskar and Kaspar started arguing about the best way to take Evalt and his men by surprise, I knew we were fucked. Evalt knew we were coming, because he’d sent us an invitation we couldn’t refuse; he knew where we were coming from, because his crows had seen us there; he knew when we’d arrive, because he’d set the timeframe. His ambush hadn’t worked, and maybe he’d been thrown off a little by that, but it wasn’t much to count on. When his men didn’t come back, with or without us, he’d assume we were still on the way.
So hidden garden gate or no hidden garden gate, I doubted we’d surprise anyone. I’d been hoping Oskar and Kaspar had some real trick up their sleeves, but it didn’t sound like it. At all. Realistically, we were going to be captured, and quickly.
Or…theywere, if I stayed back and gave myself the opportunity to slip away before I was noticed, while Evalt’s men focused on the other three. I’d been mulling it over all morning. Evalt might not know about me. I was the surprise, I was the trick.
And I had to figure out how to make that work for us on my own. Telling Oskar, who I’d already seen liked to operate as bluntly and openly as possible, that I meant to ‘skulk like a coward’ while he, Kaspar, and Linden walked into an obvious trap? Not something that would’ve flown. Oskar wouldn’t have listened, and we didn’t have time to fight over it.
So I took rear guard, stayed off the horses, and hung back, far enough that I could make my own decisions without a goddamn committee.
And it was a good fucking thing, too. The second Oskar, Kaspar, and Linden rode out of the little valley we’d stopped in, and into the open, a whole army came out of fucking nowhere, like someone had pulled back a curtain. God, I’d never get used to magic. Oskar went down immediately, because these soldiers had the common sense to neutralize the biggest threat first. Kaspar and Linden didn’t stand a chance, and they were pulled off their horses and bound within seconds.
That made up my mind for me. If it’d looked like the soldiers meant to execute them right then and there, I’d have intervened. There wouldn’t have been another choice. But dragging them off to Evalt seemed to be the plan, and that meant I still had time to come up with something better than going down shooting.
I’d scoped out the hills on either side of the valley’s mouth as we approached, and as soon as the soldiers appeared I scrambled up the hill to my left. A couple of trees and a rock sat at the crown of the hill—cover.
I ducked behind the rock and poked my head up enough to get a look at the situation below. Fourteen men, now that I had a vantage point to count them, with Oskar hogtied and still struggling and being dragged along by six of them, with the other eight surrounding Linden and Kaspar.
As I watched, Linden tried to look over his shoulder. I caught a glimpse of his pale, terrified face before one of the bastards thumped him with his fist and shoved him forward again.
Fuck. He’d been looking for me. He probably thought I’d up and run, giving it up for a bad job.
Not much I could do about that. If he died, or I died, before we saw each other again…it made me sick, that he might never know I hadn’t ditched him and left him to die.
But there wasn’t any choice. Hand-to-hand like that, they’d have taken me down as fast as Oskar. I might’ve gotten a couple of shots off first, but then it would’ve been over. Now, if I’d had my rifle, and they hadn’t had hostages…it felt good for a millisecond, imagining how I’d have picked them off one by one, head shot after head shot.
But I had a single fifteen-round magazine for my Sig, no intel, and no backup. Very fucking John McClane. At least I had shoes.
As soon as the whole troop had gotten out of hearing range, I scrambled back down the hill and set off parallel and to the left. I trailed them across a large rocky field, and then hung back as they turned onto a small path leading further to my right. Probably to the front door, and if I was wrong about that, then I was extra fucked.
I circled around, double-timing it in what I could hope might be the direction of the back of the house.
I had a hidden garden gate to find—and then hopefully a plan, and some snappy one-liners, would come to me when I needed them. And I could only pray that Lord Evalt was the monologuing type of asshole villain. The least he could do would be to buy me some time.
Chapter Fifteen
Linden
More soldiers stood on guard at the villa’s wrought-pewter gates, one of which hung crookedly on its hinges, the spread-winged phoenix at the top of it bent and dangling. Lady Lisandra’s violets, which had grown in profusion in beds along the gravel drive to the front door, lay in trampled smears. My cheeks were wet, though I hadn’t realized I’d been crying.
A shout of triumph went up as our captors wrestled us through the gates. My feet skidded in the gravel, and ahead of me, Oskar struggled anew, managing to kick one of the soldiers holding him in the knee with a horrid crunch. Another soldier cuffed Oskar upside the head, and they pulled him onward.
The villa rose before me, white stone and climbing roses and broad windows glittering in the sun. Home. The place where I’d been born, the place where I would die.
It felt inevitable now. I could only pray Lord Evalt would spare my mother, though I knew Oskar and Kaspar would die with me. No, he’d kill everyone. Lady Lisandra didn’t have much influence, as fae aristocracy went, but if she survived she’d carry her grievances to the High Court. Evalt had, so far, managed to avoid any conflicts with those more powerful than he, and if he killed all the witnesses and spun a web of half-truths to account for his actions, no one would bother to avenge us. It was the way of our people, to shrug and ignore anything that didn’t overstep our own territorial boundaries. But if Lady Lisandra lived to bring a formal petition, marked in her noble blood, the Queen would be forced to take notice.
He would kill us all. He had no choice, now that he’d set himself on this path. My only hope had been that we might somehow sneak in and take Evalt by surprise. My stomach clenched, heavy and sick, as the full realization of how stupid I’d been sank in.
He had too many men. We were never going to succeed. And Oskar, more experienced in matters like this, must have guessed that would be the case, no matter how bravely he’d tried to fight it out to the bitter end. If he knew it, so did Kaspar. They’d willingly walked into this for my sake, so that I wouldn’t need to face it alone.
Callum had more sense than any of us.
If only the seer had been right, and I really was destined to kill Evalt…but that couldn’t be true. I knew it in my bones.
No matter how I dragged my feet, it took only moments to be pulled up the broad steps and through the front door, and into the spacious hall. The soldiers shoved Oskar and Kaspar to their knees, prying their jaws open and forcing leather straps between their teeth to keep them silent.
Two of the men flung open the huge, ornately carved double doors to Lady Lisandra’s ballroom, and the rest manhandled us all inside. They pulled Oskar and Kaspar to the side of the room, allowing me to see what lay before me.
Deep, ugly gouges marred the parquet floor of the ballroom. More soldiers lined the walls.
