Luc inclined his head. “Good.”
Revek said nothing, and as Luc moved ahead, Revek’s hand disappeared from his shoulder.
He left his lieutenant to it, carefully retracing his steps, looking for any sign of Ava.
What he found was some of the soldiers who’d been with him when he’d negotiated with the Kassian spies for Ava’s life.
“They slipped passed you?” Rafe sounded disbelieving.
“No. Ava managed to escape them. They don’t have her.” He inclined his head the way he’d come. “Revek’s gone after them, I’m looking for Ava.”
“Where did Revek come from?” Rafe asked, surprised.
Luc frowned. “I don’t know.”
“If you want to split up, some can help me, some can help Revek.”
“Taira and I will help you look for Avasu,” Deni said.
Rafe met Luc’s eyes and nodded, then he and the young soldier with him moved on, following the path the Kassian scouts had forged through the undergrowth.
“Spread out,” Luc told the two Venyatux. “She’s injured, so she may be unresponsive. Call out when you find her.”
They nodded, and Deni went right, Taira left, and Luc moved back the way he’d come, to see if he could pick up a trail from the clearing where they’d held her.
As he stepped into the tiny space, the hairs on his neck began to prickle, and a feeling swept over him that he’d known before, from the Chosen camps.
Someone was watching him. Even though he couldn’t see them, he felt their eyes on him.
He turned slowly, pulling out his sword, although the vegetation was so dense, he wouldn’t be able to get in a full swing.
The feeling slowly faded, but that didn’t comfort him.
His heart sped up, and he fought back the memories of sitting for hours, never sure who was behind him.
That the Kassian guards running the camps meant him harm was a given. The timing of when that harm would come to him, though, that he could never predict.
He had long ago worked out it hadn’t mattered what he did.
Comply. Rebel. Pretend respect, or show his true contempt.
They’d already decided what they were going to do. And they deliberately kept it inconsistent, to mess with everyone’s heads.
They’d thought it would break the Cervantes children they had stolen. That they would end up needing order and consistency, and cling to it when it was finally offered to them.
Become good little soldiers for the Kassian cause.
It hadn’t worked on Luc. And he had made sure it hadn’t worked on as many fellow camp prisoners as he could reach.
He had wondered if it was someone with magic who had watched him all those years ago. Made invisible by a spell.
He wasn’t the only one who had felt it, but most had convinced themselves they had imagined the watcher. And perhaps it truly had been a figment of their imaginations. A shadow monster born of exhaustion and fear.
But he would swear it was the same sensation he’d felt moments ago.
And if he was right, that meant there was a magic user in these trees, watching all over again.
He forced himself to let it go.
That wasn’t important right now. Ava was.
He could think about this later. Not that he would have any way to truly know, one way or the other. Which was all the more reason to let it go.
He took one last look around, but the sensation had passed and he sheathed his sword. The moment it slid home in its scabbard, Ava rose up from the shadows, out of nowhere.
As if she had stepped from the Otherworld itself.
Ava didn’t think it was a coincidence that Luc had put his sword away the moment she had taken her eyes off him to unpick the last of her working.
When he had first stepped into the clearing and suddenly gone still, he’d looked lethal.
Ready to engage in battle.
She had hidden at the sound of someone returning, crouching deep in the shadow of the tree, and when she had seen it was Luc, moving in that quiet, predatory way of his, she had been about to rise up, call out to him, when he had stopped dead.
And then suddenly, his sword was in his hand, and he was turning, looking for some threat he obviously sensed. She had the feeling that if she had moved at that moment, he would have cut her down before she could identify herself.
She closed her eyes, trying to listen for whatever or whoever it was he sensed, but there was nothing to hear but the whispering of leaves and the quiet, steady breath of her lover as he stood ready to kill.
And then she glanced up to see he had relaxed somewhat, sliding his sword back into place, and she made a hard, hard decision and ripped out the last of her stitches, got to her feet and stepped into the light.
“Ava.” He stared at her, dumbfounded. “Was that you watching me?”
She stared at him, lifted her bound hands, and pulled the gag from her mouth. She cleared her throat. “I heard someone come into the clearing, but I hid because I didn’t know it was you, and then you had your sword out, so I kept still, and . . .” She suddenly understood, and the realization roared over her like a gale, like the hard storms she’d battled through the Grimwalt mountains on her way home just a few months ago.
She gaped at him, and her mouth tried to form words. “It was me,” she whispered. “Me you thought was a threat.”
“How were you not here, and here at the same time?” He stepped closer to her, and she realized that his sword was in his hand again. Had been there since she emerged from the shadows.
He stared down at it, unable to reach for her while he held it, and slowly slid it back into the scabbard strapped to his back.
“I worked magic into my cloak,” she said, as softly as she could while still making herself audible to him. “I needed to hide from the Kassian spies, so while their back was turned, talking to you, I worked an invisibility spell into my cloak, and when they turned around to grab me, they thought I was gone.”
It felt as if she was shredding her clothes to stand naked in front of a jeering crowd. That some terrible fate would befall her the moment the words were out of her mouth.
She had never revealed anything like it to anyone, ever.
She realized she was panting, as if she’d run a long, long way. She held out her bound wrists to him. “Will you cut me loose?”
He started, and then pulled a knife from his boot, sliced through the binding. He took her gag, too, and cut it off her where it hung around her neck.
“Tell me,” he whispered. “Tell me how.”
He looked like he was fighting a war with himself. Like he wanted to pull her close and push her away at the same time, and she drew herself straight, and took a step back.
“I don’t know how.” She lifted her shoulders. “My mother and my grandmother could do it, too. That’s why the Queen’s Herald had me and my mother locked up. He wanted me to work magic for him, and I wouldn’t. I thought I’d outsmarted him, but instead . . .”
“Instead, he took your mother and forced her to do it. Most likely with the threat of harm to you.”
She gave a nod.
“And this?” He plucked at his shirt.
“A working of protection.” She lowered her eyes. “That no harm should come to you.”
“Avasu!” Deni’s shout made them both jerk. “You’re all right.”