A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [62]
“What’s wrong?” Sally asked quietly, laying a hand on his neck. Mace arched into it, even though he hadn’t adopted the shape of one of those high-necked fancy equines. He liked to keep things simple. The hive mattered, women mattered. Human men didn’t, but despite all his neglect, Jayden loved him—as a father or a brother or who knew what? How could Mace have been so self-absorbed that he’d never noticed? No wonder Jayden had run away.
“Have you found our son?” Sally asked, bringing up the other great confusion.
“No,” he said, not contradicting her but not thinking about it either. “I feel Jayden. He’s down there.”
Her knees tightened around him. “Then our son has to be too! You have to find him!”
Mace tossed his head and tried, wanting to please her and to get this uncomfortable feeling of guilt out of his head. He looked for Travish’s pattern, with nothing to go on other than his familiarity with the man’s mother . . . and was surprised when he found it almost right away. The boy felt like Sally, with the same swirls and lines that formed her pattern but without that unique glow that marked her as a woman. He had his own luminescence, just as Jayden and all the other human men Mace ever encountered did, something that Mace had never paid much attention to before.
Travish had a beaten-down strength in him, the same as his mother, but he also had a terrible anger for whomever he saw as his enemies, along with a determination to succeed and prove himself, to be something other than the bastard son of a madwoman who claimed he was the son of a battler. Mace felt that anger, and also that the youth was with Jayden. Travish’s emotions toward the boy were a mix of uncertainty and disbelief, overlaid with an absolute surety that Jayden was a liar. It seemed that Travish had been told in just whose home Jayden had grown up.
“I can feel him,” he said. He immediately experienced Sally’s exultation, as soothing to him as a balm after the emotions of the two boys.
Mace picked his way up the final stretch of slope and crested the hill, still unable to see beyond it due to the trees. There was very little snow on the ground, thanks to some tree cover, and no bushes either, the trees not allowing enough light for them. Mace moved forward across level terrain, sensing the sentries still watching out of sight. The camp was only a short way away, down in a smaller valley just beyond. “He’s with Jayden.”
“He must be taking care of him!” Sally exclaimed.
Mace stepped into a pit.
The bandits must have dug it to trap men, just in case someone topped the ridge. It was covered with sticks and pine needles to keep it hidden and was nearly six feet deep, the bottom filled with sharpened stakes that pointed upwards. Mace’s front legs went through the cover and he fell forward, his shoulders catching on the sides before he could land on the sharpened stakes. Sally shrieked and tumbled forward, barely stopped from rolling into the length of the trap by Mace throwing up his head and catching her in the stomach, tossing her clear and off to the side.
Ruffles crouched low to the ground, her ears flat and her tail stiff. She started to growl, glaring at the bushes where the sentries were hiding. Mace felt their intentions toward the dog and swung his head toward her.
“Evade,” he grunted.
Ruffles stared at him, her ears coming forward at the command, and then she turned and ran, vanishing over the edge of the ridge and back the way they’d come. Her training included this command to save herself. She couldn’t feed a sylph if she was dead, and any threat a battle sylph couldn’t handle alone would be far too much for her. She’d find a place to hide and wait for him to find her.
That took care of Ruffles, but not Sally. He never should have brought her here, he realized. He just hadn’t expected a group of bandits to actually be a problem, even with Lily’s order not to kill. But as Sally sat up, a little stunned and covered in pine needles, the two sentries came out of the woods toward her. They were both dressed in