A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [66]
He didn’t say any of that to her, though. They just shared her pleasure, and the climax when it came shook Mace to his core.
“I’ll find Travish for you,” he promised, cradling her afterward to his broad chest. “I’ll find Jayden and I’ll save him. I’ll find my sons.”
Chapter Nine
He went back that night, with the moon shining through a finally clear sky. He would have gone sooner, but he’d needed to sleep. This was a rare thing for a healthy sylph to do, and nerve-racking in a lot of ways. He’d only slept a handful of times in his life, and to lose all awareness of his surroundings the way he did was frightening, especially when he knew there was danger nearby. It was wrong. He was supposed to be the guard, not Sally. But she and Ruffles watched him sleep, sitting by the fire he’d helped kindle, and nothing happened.
Mace returned to the camp of brigands that night because he wanted the encounter done with. He wanted Travish and Jayden safe and all of them out of there. Moreover, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could wait for healing. His injuries weren’t fatal by any means, but he found it harder to hold energy and he was going though it much faster than he should. Ruffles was a good dog, but she didn’t have the reserves needed to keep going like this; she was sleeping like the dead when he left her, nose buried under her tail. What he really needed was the Valley’s healer, and he couldn’t go to her until he had the boys. Saving them was as vitally important now as guarding his queen.
Leaving Sally in the safety of their camp with the fire to keep her warm, Mace shifted to cloud form and flew back toward the bandit camp, his attention focused ahead of him upon the men he could feel there. He hadn’t been sure they’d stay. He’d seen a lot of people abandon their homes before for the merest threat of a battler. More than once, he had been that threat.
The bandits had already proven they weren’t so cowardly. Once he might have thought them stupid, but they had managed to drive him away. Battlers had lost their reputation for disaster, he guessed. Solie herself had encouraged that, not wanting people to fear them. It had been decades since a battle sylph even flared their hate in Eferem, and these men didn’t believe the stories of what they were supposed to be able to do. They understood the hate aura now, but they certainly didn’t seem to trust in the other stories that a battle sylph could destroy a mountain. Really, they were even right in that conviction, since Mace wasn’t allowed to.
He arched high over the camp, sensing them below. They’d lit bonfires around the perimeter as well as in the main square. They provided light while they watched the woods all around. No one slept that Mace could feel, and tensions were high. He tasted a lot of anger in the camp, and not nearly as much fear as he was used to. One man didn’t feel fear at all, and Mace pinpointed him as the leader. He was the one who must have kept them fighting when Mace first arrived. Mace didn’t like to think about how much control he had over these men to stop them from fleeing an enraged battle sylph’s hate aura.
He swooped in before they saw him against the dark sky and hit the camp with his hatred again. Shifting shape, he landed heavily on one knee in the center of the open square, his face highlighted by the glow from the closest bonfire. Lifting his head, he stared across fifty feet of frozen mud to the man he’d sensed earlier, the one with no fear. He was a shaggy specimen, his face pockmarked by old scars and his hair greasy. He grimaced at Mace, mouth filled with missing or black teeth. His outrage was palpable.
Mace stood, his eyes never leaving the man. “I want two things. Give them to me and I’ll leave. Don’t, and I’ll turn this camp into a crater filled with ash. You know what I am.”
The bandits eyed each other nervously, some already retreating into the darkness, while their leader spat to one side. “What you