A Midwinter Fantasy - Leanna Renee Hieber [67]
Mace ignored the insult. “I want two boys you have. Jayden and Travish. Hand them over. Now.”
The bandit laughed. “Way I hear it, you monsters got no use for menfolk. And one of those two ain’t a boy.”
“He’s still a boy. Hand them over,” Mace repeated, increasing his hate.
The aura had more in common with a flash of plumage than an actual weapon, and some people were just immune. The bandit leader appeared to be one of them. His men didn’t retreat, either. Mace knew this wasn’t because they were unaffected, but because they were more afraid of what their leader would do to them than a battle sylph. The fact that Mace hadn’t started off by simply killing everyone only helped reinforce that.
The bandit rubbed his nose and snorted a wad of phlegm into the snow. “Now, don’t know if they’d be so interested in that. Why don’t you ask them?” He gestured with his chin that Mace should turn around.
A strange itch burned between Mace’s shoulder blades as he presented the bandit chief his back. Standing behind him were more of the bandits, watching silently, weapons pointed with varying degrees of confidence. Among them was someone Mace recognized immediately. He was dirtier than Lily ever would have allowed back home. His hair was a mess, and there were bruises on his cheek that Mace didn’t like. He was terrified.
“Mace!” Jayden shouted, then winced. Someone had a grip on his arm, one tight enough to silence him.
Mace eyed the man who held Jayden. He was older than the boy but just as dirty. His eyes were hard with the hatred and bitterness Mace had already felt, and his pattern was so close to Sally’s that there was no way he could be anything but her son.
“So you’re Mace,” Travish spat. “The one my mother keeps saying is my father.” He laughed, the sound fraught with pain. He’d spent a lifetime paying for his mother’s love. “What a joke that’s been.”
“Are you saying he ain’t your da?” the bandit leader mocked.
Travish glared. “Do I look like I’m half freak?”
“Mace,” Jayden whined. “I want to go home.”
Travish shook the boy’s arm. “Hey, you volunteered to join us.”
Jayden looked desperate. “They said they’d kill everyone if someone didn’t!”
Mace remembered what the townspeople had told him: Jayden’s had been a noble sacrifice. But the bandits didn’t respect it. The bruise on Jayden’s cheek was days old, forcing one eye closed, and Mace didn’t like the way the boy held himself. He could feel the youth’s pain, and he knew Jayden would need the healer as well. Lily had been right to send him here.
He eyed the boy, really studying him for the first time, with his unnatural male energy and his terror that he’d be left here to rot. Under it all, Mace felt Jayden’s endless admiration for him and his desperate need to be acknowledged, if only once. He regarded the child, his expression softening for a moment. Then he lifted his gaze to the angry young man who held him. The one he’d promised Sally he’d bring back.
“Let him go or I will kill you.”
Terror flashed through Travish, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He had his mother’s courage, tainted with bitterness, and instead he pulled a knife, holding it to Jayden’s throat. “You want to try?” he snapped. Jayden froze.
Mace frowned.
“This is how it’s gonna be,” the bandit leader said from behind him, making Mace turn. “You do what we say an’ we’ll let the kid live. Don’t, an’ we’ll gut him like a fish.”
Mace just stared at the brigand, well aware of Jayden’s terror behind him. “What makes you think it matters to me?” he asked.
Jayden’s terror increased, his surety that he was being abandoned after all sending him on a downward spiral faster than the battler could have imagined. Mace actually felt him give up, and something he hadn’t known was there cringed in the depths of his own soul.
“Fine,” he growled, acquiescing before the boy could feel worse. “But if you hurt him, nothing will stop me from killing every man in this camp.”
Nothing except Lily’s order.
The bandit leader nodded, smirking, but the hope infusing Jayden’s pattern told Mace he’d made the