Chapter 25 #2
Damn them to shades of the underworld. I was now pissed off at them all. Sitting there, leaning on my knowledge to guide them south to safety, they were going to double-cross me.
I just knew it.
My foot started tapping against the snow, and I saw his head lift once more to look at me over the camp.
“Trailfinder?”
Fuck him.
I was on my feet, walking away from the camp.
A hand caught my arm and pulled me back into his chest. I knew it was him. No one else had the audacity to touch me as freely as he did.
“I need privacy.” If my voice sounded like it came from between clenched teeth, it was because it did.
“For what?”
I wrenched free of him, spinning to face him. “Oh my gods, Nicco, I need some private time.”
“You need to shit?”
My eyes closed in despair. “Please go away.”
“You just needed to say that, bunny.”
“Gods, you’re an asshole.” I stomped away from him and refused to acknowledge the fact that the bastard told me to stay close.
I got maybe thirty feet before I knew he was behind me.
Not footsteps. I never heard his footsteps. Just the change in the air's quality that happened when Nicco decided to be somewhere.
I didn’t turn around. “Why?”
“I said stay close.”
“I heard you,” I said, without stopping. “And I told you I needed alone time.”
“Amarya.”
“I need some space, Nicco. Just some space where no one is watching me and I can do what I need.” I stopped walking and turned to face him. He was closer than I expected, which was always the problem with him. “Can you give me that?”
He studied me for a moment with that level, assessing look. “No.”
I turned back around. “You make it easy to dislike you.”
He fell into step behind me. Not close enough to crowd me, not far enough to give me the privacy I'd asked for. The exact distance calculated to be both present and plausibly not following.
I hated how good he was at that.
I stopped when I reached a flat rock that wasn’t thick with ice and sat down on it, and stared at the southern horizon in the dark. He stopped behind me. I could feel him standing there, probably with his arms crossed, doing his watching thing, and I concentrated very hard on breathing slowly.
“You don’t seem to be doing what you claim you need.”
“Fuck off.”
He laughed. I heard him retreating loudly, for my benefit. “I’ll be back shortly to make sure you haven’t fallen asleep.”
“Asshole!” I called over my shoulder, and he laughed louder.
I wasn’t proud that I checked over my shoulder twice to make sure he was gone. When I was sure he was, I decided I might as well relieve myself.
I didn't hear them.
That was the thing I kept coming back to afterward. I didn't hear them at all.
One moment, the dark beyond me was empty. The next, a hand clamped over my mouth from behind, an arm locked across my chest, and I was hauled backward from the rock before I had a chance to defend myself.
I didn't scream. My instincts kicked in before fear could. I bit down hard on the hand covering my mouth, drove my elbow back into the ribs, and twisted. The grip adjusted immediately, which meant whoever had me had done this before.
“Trailfinder.” Vorn's voice sounded low in the quiet of the night. Calm. Almost apologetic. “Don't scream.”
I went still.
Not because I was afraid… or not only because of that.
Because Vorn's voice had come from my left, and the hands restraining me were in front and behind.
I could scream, but screaming would bring the camp.
The camp was a minute away at a run, and a minute was a long time when you were with men who knew the landscape as well as you did.
“This doesn't have to be difficult,” Vorn said. He stepped into my eyeline, the same broad, unhurried man from the settlement, looking at me with the same weathered steadiness. “You come with us. Your companions don't get hurt.”
He looked at whoever had me, and they dropped their hand from my mouth.
“You waited for us?” My voice sounded steadier than I felt.
“I waited for you,” he corrected, and the distinction was deliberate.
“Vorn—”
“I need a trailfinder,” he said simply. “I need the best one. That's you. Come willingly, and everyone goes home.”
“And if I don't?”
He looked at me for a long moment. Not threatening, just honest. A man who had already decided what would happen and was giving me the courtesy of a choice, knowing it made no difference to the outcome.
“Then I take you anyway,” he said, stating the obvious. “And your Darysian friends get to find out how many of my people they can fight in the dark.”
Which would be none.
I heard movement behind me, and I was spun around so my captor could see as well.
Fast. Faster than I'd expected, the sound of boots on snow, then impact, someone going down.
I wrenched sideways and nearly got free, but a second pair of hands had me, then a third, and I understood, with the clarity of someone who had spent years assessing odds, that there were too many of them for me to fight.
Behind me, the sounds of fighting continued, then fell quiet.
I heard a grunt, and my stomach plummeted.
Now they had us both.