Unbound (The Captive #7)(26)

“Where is the king?” one of the king’s men inquired.

“We were ambushed by the same group of people who devastated Badwin.” Cries of alarm met her statement, and frightened murmurs raced through the crowd. “My brothers are working to try to keep everyone protected.” Not entirely a lie. “We’ve been sent back to see you safely onto the palace, but we must move quickly.”

“Is Hannah okay?” An older-looking vampire shoved his way to the front of the crowd to demand. Melinda recognized him as Hannah’s uncle Abe.

Many of the residents of Chippman had some kind of genetic defect. Abe hadn’t stopped aging until he was sixty-two. He was spry and healthy, and wouldn’t age another day, but he looked older than most of the vampires surrounding him. Beside him stood his son, Lucas, and Hannah’s best friend, Ellen. Their faces were filled with worry as they stared anxiously at her. Tempest’s best friend, Pallas, and a few of the children she’d fled Badwin with also pushed their way to the front to stare at her.

“Hannah is fine. Everyone is fine,” she assured them, or at least most of them had been fine the last time Melinda had seen them. “Now, we have to go.”

They would be able to move faster now that the sun was down and the vampires from Chippman who were unable to stand its rays, like Lucas, could travel without the hindrance of the covered carriages built for them.

“Leave the carriages behind,” Ashby said when some of the vampires started to ready the horses for them. “We will be returning to the palace tonight.”

“What if we don’t?” one of the vampires demanded anxiously.

Ashby’s gaze didn’t waver as he met and held the man’s. “We have no choice but to reach it tonight.”

Uneasy murmurs went through the crowd. “Then we will reach it tonight,” Lucas declared. “Easy enough if we move out now. Let’s go everyone.”

Melinda took a minute to gather herself as she watched them all saddle their horses. They were doing as she and Ashby had instructed. Now they had to get them all to safety. Ashby claimed a horse from one of the king’s men and lifted her into the saddle.

“I can get up on my own,” she said.

“Nope,” he said as he swung onto the saddle to settle himself behind her. “Get used to being pampered and not lifting a finger. I intend to spoil you.”

“More than you already do?”

His smile was strained; his normally lively eyes didn’t dance, but she still saw the joy in his gaze as he stared at her belly then her. “Far more.”

She settled back against him when he nudged the horse in the side and they took off at a brisk trot through the woods. They weren’t as familiar with this area of the forest as Aria and her brothers were, but Melinda had been through here enough to know at least three ways back to the palace.

“We can’t take the main road,” she said.

“No, we can’t,” Ashby agreed as he steered them toward a rocky ledge and two side roads.

One side road ran parallel to the main road, about three miles away from it, but still too close to the main for her liking. The other was a convoluted pathway that meandered through the woods, over a mountain and down into a valley. It was a little known road and rarely traveled, but it would add hours onto their trip, and if they were cornered in the valley, there would be no escape.

“We’re going to have to stay in the woods,” he said.

“Yes,” she agreed and rested her hands on top of the lean muscles of his forearms. “Let’s hope we don’t get lost.”

“I’m like a compass. I always know the way,” he replied.

“I feel like your compass might have us going in circles.”

“Then it’s a good thing I have you to help guide the way.”

“I hope so.”

He led the horse down a steep embankment and into a gully; she didn’t think it was the same gully from earlier today—had that really only been today? It felt as if days had passed since they’d first been attacked. Looking out at the landscape before them, her stomach turned at the reminder of her brother’s death.





CHAPTER 11


Aria

“I know you’re there! Show yourself!” Aria commanded.

“Don’t shoot,” a woman replied from the shadows. “I’m coming out now, and I mean no harm.”

The woman stepped out of the tunnel where she’d been hiding. Her hands were raised in the air. Gray speckled the brown hair tumbling around her thin shoulders and weathered face. She was probably only in her late thirties, but life had etched lines around her brown eyes and mouth.

Something about the woman tugged at Aria’s memory, but she didn’t lower her bow. Even if this woman had known where the keys were and how to traverse these tunnels, she trusted no one right now.

“Your Highness,” the woman said and kept her hands raised as she gave a small curtsy. “It has been a while.”

That voice, she’d heard it before, but where? If her heart wasn’t so badly shattered and her mind could grasp at anything other than death and destruction, she was sure she would know who this woman was, but the answer continued to elude her.

Her gaze ran over the woman again as her voice tickled at the back edges of Aria’s mind. Then, recognition burst to life within her. “Mary?” she inquired.