Unbound (The Captive #7)(8)
His flesh was mottled and red from where the arrows had punctured him over and over again. He’d always had flawless skin, smooth to the touch, so strong and warm beneath her hands. Now it was chilled beneath her fingers and there was a weakness in him she’d never seen before. The cold of his body wasn’t from the snow beneath him and the winter air flowing over him, but from the life steadily seeping away from him.
She would crave death without him. She knew what the loss of a bloodlink had done to his father, Atticus. She would never allow herself to become that kind of a monster.
She’d informed William she might have to be destroyed. Now, the possibility loomed over her like a guillotine preparing to fall. She could almost feel the sharp steel edge kissing the back of her neck.
However, like Atticus, she wouldn’t die or allow herself to be destroyed before exacting her revenge against Braith’s killer. She would not rest until she knew the woman who destroyed her husband was dead. That woman was far stronger than she was, but Aria would find a way to watch her screaming in agony before she allowed death to claim her.
Braith had taken those arrows to keep her alive. It should have been her lying there now, not him. She brushed a strand of black hair off his forehead. His face was lax, making him appear more vulnerable than she’d ever seen him, and right now, he was vulnerable. Like him, she would risk everything to keep him protected.
Aria hastily removed her bow, quiver, and cloak before taking her bloody shirt off. The cold air cut through the thin undershirt she wore as she lifted Braith’s shirt from the ground.
“Keep working,” she muttered to herself. “Keep going.”
Bunching up the ruined clothes, she rose to her feet and ran up the side of the embankment on the other side of the gulch. She dipped the clothes onto the ground every couple of feet, leaving blood stains on the snow as she went. Halfway up the hillside, she fell to her hands and knees. She dug through a patch of snow to uncover the leaves and earth beyond. Tearing away the dirt, she created a small hole and stuffed the shirts inside before burying them.
She ran back and forth over the area, kicking snow up to cover her digging. When she was done, she turned and walked backwards down the hill, giving the appearance of someone going up the hill, but no one coming back down. It might not distract their pursuers for long, but it would buy her some time to navigate the traps within the cave safely. If she knew her brothers, they would realize what she’d done and not go to the caves the same way she planned to go.
A sense of urgency drove her as she raced back to Braith’s side. The bloodlink between us is still there…
However, she could feel a wavering within the bond connecting them. “Don’t leave me,” she whispered to him.
She threw her cloak back around her shoulders and pinned it in place with the silver horsehead brooch her father had left for her before he died. She would have put the cloak around Braith to try to warm him, but it would never fit his large frame. Kneeling at Braith’s side, she ran her fingers over his cherished face before lifting him onto her shoulders once more. She didn’t look back as she raced through the snow to the entrance of the cave.
The musty scent of the cave filled her nostrils when she plunged into its gloomy depths. She carefully placed Braith on the rocky ground twenty feet within before returning to the entrance. She searched the gulch and the trees lining the sides of it for any hint of danger. Everything remained calm for as far as she could see, and she scented nothing out of the ordinary on the breeze shaking the trees.
Satisfied they were still alone, she stripped her cloak off once more and raced out into the open. She ran half a mile back; it was as far as she dared to go without chancing being spotted. Lowering her cloak into the snow, she walked backwards and wiped away her footprints leading to the cave.
There was nothing she could do to completely mask their scent, but with the buried clothes, she hoped to leave their enemies confused enough about their location that she would have a better chance of leading them away from the cave system later.
If their enemies did find the cave and decided to investigate, there was a good chance they would be driven back, killed, or at least maimed by Daniel’s booby traps. It had been nearly a year and a half since they’d had to use the caves to hide from vampires, but she didn’t doubt her brother’s designs had held up during that time.
Returning to the entrance of the cave, she fled back to where she’d left Braith and knelt by his side before lifting him onto her shoulders once more. Her legs, back, and chest protested the movement, but she’d carry him a thousand more miles if she had to.
CHAPTER 4
William
“This way,” William said and fled down the center of the gulch after his sister’s footprints. On her own, Aria barely would have left a mark behind in the snow, but Braith’s weight on her shoulders had made her normally agile step far more pronounced.
He kept hold of Tempest’s hand as he ran through the snow in pursuit of Aria. Her hand warmed his as he slid his fingers across the delicate bones in the back of it. Tempest was strong, nimble, and smart, but he’d felt the power of the vampire woman claiming to be the rightful queen and experienced her cruelty when he’d allowed himself to be captured in Badwin.
He shuddered at the possibility of anything happening to Tempest. She was his; she’d made him forget the wrath that had festered inside him after he’d lost his mortality and become a vampire, one of the creatures he’d spent most of his life hating.