Broken Dove (Fantasyland #4)(124)

“Lo!” Maddie wheezed into his throat.

He took the pressure off the back of her head and looked down at her. “Dove, what?”

She tipped her head back. “You’re squeezing the breath out of me.”

His arm around her back relaxed but he did not let her go.

She collapsed into him and pressed her face in his chest.

Seeing her do that, feeling it, he felt a muscle tick in his cheek right before he whistled sharply.

Maddie jumped in his arms and lifted her head but Apollo turned his eyes to the wolf who ran to him and stopped five feet away.

He heard Maddie catch her breath but he spoke to the king of the wolves.

“How many did you lose?”

“Twenty-seven.” He heard in his head as the wolf barked.

Twenty-seven.

Twenty-seven wolves.

Gods damn it.

“They will be avenged,” Apollo promised.

The wolf yipped, bobbed his muzzle, turned and ran through the smolder.

“What was that?” Maddie asked, her voice breathy, now for a different reason.

Apollo looked down at her.

She was staring after the wolf.

He lifted his head and gave a different kind of whistle.

Anguish trotted to him.

He heard Maddie gasp as he lifted her up and planted her arse on his mount. He didn’t delay in swinging up behind her, jerking up his chin to Frey, dipping it to Finnie, clamping Maddie close to him and bending into her and his steed.

He dug his heels in Anguish’s flanks.

His horse shot through the smoke.

Destination Brunskar.

And the path to vengeance.

* * * * *

His boots sounding sharp on the black stone floors of the Brunskar dungeons, Apollo was not surprised at what he saw at the end of the hall when he turned the corner.

Madeleine and Frey facing off.

She was wearing what he assumed was one of Melba’s soft, peach gowns. He assumed this as he’d left her to Melba, a guard, one of Calder’s witches, a physician called in from the village, as well as Meeta. They were all seeing to Loretta.

In other words, outside Melba, who’d essentially been elbowed aside by a rabidly protective Maddie and an equally rabidly protective Meeta, they were generally getting in the physician’s way.

As he had things to do that didn’t include watching a physician stitch flesh as his Maddie fanned Loretta and Meeta threatened the poor man if the stitches weren’t tidy and straight, he’d left them to it.

Now she had found her way to the dungeons, the torches lit along the walls casting spare light into the gloom.

He was finding that was his Maddie. Assassins. Hewcrows. Dark magic. She was a fighter. She most definitely did not like to be kept in the dark and she didn’t shy away from much.

Except emotion.

And she was learning to face that head on too.

And all of this, all of Maddie, pleased him very much.

Which meant the thirty minutes where he knew not whether she was still with him in this world, or she was not in any world, had been unadulterated anguish.

Apollo could not dwell on that however, for as he got close, he saw her face was set.

As was Frey’s.

She heard his boots, looked his way and greeted, “Hey, honey.”

Even as fury and fear still smoldered in his chest, at her greeting, Apollo nearly smiled.

However, he did not.

This was because she turned instantly back to Frey and opened her mouth.

But Frey got there first.

“You will not enter.”

Apollo stopped close behind Maddie but had no chance to speak.

“Finnie’s in there,” she returned heatedly. “I saw her when you opened the door.”

“My Finnie is an unusual woman and princess of this realm,” Frey retorted.

“Well, I’m an unusual woman too. Seeing as she’s of my people, we’re the same kind of unusual and it was me and my girls”—she jerked her thumb at herself with each stressed word then threw out an arm—“who were out there with those things.”

Apollo felt his jaw grow tight at a reminder of the danger Madeleine had been in.

But Frey was not swayed

“What you would see in there is not for women’s eyes.”

“Huh,” Maddie huffed in disgust, and at that noise, Apollo lost his disquiet and rage at the events of earlier that night and again almost smiled. “I’ve seen Lo slit a man’s throat, gut another one, slice another one in the neck and cut off a man’s hand.” She twisted her neck and looked up at him. “What other carnage have you wrought in front of me, sweetheart?”

At that, there was no hope of stopping it, he smiled down at her.

“Lo, this is your decision,” Frey stated and Apollo looked to him.

“Let her enter.”

He felt Maddie relax in front of him.

Frey nodded and turned instantly to the door he was blocking, opened it and moved inside.

He left it open and Maddie began to move there but he caught her arm and turned her to him.

“Apollo—” she started impatiently.

“One moment, my dove,” he interrupted her gently. “Before you enter that room, you must be warned. You have seen Laures at work but you were in no state to let it register and he had just gotten started. Oleg, Frey’s man, is also skilled at extracting information. He does not relish using these skills, but he has them. What you may see in that room may be difficult to witness no matter the…” he paused, “carnage you’ve already beheld.”