Page 257 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“Yeah!” I smashed his helmet to the ground by his dumbass head. “What thefuckis wrong with you?”
Forty-Two
“Explain!”IdemandedofBriar hours after the ceasefire. After I’d taken stock of what we’d lost.
Hundreds of refugees were wounded. Ten were dead. Including Morus, who hadn’t kept, as he’d promised he would. And Liatris, who’d taken an arrow through the chest just after safeguarding Jet.
Sedge had found the little one crying over his mother’s body, and I’d spent most of the last hour rocking him into a fitful slumber before storming to the Kirk of Cara to tear my so-called fiancé a new one.
Shamefaced in his shiny royal armor, Briar rose from a pile of rubble in the kirk. Royal forces had catapulted several humongous stone balls at the temple before they’d realized nobody was inside. Cracks now spider-webbed across Adam and Eve’s frieze, but the glass dome rising above us had somehow remained intact. Moonlight filtered in through its etched panes, washing us in silver.
Hands out in supplication, Briar started with, “I’m so sorry, Amy. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“Then what the hell did you mean to happen?” Smoke wafted from my hands. My emotions were on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and my powers had called shotgun.
Behind me, Myrrdin cleared his throat, then I felt another’s warm touch upon my sweaty back, doing more to calm me than a tranquilizer could.
Pete’s still here, I kept reminding myself.He’s here. He’s okay.
Briar’s Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. “We were trying to rescue you, Amy.”
“You could’ve killed me too, Briar, with the crazy way yinz burst in here!”
Briar shook his head, his jaw clenched in denial. “No, we’d planned that out. We enchanted our arrows, so that they wouldn’t strike a single prisoner. We didn’t want to hurt any innocents.”
“There are no prisoners here, Briar!Allof these people are innocent!”
Briar’s lime eyes scathed the two harbingers standing behind me. Obviously, he had his doubts on the matter of innocents.
Neither Pete nor Sedge seemed to give a crap what he thought of them.
Myrrdin tapped his slender lips. “Briar, what led you to believe there were prisoners here?”
Taking a deep breath, Briar faced the prophet in something akin to relief. He clearly thought Myrrdin would have his back, as he’d been Myrrdin’s former pupil, just as my mother had. “Because we had intel that said so.”
“What does that mean?” I snapped. “Intel? Are you working with the CIA now?”
Briar’s mouth quirked. “It was a message, Amy, detailing exactly where you were—that you were being held captive in one of Gentian’s harbinger outposts.”
I stilled.Huh?
“Who sent it to you?” Pete asked, his voice an echoing mallet in the rotunda.
Briar didn’t even try to mask his sneer. “It wasn’t sent. It was found. In the jungle while we were searching for her.”
“You were searching for me?” How dogged had that search been if numerous harbingers had caught my trail, but no one from the Spring Palace had? Gentian couldn’t be the only game in town for proficient trackers.
“Of course, I was!” Briar exclaimed, insulted. “I’ve been looking for you since I got carried away by those damn sluaghs! I even put out broadsheets offering a reward to anyone who’d deliver you safely home!”
I turned to my allies for verification.
“I did see broadsheets,” Sedge confirmed, sour-faced. “They were everywhere for a time.”
“Hmph,” Pete grunted. “Doesn’t mean he’s who distributed them.”
Yep, we’re on the same page, man.
Briar certainly had a lot to gain from my absence. Since all the Dananns I’d met, besides my siblings (probably), wanted him to wear my father’s crown. With me out of the way, it’d be much easier to take it.
