A Midwinter Fantasy (21 page)

The only problem was, Mace still didn’t understand how such a thing could be possible. He wasn’t human, and he couldn’t
be
human, no matter how he refined his shape. He hadn’t even been shaped as a human when he’d loved Sally. All he had was her word that he was the father.

“I believe your mother,” he said. “If she says I’m your father, then I am.”

Travish gaped at him, obviously not expecting such a calm, assured reply. His tension returned a moment later, though, and his mouth firmed. “That wasn’t a yes.”

“Do you want me to put you over my knee and spank you to prove it?”

Travish blinked at him and then laughed, the sound of it open and honest, amused. The reaction seemed to catch him by surprise. Mace blinked and continued to watch, his
hands flat on his knees. He pulled back more of the hate and saw Travish relax.

“It’s crazy. It can’t be.”

“How did your mother explain it?” Mace asked.

Travish shrugged. “She just said it was a gift.”

“It’s the Winter Festival. It’s all about celebrating the magical gifts the Gift Giver gave and that you humans now give each other, isn’t it?” It made sense to say this, even though he’d never thought of the festival that way before.

Travish glanced around at the stacks of goods. There weren’t any Winter Festival ornaments in the stable; the entire camp was bare of them. “Yeah, well,
this
certainly isn’t the place for any magic gifts.”

He fell quiet, as did Mace. Travish was lost in his own thoughts, and Mace reeled the hate back even more, struggling to get the trick of not sending it to this man even as he projected it to everyone else. The trick seemed to be working, though he was certain Travish wasn’t entirely spared. Mace didn’t want to stop projecting to the rest of the brigands, though, and he frowned, wishing for once that he’d bothered to learn it in the first place.

“What is it?” Travish asked.

“I’m trying not to push my hate aura at you,” Mace told him. “It’s not simple to avoid a single person.”

Travish flashed surprise. “Why would you bother?”

Mace lifted his hands, palms up. “You’re not my enemy. Your mother asked me to bring you home.”

Travish stared at him, surprised. Then his anger flared up again. “Home? If I’ve got a home anywhere, it’s this place. I’m accepted here. If I’m the bastard son of a whore, then so are half the men here. No one gives a shit.”

“No one would give a shit in Sylph Valley either,” Mace told him.

Travish blinked. After a moment, he spoke again. “Sylph Valley is full of nothing but whores.”

He sounded unsure.

Mace shrugged, though he loathed the use of the word
whore
and once would have been driven to violence by it. “Only to men who think a woman should have no choices in her life.” He leveled his gaze at Sally’s son. “Or do you think your mother was happy in that kitchen for your entire childhood?”

Travish had to look away again. He felt guilt for that, but there was a young man’s bitterness and rage mixed in there as well, a desperate need for someone to blame.

Mace didn’t know if he was going to reach the young man. He didn’t know if Travish’s bitterness was too deep for him to see any better path than the one he was on now, or if he could—or should—be forgiven for having taken it. Mace didn’t know what his crimes were among these bandits. He’d held Jayden’s arm until it bruised, and he was in a camp filled with stolen goods. How many of the original owners had Travish helped kill?

Yet Sally wanted him to get Travish out, and Lily wanted him to save Jayden. That was enough—for now.

“I want you to help me rescue Jayden,” Mace told him.

“Why would I do that?” Travish sounded incredulous.

“Because he’s now in the same position you were,” Mace said. “And he doesn’t deserve it any more than you did.”

Travish laughed, his voice bitter and mocking, but Mace felt his pain as he backed toward the door. “I may be a lot of things, but I’m not a backstabber—and I’m definitely not stupid enough to cross Raven. Save Jayden yourself if you think you can. You’re the damn battle sylph. Mother was always
going on about it. How wonderful you were, how powerful.” He spat on the floor. “Like it mattered. She could have just stopped saying it and kept her head down, and everything would have been easier. They could have forgot I was the bastard son of a whore and let me be part of the family. She’s crazy. The whole family hates her because she’s crazy.” His lip trembled. “All she does is let things happen to her. She’s a coward.”

The young man went out and closed the door. Mace felt him on the other side, guarding, and he sighed. The boy’s emotions were a mess and he obviously didn’t want to talk anymore. Still, he’d left Mace alone, and that was a very welcome piece of stupidity—or perhaps intent.

Mace changed shape immediately, condensing his size and form and becoming a large black rat. He had to leave his clothes behind, but he didn’t worry about that as he scurried to the back of the stable, making his way through the stacks of goods. The building was old, not well maintained, and he was easily able to squeeze out through a gap between two wall panels.

Outside, the sky was lightening toward dawn, but Mace doubted anyone would notice a rat even in full daylight; he could certainly sense enough other rodents making their way through the camp in search of food. Mace was in search of something else. He ran immediately to where Jayden was being kept, racing across the top of the snow along the outskirts of the camp and hoping that Travish didn’t decide to head back in for a verbal rematch.

He might get blamed for this, Mace realized, but he put that thought aside. He would grab Jayden, get him out of the camp, and come back for Travish. If he had to follow his original, indifferent plan of throwing him over his shoulder and just leaving with him, he would. Travish would surely see the wisdom of not returning to a camp of bandits that
the other battlers from the Valley were going to turn into a large crater.

Two brigands flanking him, Jayden sat in a lean-to by a fire, shivering and dozing in the early air. The men were drinking and laughing, waking the exhausted boy whenever they noticed him sleeping. Jayden looked to be too worn out to protest much, though Mace heard him swear at them when they jabbed his ribs, which only made them laugh. The guards were much taller than the boy, even sitting, and his slumped position lowered him even more.

Mace ran up behind the three, shifted into human form, grasped the heads of the two guards, and slammed them together. Jayden gave a gasp as they tumbled to either side, unconscious. Mace grabbed the boy, yanking him close before he could even turn. Changing shape, a moment later he was in his natural form, darting away from the camp through the trees, racing off in the hope of not being seen. He ached from his wounds, and this couldn’t be a comfortable ride for Jayden, but he felt the boy’s hysterical relief.

“Mace?” the youth gasped.

Mace couldn’t answer, not in this form. Jayden would have had to be his master for a telepathic link to be possible. He thought for a moment instead, and formed a tentacle inside the inner pocket in which he carried the boy, reaching out to squeeze Jayden’s shoulder.

The boy started to cry. He was sobbing, his breath hitching as he gasped out apologies and promises to never run away again. Mace really didn’t know how to deal with that, and finally just stroked the boy’s hair with the tentacle, just as he would have tried to comfort one of Lily’s female orphans. It worked much the same here, doing nothing to stop the crying but helping to ease the hysteria. Mace sighed and kept flying, well aware of his own guilt. It had been easier
when he still didn’t care, but that was in the past. He stroked Jayden’s hair and carried him to safety, letting the boy weep.

He’d left Sally and Ruffles in the woods at the other end of the valley. Mace flew toward their hiding spot, hugging the tree line on the south side so that no one on the ridge would see him. He’d leave Jayden with Sally and Ruffles and head back for Travish. He still hurt, but if all went well they’d be returning to the Valley within the hour. He was more than big enough to carry all of them, and the humans could, he hoped, keep Ruffles from doing anything disgusting while she was inside him.

Mace darted into the covered clearing where he’d left the females. It was deserted.

Lurching about with all of his senses, Mace physically froze. There was no sign of Sally, not visually and not patternwise. The ground was torn up, and Mace made a mournful sound, setting Jayden down and shifting to human shape, spinning around with a growing sense of horror.

“What’s wrong?” Jayden asked, wiping his eyes. “Can’t we just go home?”

Mace closed his eyes and focused, reaching out with his senses for both Sally and Ruffles. The dog was apparent to him immediately; they must not have frightened her during the capture. But they wouldn’t have to. Sally was brave, but she was also smart enough not to try and fight against a group of armed men. Mace had dropped her here, in a copse only a few miles from the bandit camp. Then he’d gone back, focused on the camp itself, not on his surroundings. How hard could it have been for a few men to skirt the valley and take both Sally and Ruffles? How could he have been so unmitigatedly stupid? He’d never underestimate a human man again, he promised himself. Not if he survived long enough to outlive the world.

He stared back toward the bandit camp, standing nude
among the pine needles and snow, since he’d abandoned his clothes, his mantle throbbing from the pain of his wounds. He couldn’t feel Sally over this distance without a master bond, but he could touch Ruffles. She was there, and Sally had to be with her.

“Mace?” Jayden whimpered as the battler closed his eyes. “I’m sorry I ran away. I am. I shouldn’t have gone with them, but they said they’d kill everyone.”

Mace opened his eyes and looked down at the boy, really seeing him this time. There were all the usual male traits that he’d always ignored, feeling they made men inferior to women. Below that, though, he found a desperate need to be acknowledged, to be loved. To be worthy of attention from the person Jayden believed to be the greatest warrior in the world. He wanted to be just like Mace, and he couldn’t because he hadn’t been hatched a battle sylph. Surprisingly, finally realizing that made Mace feel rather small.

He reached out and clapped a hand on the boy’s shoulder, felt him instantly tense. “Going with them to save the others was the right thing to do,” he said. “It’s what a battle sylph would have done.” Well, a battle sylph would have killed the bandits, but the courage was the same, the instinct of hive over self. For Jayden, the courage to do that actually had to be greater than anything a battler would need. “You . . . you honor me.”

Jayden stared at him for a moment and then started to cry again, obviously trying to stop and furiously wiping his eyes. Mace couldn’t leave him here. Not with how Sally had been plucked from the same place. And he couldn’t take him back to the bandit camp; he wasn’t so stupid that he’d make the same mistake multiple times. He had to get Jayden to safety.

Oddly, he
wanted
the boy to be safe.

The ritual of visiting and gift giving in Falloweld had turned into a full-out party, likely at the thought that there was a battle sylph out hunting down the bandits who’d been terrorizing them for so long. The inn was filled with townspeople and families all raising their glasses in a cheer, as though there had never been any danger at all to a woman, two boys, and a dog.

A lot of those glasses dropped when Mace crashed in, slamming the door into the wall as he did, and dropped his natural shape for his human one while he set Jayden down. They gaped at him, at his nudity, and at the filthy boy standing in the circle of his arm.

“What?” Falon managed.

Mace pushed Jayden a few steps forward. “Feed him,” he ordered. “He saved your lives. I’ll be back in a few hours. Treat him as anything less than a hero and I’ll destroy this entire stinking inn.”

Before they could say anything, before they could protest, Mace was out the door again and back in his natural shape, flying toward the bandit camp. He didn’t worry about Eferem misreading or attacking him now; there simply wasn’t enough time to consider any alternative. He was running through his energy faster than normal, thanks to his wounds, and he needed to feed. He also needed to save Sally. This was the
kind of emergency his queen would fully understand and he was terrified of not getting back in time.

He raced straight back, skimming the treetops until he reached the ridgeline and roared up the steepest side. If he was lucky, both Sally and Ruffles would be held where he could easily get to them.

He wasn’t lucky. They were in the center of the camp, Sally sitting on a crate, with Ruffles lying at her feet. All of the bandits were there, standing around the two females and looking in every direction. Sally seemed unhurt, but her fear was palpable. So was the bravery that spoke to his soul.

It didn’t take them long to spot Mace’s lightning. Someone shouted, and they were all gawking up at him, closing ranks around their captives. Most of the men were terrified, but at Raven’s order they acted. The bandit captain stood beside Sally, one hand playing with her hair.

“Get down here!” he shouted. He exuded fury, outrage at having been defied, and as Mace hovered there, the bandit chief’s hand gripped Sally’s hair and yanked her head back, ignoring her cry of pain. “If you don’t want her dead, you’ll get down here!”

Mace wanted to kill him. Never had he wanted to destroy someone as he did right now, and he raged at Lily’s command. Not even against Jasar’s control had he fought with so much desperation, and the men below him stared up in terror as the blackness of his form turned nearly white with the crashing lightning inside him. His mouth gaped wide, teeth formed of pure energy, and he roared his fury, rearing up. He would disobey. He would disobey this thoughtless command, this order restraining justice. He would kill the man, free Sally, take her in his arms, and make her his master. His love. His soul tie. He screamed, gathering his power . . . and nothing happened.