She smelled the first burst of acrid smoke. Flame ignited behind her as the flick of a small lit stick struck her guard's drenched clothes.
Fire broke out everywhere the sticks hit. Clara smelled the burning flesh as the men of her guard melted before her.
She tried to turn her head to retch at the stench of their incineration, but those fingers on her chin were like steel. She threw up where she stood, the screams of her charred guard wilting to decaying moans.
Then merciful silence.
The one who held her jaw whirled her around, his hands moving to her shoulders.
Clara identified him easily. Cyril.
Second to Caesar, now compatriot of King Otto, he looked happily upon her dead.
Clara moaned as Cyril's bruising grip tightened. She searched for Charles amongst the chaos and blackened bodies. Then she felt a slap like a stinging whip as a hand struck her flesh.
Clara screamed, overcome with surprise by the sudden abuse, and swayed on her feet.
Cyril raised his hand to slap her again. Clara's arms tried to fly up in automatic defense of her face.
A thick muscular wrist stayed Cyril’s hand.
Cyril all but growled at Theodore, as the much larger man stopped his discipline of the ungrateful royal.
However, Cyril had not risen in the ranks of the pack of dogs through rash behavior. He saw his own discipline in those hard eyes with flecks of pewter steel and relaxed his posture.
Clara's eyes rose to the male of the Band. She did not recognize him.
His throat slits flared, and Clara knew when he understood what she was and tried to look helpless. It was not a great feat, since he was well over a foot taller than she and a clear one hundred thirty pounds more.
There was no escape. No defense.
Though it was interesting that he did not allow the abuse of her at the other man's hand. Clara was expert at not dwelling on inexplicable things but just surviving what the present brought.
“The female does not need to be subdued, Cyril,” Theodore stated.
He was in charge, whether they were aware or no.
And that command did not involve beating helpless females into pulps simply because they could raise their arms.
Again, Theodore thought it was daft to abuse for its own sake when one could get what he needed without wasting time in such a way. He had been through many different factions of Fragment because the leaders adhered to abuse as sport, rather than as a means to an end.
Though the guard belonged to the King of Gluttony, he was a noble of that degraded sphere, and he behaved as Fragment.
Theo would have no trouble treating him as such.
King Otto said, “Yes, Cyril, do not strike the queen again, for she might be cooperative if pressed into service.”
Clara did not like how King Otto phrased that last and looked around for help.
However, the portal was closed, as per her instruction.
The neighboring peoples, a Fragment of their own, had scattered to the four corners of the earth when the altercation had ensued.
Clara was by herself Outside. Her guards lay in a circle of charred death. Clarence was bleeding out like a slaughtered swine, and Charles was nowhere to be found.
She felt her throat tighten at the thought of the senseless deaths and the unwitting part she had played.
Matthew had been right. She should never have left the sphere, for trading, for communication… for anything.
Cyril scowled but dropped his hand to fall and latched it around her small wrist.
Clara used her blade and sliced into the man’s wrist as deeply as her lack of leverage allowed.
He howled in shock, and Clara had a moment of fierce triumph before his fist crashed into her temple. Clara spun backward, blackness sweeping into her vision like the faraway ocean of her true Clan.
Theo's eyes widened in shock. But he wasn’t quick enough to stop Cyril from striking the woman, though he did manage to catch her before she received additional braining on her way to the ground.
Theodore had never touched a select.
He'd left the direct capture of the females of dubious blood origin to others, for to make contact with one came with the threat of bondage, though he scarcely believed in it. They were so rare it had never been much of a problem but mere infrequent avoidance on his part.
She was light as a feather, but her blood was heavy through her flesh and bone. The presence of their connection lashed at Theo when his hand closed around her nape, and he swept her into his arms.
The primal fire in his breastbone instantly came alive.
His head tipped back, and he roared into the stillness of the Outside, his bellows mingling with Cyril's cries over his wounded arm.
The warmth came from his hand on her flesh and drove to the farthest reaches of his body, bursting into liquid fire.
Theodore swayed, gripping the unconscious queen in a protective cradle against his chest.
“Theodore!” King Otto shouted.
Theo's head whipped to the king. He came back to himself in bits and jagged pieces. His head swam from the heat of blood joining of the select.
The king scrutinized him in a way that would have caused most to squirm.
Theo held the stare. More. He challenged it.
“What have you done, my friend of the Band?” King Otto asked softly.
Theo replied, “Nothing.”
But his body betrayed him as he backed a step away.
The eyes of three Fragment, the remaining royal guard, and the king tracked him like an enemy.
At present, Theo fell squarely into that category.
“You do remember our objective, do ye not?” the king asked.
Theo nodded.
“Aye.”
He could feel the woman's heartbeat against his chest and was unaware that he stroked her arm as he held her.
“Then let me place her atop my horse, and we will work our way inside the sphere.” The king's eyes shot around as if they were marbles in a game of shooters.
“Before the ones we tried to burn to the ground make haste to our position.”
Theo glanced down at the thin gold chain around the select's throat and spied the decorative arch of a brass key peeking above the lip of her bodice.
His eyes flicked to the door, and he understood at once that it be the way inside her home sphere. Theo looked back down at the woman and gritted his teeth to keep from touching her further.
Theodore did remember the objective exactly.
He was unsure that the King be privy to how it had changed.
Otto would not overtake this sphere.
The plan had become irrevocably altered with the introduction of a queen who was blood of the Band.
CHAPTER 9
Matthew rode as hard as he dared.
The women and few children needed the full protection of the Band until they could sequester them inside the safety of Clara's sphere, which would soon absorb more people than they had imagined.
His guts jumped as his steed slowed to a trot, and he guided the animal in a loose circle around the tight knot of horses and sundries saved from the fire at the Clan. Much had been left behind, but Bracus and the others of the Band understood how little would be reacquired later after other vagrant parties of Fragment swept through. Attracted to the destruction, they would take whatever was useful.
However, Matthew was not a lover of things but of relations built through trust and hard-won respect. He had garnered little of that in the time he had been raised by the Fragment and witness to the atrocities therein.
Now he was free of that yoke and he fought hard to live a life apart from the principles he learned through their subjugation and torture.
He spotted Maddoc at the back of the party. The younger man lifted his chin. He was sullen and angry, and Matthew understood why.
Very well indeed.
Maddoc was well fashioned and sat upon his steed as though it gr
ew out of his body, as comfortable as any of the Midwestern Band.
Maddoc nodded as Matthew approached. The quiet voices of women pressing children into silence as they rode provided the only background noise, save the crushing of the snow beneath the hooves of their horses.
Matthew guided his horse to fall into step beside Maddoc’s. “When we come upon the sphere, my young friend, I will give you leave to seek Evie.”
Maddoc's face lit up in surprise.
Matthew let out a low chuckle at the younger man’s expression, and Maddoc returned to scowling.
His handsome face sharpened to points of low anger that aged him from his ten and eight years.
“Be of good cheer, Maddoc. Once we arrive at the Kingdom of Ohio, we shall herd the women and children inside. I will see about Clara, then you may gather another of the Band and set off after Evie.”
Maddoc looked ahead at where Philip and Calia rode together. Their legs would brush together every other horse length, a full look passing from one to the other.
Maddoc's hands clenched to fists around the reins of his mount.
Evie was out there, and he was tethered to the group, always tied. The only consolation was that Edwin was missing as well. It was Maddoc’s fervent hope that they were together and she was not lost, cold, and wandering Outside where any band or Fragment might stumble upon her.
Maddoc simply would not entertain thoughts in that direction.
He did what he must. “I agree.”
Matthew slapped him on the back. “I know it is difficult, but duty to the many comes before duty to the few.”
Maddoc agreed for the most part. Yet the exception stared him in the face.
Matthew trotted off to the front of the line again. Maddoc thought that if Clara was in peril, Matthew would forget all lofty designs, abandoning them as surely as the sun rose in order to save her.
He let the group slip ahead and quietly escaped their notice.
The Clan of Ohio would not fall because of his absence. But perhaps Evie would.
Maddoc could not take that chance.
*
Evie
A pebble skittered across a patch of slick ice. Evie looked up and scanned the patches of shadows and light made by the low sun at the horizon's edge.
She slung her rucksack onto her back and trudged on, staying tight to the perimeter of the forest. She judged her directions by the setting sun. She knew Clara's sphere lay to the south and her Clan to the northeast.
But if she could not get warm, she would be overcome with the cold sickness. Her body would grow tired, and she would think it a very good idea to lie down and rest, never to awaken.
Edwin and she had become separated when the Fragment had tried to overtake them. Evie made a vow that if she survived this disaster, she would stop being an ungrateful shrew.
Shame colored her face when she thought that Jocelyn of her home clan was hardly worse than how Evie had behaved with those who cared for her.
Evie sighed, moving into the forest to make the long trek back to the Clan.
The common route was too well-traveled for her to take it as a solitary traveler.
Fragment would be aware and hope to catch someone by surprise.
Women were a rare find because none were daft enough to be caught alone and unguarded.
Except her. She had acted like a proper dolt.
Hearing a branch snap, Evie stopped suddenly and whirled around.
Nothing.
Leaves stirred by an unseen wind, their crinkly brown, orange, and spice colors moving like molted water on the skeletal arms of the trees.
The embrace of autumn was a memory as winter sank its teeth into the forest.
Evie continued walking then stopped again when she heard what she'd been hoping for. A sigh of profound relief caught in her parched throat.
She walked carefully down the slope, hanging onto naked branches to maintain her balance.
When the frozen dirt became sodden, she stepped on the pockets of moss that lined the hot springs and laid her rucksack down on the driest spot she could find. Her hands shook as she searched through her gear for her canteen. She pulled it out and stopped her teeth from chattering long enough to take a deep pull of water.
Only a sip or two came out. The water was frozen.
A rough shudder took her, and she slammed her jaws together to keep from quaking. A hot tear escaped her closed eyes and fell like branded fire on the hand that clutched the canteen.
Instead of throwing the wretched thing, Evie carefully set it atop her rucksack and began to remove her clothing. In that moment, she was grateful not to be a female of the sphere with all the ridiculous accoutrements required of them. Corsets, silk stockings, and other female contraptions would have held her afloat.
She rolled down her wool socks, pulled her linen undergarments, out from underneath her skirt, and lifted the indigo shift dress over her head.
The lightweight camisole of eyelet lace was form-fitted, with darts to keeps its narrowness where her waist nipped. She had long ago pulled off the silk undergarments that went beneath.
Calia had sworn that though they were light as a feather, they insulated the body well. She had been right.
For without those, Evie thought she might have taken that eternal slumber that begged at the edges of her mind. She was shaking so badly she dropped her things instead of folding them neatly as she ought.
Naked, Evie waded into the hot spring. The water steamed all around her as she clung tightly to the small sliver of soap from her pack.
She bit her lip to keep from crying out as the heat bit all along her chilled and numb flesh.
She stopped, her waist and breasts bare to the air. She held her breath and dunked her entire body under the water in a single plunge. She emerged with a yelp, gasping. It was both wonderful and too hot.
Evie lathered the sliver until it was frothy and fragrant and washed every part of her body. She stuck one foot out of the water to soap her toes. She closed her eyes, floating in the hidden valley of water and knowing her home Clan was only minutes away.
It was heady knowledge.
She would see Jonathan. The thought made a wave of homesickness wash over her, and tears ran down her face, sinking into the floating suds.
She dared not contemplate Maddoc.
Evie felt clean and rested, finally warm to her very bones. She sat up, wringing out her hair. The chill hit her damp skin. She did not shiver yet but knew the cold would eventually return. The home fires of her clan called to her, and a tired smile pulled at her lips.
Evie was making her way back to shore when she saw him.
At first, she was so stunned by the rider she did not think to cover her nudity. “Maddoc,” she breathed, and her eyes swam with wet regret, remorse, and sadness. A hard ball of grief lodged in her throat.
Maddoc's steed was sure footed on hills, its winter hooves shod with small spikes to grip the terrain.
He rode the horse down the slick slope. The spring was a closely guarded secret amongst the Midwestern Clans, and he hoped that with the cold weather, Evie would go there first if separated.
Maddoc did not think she kenned that the fort lay a horse-length deep in ash.
He spotted more tracks as the ground softened to mud. His heart began to race upon seeing the telltale lightness of foot.
Evie, he hoped.
Then, at the base of where the forest floor fanned out in a carpet of damp moss, Evie stood naked before him.
He did not know where to look first, though he felt as if he looked everywhere at once.
He had never seen a woman naked before, and it was so much better that it be one he loved.
His breath had been stolen, her beauty such a great thing he could not think for it.
Evie's hair lay like dark gold all around her. Damp strings of her wavy masses cascaded over one breast but left the other one peeking out in invitation.
Maddoc felt his body respo
nd in a violent surge and groaned.
The blood of the Band welled within him, and his thoughts of protection and safeguarding were easily stifled by want and desire. His eyes roamed lower and fell to what he had only allowed himself to think about in his most private moments.
Maddoc slid off his horse and expertly flicked the reins around the trunk of a tree whose roots fed directly from the hot spring.
“Are you hurt?” he asked in a hoarse shout.
Evie suddenly realized she was naked in front of Maddoc.
In front of Maddoc!
She dipped beneath the water and thought it entirely possible a person could die of acute embarrassment.
Maddoc stripped off his clothing and strode into the hot water.
Evie's eyes grew wide at the maleness of him.
Yet she found she was unable to look away.
Like Maddoc, she had never seen the opposite sex without clothes.
She watched him draw nearer, the water parting as his powerful bare legs sawed toward her. His eyes blazed at Evie like the sun, the bright copper of his hair the only color of the forest to Evie.
Her blush rose anew when Maddoc stopped in front of her, fortunately hidden from the waist down. The illusion of modesty was hardly enough to allow her to breathe.
She stole a glance at his broad chest, the muscles deep and wide. Fine striations rippled at his shoulders as he put his hands at his hips.
“What say you, Evie?” Maddoc asked, his voice deep, the question perfunctory.
Evie put her face in her hands and began to cry in relief.
She sobbed so hard and deep that it felt as if her heart were breaking into small chunks that would float away in the water.
She did not even have the presence of mind to act the part of the grown-up she had become in front of Maddoc.
When his arms came around her, she buried her face in his chest and held on.
Maddoc stroked her hair.
When her crying slowed to bubbled pauses, Maddoc tipped her face up and dotted a kiss on her nose before smiling down at her.
savage 05 - the savage protector Page 8