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  Lynx gritted her teeth against her gag at this proof positive that Lukan had installed cameras in her home.

  “I, and I alone, have created this image of the Light-Bearer from nothing more than the sensory and biological information fed to me from the Final Word in his neck. Never again do we need a camera to tell us what the traitor is doing. The ice crystal will record and compute all his data, creating a visual of him and the environment he is in. He can now never escape our watchful eye.”

  Lynx gasped.

  “Even better, we can plant suggestions in his head. We will become the most powerful influence in the boy’s life.” Mouth nothing more than a gash, Felix grinned at Lukan. “Whether Axel lives or dies, from this time onward, the throne will be safe.” His grin faded, and he turned to Lynx. “I hope you take note of the power in our hands.”

  “Like I should care that you have tagged my son,” Lynx’s yelled right back at Felix.

  Lukan clutched his head. “Stop it! Both of you. Axel could be here at any moment.”

  “Then I suggest we get Nicholas out of here as quickly as possible, sire. I will guard the Norin bitch until you get back.”

  Lukan dithered. “Why don’t I just take her now?”

  “And have her see where the Light-Bearer is to be kept?” Felix gestured at Lynx. “She is a known flight risk, sire. Would you wish her escaping to free the traitor?”

  Breath ragged, Lukan tugged at his hair with both hands. His movements stilted, he spun from her to Talon and back again.

  “Sire, we discussed this when we first laid our plans,” Felix said, in a calm, soothing voice. “The Light-Bearer’s new home is miles away from the palace. Morass will be up front, driving the carriage. You cannot risk putting her in the back with Nicholas, lest she find a means of escape. That means the two of you will be alone in the carriage. You are not a man of violence. Do you wish to guard Lynx yourself?”

  Without waiting for Morass’s help, Lukan scooped Talon up in his arms and staggered out of the cottage with him.

  Morass hurried after them.

  Despite her determination to show no emotion, Lynx’s breath hitched as her son vanished from her view.

  All that mattered now was for her and Axel to find Talon. When they did, she and Axel would train Talon to fight like a Norin raider. When his training was done, no one would ever defeat her son again.

  And then Lynx would fight by Talon’s side when he overthrew Lukan and his vile empire.

  Chapter 10

  Lynx retched as Felix tugged off her gag. It was a small consideration compared to the throbbing in her broken wrist.

  “My son will be arriving soon,” he said.

  Lynx didn’t want to engage with the swine, but this was too important to be ignored. “He survived?”

  “He is Axel Avanov, my son, the greatest warlord ever sired on this planet. Of course he survived. Do you think I would have let Lukan unleash a dozen airships on him if it risked Axel’s life? He is merely delayed. Quite a dog fight in the skies above the forest tonight.”

  This was Felix at his best. Conniving, two-faced, a man without honor she could never trust.

  “Axel said he was going to outrun them.” She wasn’t sure why she said that, but the words just seemed to spill out.

  At least speaking interrupted thoughts of Tao with the hand axe in his chest. She turned away, too overwrought to think about life—whatever that now entailed—without his gentle, loving guidance. Her eyes trailed to Thunder, stiff and cold before the faintly glowing embers in the fireplace.

  Her heart lurched.

  The fireplace—one of Talon’s feathers congealed in a pool of blood next to the hearth.

  But at least Axel was coming, so there was hope that they would rescue him. She clung to that.

  “Indeed he did,” Felix replied, his voice distant but audible over her thoughts. “Now hush your talking and let me finish before he comes.” But instead of moving, Felix stood for a moment, listening.

  Lynx’s listened too and heard the chugging of a departing steam carriage.

  Only when the sound died away completely did Felix stir.

  Without the aid of his walking stick, he strode like a man half his age to her bedroom. Yet another deception from the despicable cheat. He pulled off her fur blankets.

  He stopped near Tao and leaned down to examine the hand axe. “My dear, perhaps now you can solve a mystery for me. How did Axel’s hand axe first come into your possession? It was a strange love token for him to give you. And now it’s been used to kill Tao, your closest ally and friend.”

  Lynx couldn’t stop herself from retching again. How could she ever tell this despicable man that Axel had proposed to her over that axe and that she had agreed to marry him?

  “No matter, you can tell me some other time.” Felix turned back to Tao and raised his arm in a small salute. “Tao Avanov, a true man amongst men. You did not deserve to die like this.” He gently, almost reverently, covered Tao’s body with one of her blankets.

  “Then why did you kill him?” Lynx shrieked.

  “Lynx, my dear, perhaps it is time I pointed out something that thus far you have failed to observe. Stress, no doubt, has clouded your vision. I harmed no one. Not even you when you tried to slit my throat.” He walked over to his walking cane and picked it up. A quick pull, and he yanked out a narrow sword. He glinted it in the light so she could see how sharp it was. “Ponder on that while I do my work.”

  “You stood by and let it all happen,” Lynx yelled straight back. “That makes you as culpable as Lukan and Morass. And you injected my son. Where has Lukan taken him?”

  “Please don’t make me have to gag you again, my dear.” Felix tossed a second blanket over Thunder. Then he walked outside. He was gone for perhaps five minutes, and Lynx began to wonder if he would ever return when the chickens cackled as they always did when released from the coop.

  A whiff of smoke caught her nose, and she understood.

  Felix was destroying her home.

  In the pale dawn light, three white streaks darted across the yard in front of the open door. Their milking goats, headed for the forest. Felix must be burning the barn, too. She supposed if the goats survived the perils there, in time they would learn not to come back here.

  As much as she hated this place, it saddened her that her home had been so violently and abruptly destroyed by men who wielded such unfettered power. More than anything else, Talon had to be found, trained to fight—she smiled with pride at his ill-fated attempt to beat up Lukan—and then given leadership of the Pathfinder Alliance so he could lead the war against Lukan. And Felix.

  When Felix returned to the cottage, he held a tin can and a handful of straw, accompanied by the unmistakable reek of kerosene.

  He walked deliberately around the cottage, dribbling the fuel on the wooden floors and walls and across the furniture.

  Lynx’s heart wrenched as each familiar and—now that she stood on the brink of losing it all—much-loved item was prepared for incineration.

  Felix stopped at Tao and doused him, too.

  Lynx struggled to breathe. She wasn’t sure if it was the fumes or the finality of Tao’s death. The Norin always burned their dead, but only after a proper eulogy. That brief salute from Felix seemed like a poor sendoff for a man as worthy as Tao. With her manacles, and the pain in her wrist, she couldn’t even pull herself up to stand to show her respect for the man who had been her best friend for almost half her life.

  Job done, Felix turned to her. He held a metal object in his hand. Her thoughts took on a detached quality. It wasn’t just an object. Axel had shown her one. He called it a gun, a weapon he and Lukan had reintroduced to the world from before the Burning. They fired lead bullets and explosives that could kill on impact.

  Felix aimed the gun at her, his agate-colored eyes sharp as he stared at her down the barrel. “I am going to free you. Try to harm me, try to run, and I will make holes in your legs.” The g
un shifted to her left. A loud crack, and a hole appeared in the wooden floor. “You will never walk again. Do I make myself clear?”

  Why would he need a gun and bullets to control her? She had an ice crystal in her neck. She considered asking and then decided against it. He would never speak the truth. And she didn’t want to alert him to her thoughts. It was better to play along, to let him talk. Perhaps he would let slip some clue as to where Lukan had taken Talon. As soon as Axel arrived, she would knock Felix senseless, and she and Axel would go immediately to rescue her son.

  She nodded.

  “Good.” Felix tossed her a key. “It works on the manacles on your ankles. Unlock them.”

  “You do know that my wrist is broken?” She held up her hands to show him her wrist swollen around the metal.

  “Then stay here. Your choice.” Felix pulled a flint from his pocket and flicked a couple of sparks at the kerosene-soaked straw. He tossed the burning bundle down onto a line of fuel snaking across the floor.

  First a thin trail of flames and then a wall of fire engulfed the room, the roaring heat almost unbearable.

  Body dripping with sweat, Lynx gritted her teeth against the pain in her wrist and fumbled with her good hand for the key. It dropped onto the floor at her feet just as the flames licked her leather tunic.

  Swearing loudly, she managed to scoop the key up. With painful slowness, she unlocked the manacle. The iron rings had barely fallen away when a hand reached down and dragged her to her feet.

  Through the heat haze, she saw Felix, his mouth covered with a soiled handkerchief, walking cane tucked under his arm.

  Something cold and metallic pressed against her kidneys.

  It had to be the gun. Attacking him was now trickier than she imagined, if not potentially deadly. Even though it rankled, and left her feeling helpless, it seemed wiser to wait until Axel’s arrival.

  Felix propelled her through the fire out into the yard.

  Smoke hung heavy over the homestead. Lynx’s eyes, already burning from the intense heat, now streamed from the fumes. She coughed, but before she could catch her breath, Felix marched her past the burning barn. The flames had reached a small wooden hut abutting the main building. Bird’s mews!

  She struggled and screamed, “No, Felix! Please! Bird is in there. I can’t let Tao’s falcon die like this.”

  Without hesitation, Felix released her and strode through the fire into the mews.

  Lynx considered running, but she couldn’t risk Felix not rescuing Tao’s falcon.

  Bird screeched and flapped her wings, clearly terrified by the roar, heat, and smoke.

  Moments later, Felix lurched outside with the falcon held upside down by her legs. She flapped frantically as Felix struggled to pull the leather hood off her face. He dropped the hood to the ground. Bird tore at his unprotected hand with her scimitar-like beak. Lynx expected Felix to toss the falcon away, but he surprised her by untying the jesses bound to her legs. If her hands had been free, Lynx would have helped.

  Then she smiled despite everything.

  At the rate Bird attacked him, Felix’s hands would be shredded before the silver bells Tao had tied to her legs so many years before clattered to the ground.

  But even in her delight at Felix’s obvious pain, Lynx feared for Bird. How long would Felix put up with this torture from a creature he cared nothing for? The ineptitude in his handling of Bird showed he had never experienced the thrill of hunting with a falcon. She stepped in close and spoke the quiet, familiar words Tao had always used to calm Bird down.

  The falcon turned her head to Lynx, her piercing yellow and black eyes focused on her to the utter exclusion of all else.

  For an instant, Lynx experienced the surging joy Tao must have felt each time this magnificent, wild creature chose to engage with him so completely, so intimately.

  Felix loosened the jesses.

  Bird shrieked her eerie, bone-chilling cry, and flapped her powerful wings, fanning the fire behind them as she soared up into the sky. She circled the burning farm twice before catching the updraft above the cottage, where her friend lay.

  Lynx and Felix watched until Bird was nothing more than a speck in the early morning sunrise.

  It felt to Lynx as if she had just lost Tao all over again.

  She was about to turn away when her eye caught another movement in the smoky sky.

  Felix rammed the gun into her side just as the unmistakable shape of an airship emerged through the haze.

  Sleek and aerodynamic, the balloon-less craft sliced toward them. But as it neared, the signs of battle became visible. The deep blue hull, spangled with stars, was blackened and holed in at least four places. Unable to move for the steel pressed to her, Lynx craned her neck to determine how serious the damage was, but she knew next to nothing about airships. At least Axel had arrived. Hopefully, he would have a plan for the weapon.

  Felix grunted. “Superficial damage. I knew Axel would outsmart our pilots.”

  Lynx glanced at him, puzzled by the pride in his voice. She knew from Axel that he and Felix had not spoken to each other in sixteen years. “I thought you hated Axel for defecting to the Pathfinder Alliance?”

  Gun pressed to her side, Felix led her away from the fire, to stand amongst the carrots in her vegetable garden, where no flames threatened.

  “Axel didn’t defect to the Pathfinder Alliance. He is the Pathfinder Alliance. Without him, they would be nothing.” Despite Axel’s unwavering commitment to the Dragon’s primary enemy, admiration leached out of Felix’s voice. “Since he defected, I have waited in the shadows, hiding my feelings for my son from everyone, including my wife. But that ends today, with you as my bargaining chip.”

  Lynx threw her head back and fixed Felix with her iciest stare. “Don’t for one second think I will let you use me to harm Axel. It is enough that you oversaw the death of Tao and the kidnapping of my son. I will never allow you to threaten Axel.”

  “Stupid girl,” Felix hissed, shoving the gun even harder into her side. “Even after all this time, you understand nothing of power politics.”

  “And I suppose you have no intention of enlightening me?”

  Felix looked up at the sky, ostensibly watching Axel’s airship. Lynx knew she’d get no answers.

  The magnificent craft heaved into view.

  Away from the flames, the Light-Bearer’s huge propellers at the back of the ship tilted downward, battering the air as the craft slowed. Leaves, dust, and ash swirled around Lynx and Felix like a small tornado.

  Lynx covered her face with her manacled hands. Any moment now, she would see Axel in the flesh for the first time since Talon’s birth. Part of her wanted to dance with joy, but too much had happened—she’d lost too much—to give into such whimsy.

  And who knew what Felix planned?

  The propellers rotated slowly as the airship hovered just south of the vegetable garden. Someone threw down a weighted rope. It was followed by three more, and then the hatch opened in the hull.

  Handsome as ever, Axel, dressed in black battle fatigues ideal for fighting in dark mines, stood in the doorway.

  Even from a distance, Lynx saw his face harden to stone at the burning farm.

  Lynx waved her manacled hands at him, hoping to warn him that all was not well and not to trust his father.

  Axel turned back into the airship, and two crewmen appeared at the door, one with blond braids and feathers, the tilt of his jaw and the supple way he carried his body familiar even at a distance.

  Heron! Lynx’s mouth gaped, and a tiny spurt of joy sent her pulse racing. Heron. Her first love.

  Like her, Heron was older, but she would have picked him out of any crowd.

  He smiled down at her and then trained a long-barreled gun on her and Felix—or rather, on Felix, she hoped.

  The other soldier, a woman with long ginger hair pulled severely away from her fine-boned face, threw down a rope ladder. There were few people Axel would trust on such
a mission, and if Heron was with him, this woman could be none other than Axel’s commander Magridal. He always used her on tricky missions.

  When Axel reappeared, he also had a weapon in his hands. He shouted down to them, “Where’s Nicholas?”

  “Lukan has him,” Lynx yelled back. “And—and Tao’s dead.”

  Axel’s mouth moved, but Lynx could not make out what he said or to whom he spoke. Then he shouted again, “Lynx, step away from Felix. I will climb down to tie you to the rope. Magridal will hoist you up. We’ll sort out the manacles when you get up here.”

  “Not so fast, Axel,” Felix called. “I have a gun aimed at Lynx’s kidneys that says she stays with me.”

  Axel looked questioningly at Lynx.

  Lynx hated to admit it, but she nodded. “Please Axel, don’t let him harm you for my sake.”

  But Axel and Heron dropped their weapons to their sides.

  “Son, you and I need to talk,” Felix called. “I always said I would give you Lynx if you apologized to your mother and me for defecting from the family. You never took me up on the offer. All these years I have listened to your mother mourn for you. It is enough. I will endure her anguish no longer. I want you reconciled with your family.”

  “The idea holds no appeal,” Axel yelled down.

  Felix sighed. “Morass is coming back to fetch Lynx. I am offering her to you instead—on condition that you will talk with me. There is so much that we can do together in Chenaya.”

  “Always manipulation and blackmail, Felix,” Axel shouted. “Does Lukan know you’re deceiving him?”

  “I have done my duty unfailingly to the crown, but that does not mitigate my responsibility to my family. It never has. You know that. I am asking you to trust that I am acting in the best interests of your mother, your sister, your best friend, and their three children. I even seek to protect your life.”

  “I suppose that’s why I’ve just run the gauntlet of a dozen of your airships?” Axel hitched the weapon at his side. “I should just cut you down where you stand.”

  Felix tightened his grip on Lynx. “Your sister would not approve. Not even you can deny that.”