Callum 

I pulled the reigns to bring my mount to a stop on the small rise. Yellow-green grass and purple heather blanketed the rolling hills, interrupted only by an occasional tree and craggy outcrop. Low-hung clouds swallowed the sky, and a storm crept in from the west, its flash of lightning a warning. The weather would make the search nearly impossible in another hour. 

I squeezed and stretched my hand, getting used to the feeling of the newly sewn skin and its ticklish sensitivity. No pain came from the mended wound, but my sides and shoulder ached. I couldn’t place the origins of the soreness. No marks marred my armor where a blow might have gone unnoticed. Pain like this was unusual for me, it never lingered unless there was something truly wrong with my body. 

It made me think of the girl. Walking away from her had been difficult, but the sensation dissipated as I got further from the fortress. Even the ache lessened with the distance. Remi had been right. I needed to get away from her. Get some fresh air and prioritize. 

I left the majority of my men to secure the fortress and scour through every outbuilding. Sixteen riders in pairs, including myself and Jaspar, split up to cover the cardinal directions away from the fortress looking for the possible exit of Verbodine’s escape.

As simple as it appeared, this terrain could hide an entire army behind all the rocky boulders and deep hollows between the hills.

It worked in my favor for the ambush, but it worked against me now.

There were two possibilities. The Earl and Marquis remained hidden deep in the depths of a cave with no exit waiting for us to leave. Or, an exit existed somewhere among these blasted crags. If the first, I trusted Holwick’s tracking skills. If the latter, only luck and numbers could find them.

“Ahrrrrgggh!” I shouted into the wind. The noise unsettled my mount, the mare shifted a few steps and pawed at the earth. 

“Did that help?” Jaspar asked as he rode up beside me.  

“No.” 

“Any sign?” 

“No.” 

“The girl?” his voice lowered as if he were fearful to ask but needed to know. 

“Still alive.” 

Jaspar nodded, but kept his eyes on the horizon, looking for movement. 

“How?” I asked. “How does he always slip out of my grasp when I finally think I have him cornered?” 

“The Earl is a lot of things, but he’s smart and must have a strong weaver working at his side to create such ill-workings. Perhaps, the girl will be able to help us. If we can make her trust us.” 

That would be difficult. I already tried to kill her once. It would take a big carrot to overcome that stick.  

“You’ve grown into a good man, Cal,” Jaspar said, scratching the bright red beard that hid most of his face. “Your father didn’t have the chance to be with you to see it, but I know he would be proud of you.” 

The old man grew quiet watching the lightning flash in the distance. I counted to seven before the quiet rumble of thunder spilled over the hills to reach us. 

“He wouldn’t want you to devote your life to violence and vengeance for his sake.” 

Jaspar’s words held a lot of truth. Anyone who had known my father regaled me with stories of his greatness. He raised armies only for the King, and to protect the duchy. Hung up his armor when his children were born. Changed his life’s work into caring for every inch of the duchy and its people. A righteous man.

Father’s father died at peace in his sleep having lived to a good age. He didn’t need vengeance. 

“So you say, but you still join me every time I try to hunt down the Earl,” I said. “You look into every lead and trace down his every misdeed. I know you want him as bad as I do.” 

“I never said I was a man of peace,” Jaspar said with a smirk. “Just that you oughta be.” 

“Do you think we’ll have enough luck, and that storm will drown him underground like a rat?” 

“I don’t think that’s the end you want, Cal.” 

“No,” I said, flexing the new skin on my hand again, “I want to face him.” 

I winced, this new ache didn’t come from my hand it twisted in my gut. A slimy blackness, I felt it for the first time after I tried to kill the girl. Visceral. Primal. I experienced it as something new, but it had always been there, waiting to strike in a moment of weakness. It set off the prickling of the little hairs on the back of my neck and my heart quickened. 

Was something coming? My whole body felt alert and ready for an attack.

I stood in my saddle to get a better look at the surroundings. Nothing but grasses and rocks surrounded us. On a hill, halfway to the horizon, two riders on horseback in my colors continued the search. Nothing appeared wrong, but the dark sensation grew.

“What’s wrong, Cal?” Jaspar asked, looking about. 

“I don’t know.” I sat back and pressed a gloved hand against the steel covering my gut, an empty gesture. Nothing could be felt through the steel and layers of padding beneath the chest plate. 

“Got the shits?” Jaspar asked. 

“No.”  

My vision blurred and narrowed as a new ache filled my head. It started small, but happened again, and again, like an axe cleaving into my skull reaching deeper with each strike. I grabbed the saddle horn to keep from falling from my horse. 

“What’s got you, boy?” Jaspar asked, worry thickening his voice. He had nudged his horse closer towards me until we were knee to knee. 

I meant to respond, but the slimy darkness snaked through me, electrifying every nerve I had long thought dead. It squirmed a path from my belly up to my shoulder, pinching between the bones like it sought to tear the joint apart. I doubled over in the saddle grabbing at my shoulder. 

Testing its movement, I lifted my arm, but nothing hindered it, and the movement itself did not incite more pain. 

It’s not my shoulder.

“I need to go back,” I said. 

Grabbing up the reigns, I pushed the pain down to quiet it so I could concentrate. Pressing my heel into the horse’s side, I turned the mare back to the fortress and set off at a canter. Leaving Jaspar behind.

This pain did not originate in me. I could feel it, but I didn’t own it. That left only one factor, the girl. Her pain radiated through me. 

Entanglement. 

I could feel, because she could feel. The pain, the soreness, the sick feeling in my gut: it came from her. Someone was hurting her.

I left the girl in Remi’s care, but Remi was impetuous. 

Let me be in time. 

Leaning low over the horse's neck I pushed the mare for every bit of speed she would give me. The fortress wasn’t far, just over a mile. I could make it back in five minutes, maybe six.  

The pressure on my shoulder eased, but the black slimy thing swimming circles in my gut remained. This nauseous thing must be fear. Her fear. 

I hadn’t felt fear since I was a small boy. Before the curse took away the rainbow of sensations and emotions. I never wanted to feel it again. I would make her safe and keep her that way if I had to. I’d make her the most comfortable prisoner this world had ever seen, just to avoid it. 

The mare ate up the ground beneath me, past the gates and onto the twisting road that led up to the fortress and the great hall where I had left her. My men, horses, the common folk of Breccia: they all lept out of my way as I rode to the fortress at a reckless pace. I dismounted at the stairs to the keep, handed the reigns over to the first man to step up, and shouted orders to cool down the mare all without losing stride. 

Ripping off my helm I shouted into the hall as I entered, “Remi!” 

With a glance I could tell she was alive, breathing, and not bleeding. But somehow I had known that even before I could see her. 

“What?” he called back. He stepped away from the girl and looked ready to go to battle for me. “What’s wrong?” 

“I trusted you to take care of her!” As soon as I shouted the words I could feel the slimy blackness wriggle up again. I was the one making her afraid now. 

I took a breath seeking the calm prudence of the steady greyness the curse had instilled in me. The emotionlessness that led to my better reason, but it kept slipping out of my grasp. Her fear overpowered my senses.

“You were supposed to watch over her, not torture her,” I spoke softer, but my hand was on the hilt of my blade and my body ached to pull it out.

Remi stared back at me. A turning wheel of astonishment, remorse, annoyance, and ire spun through his head–each emotion splashed across his face in turn.  

“Cal, she is the enemy. She probably knows where the Earl is hiding. Where he is headed. I was trying to get a few answers from her now that she can move enough to flippantly shrug at me.” Remi’s voice started soft but grew in anger and impatience with every line he laid against her. 

“She was afraid and in pain!” 

“Still an enemy.” 

“She’s just a girl!” 

“The bride of your other enemy.” 

“What did you do to her?!” The slimy blackness was climbing up my throat like it would choke me. 

“This is not you Cal!” Remi shouted back matching my tone. “You are bewitched and bewoven. Take a moment and think. Whatever you are feeling right now it doesn’t belong to you.” 

In all the shouting we had gotten so close we were standing face to face. The armor plates on our chests nearly touched when we breathed. Remi’s eyes searched mine, looking for something. Maybe my sanity. I huffed my breath through my nose like a bull and swallowed the slimy blackness until it became small again.

A tiny voice of reason from the back of my mind spoke up.  

You are being a righteous idiot, Callum Truehorn. 

I looked at the girl again. Her hands tied to the chair and her eyes darting between Remi and me. It sent a thrill down my spine to the tips of my toes when I made eye contact with her for the first time.

Green eyes like a spring meadow. 

Maybe, I could ask her for her name.