Page 53 of Burdened Bonds

“If you’re looking for her, you already know.”

“Know what?” Phoenix says as I storm towards them.

The man eyes me nervously. “Haven’t you heard? There’s a new bounty on that girl’s head. That’s the one you’re looking for, right? The one that killed Lowsky’s brother. They want her captured and brought in alive.”

Phoenix glances at me. His face is as stone-like as his name but I read the concern in his eyes.

“Who?” I grunt. “Who’s offering the reward? The,” I cringe, “Lord Protector?”

“I hear there’s more than one offering such a reward.”

“Who else?” Stone asks.

“I don’t know. It’s just a rumor I heard from some of the other men. I don’t even know if it’s true.”

Stone stares straight into the kneeling man’s eyes and I know he’s checking to see if the man is lying or not.

“Where are those men now?”

“No idea. They left.”

“Why?”

“Probably out searching for the girl too.”

“What … what reward are they offering for her capture?” Winnie asks from behind me.

The man mutters a figure.

Winnie gasps and that concern in Phoenix’s eyes turns to alarm.

We’re not the only ones who are going to be out looking for her and that reward is a very strong incentive for all the lowlifes and scumbags out there. Our urgency to find her just racked up tenfold.

“Why the fuckhasn’t she tried to contact us?” I say with irritation as we make our way back to the hidden car, taking a round about route through the trees, even though the members of the Wolves of Night seem to possess no desire to attack or engage us. In fact, they seem mighty happy to let us leave.

“The communication lines have been down,” Phoenix points out.

“They’re back up now,” I say gruffly.

“Yes,” Phoenix says patiently as if talking to a particularly obtuse child, “but she could be dealing with two situations. She may have realized that there are people out hunting for her, in which case getting on the end of her cell and broadcasting to the world her location would be stupid. Who knows who might be tracking her phone.” He looks at me pointedly, reminding me that, yeah, I’d done exactly that myself. “Or,” he swallows, his face distorting, “she’s being held captive and has no way of getting to a communication device.”

“She could still try to reach us through the bond,” I say sulkily, kicking at the dead leaves on the ground.

It’s damn cold out here in the wastelands, and my toes and fingers are frozen stiff.

“Azlan,” Stone says, this time with a little more frustration. “You can feel how great the distance is. For all we know she may be trying to reach us, like we’ve been trying to reach her, and failing.”

“Those men hadn’t seen her or Renzo,” Winnie says, from my other side. She’s been silent since we left, obviously mulling things over. “If he’s handed her in, collected the reward, wouldn’t we have heard? Wouldn’t those men have heard?”

“We don’t even know whoislooking for her,” Phoenix points out.

“My uncle – my uncle will be looking for her,” I say with certainty. The man is shrewd. He’ll have figured things out by now and he’ll be keen to investigate the girl and her capabilities, her powers. He’ll want to know if she’s a threat or something he can use to his own advantage.

“Christopher Kennedy?” Winnie asks.

“The Lord fucking Protector himself,” I say with disgust.

“If he had her, Tristan would know and he would have let us know.”