Page 24 of Legacy of Thorns (Kingdoms of Legacy #3)

Finley

F rom euphoria to despair in the space of a moment.

Finley wanted to chase after Daphne, to hunt her down and make her understand that he already saw her as whole and valuable, just as she was. But he knew when he wasn’t welcome, and he wasn’t going to force his presence on her. That would only drive her away further.

But neither could he return to gathering spring greens.

He paced back and forth among the trees, reliving the kiss and the expression on Daphne’s face as she pulled away from him.

How could she look like that after a moment of such intense connection?

Finley couldn’t remember the last time something in his life had felt as right as the presence of Daphne in his arms.

Eventually he was forced to return to the cabin. To his relief, Daphne was already there. She hadn’t fled from them completely, then.

But she was avoiding him—as much as was possible in the small confines of the cabin. He knew Nisha and Morrow could see it, but mercifully neither of them commented.

After Daphne rebuffed his first few attempts to talk to her, he stopped trying, reduced to watching her when she wasn’t looking. She looked tormented, and he longed to gather her into his arms and smooth away the lines between her brows with his fingers.

She continued to avoid him the next morning, exchanging only the barest practicalities over breakfast. But they were scheduled to patrol together, and to his relief, she didn’t find an excuse to bow out of it.

Perhaps she was secure in the knowledge that Archie would tag along, as he always did. Finley merely hoped the hours spent together would bring back some of the former ease between them.

As they walked away from the cabin, Archie positioned himself between them, shooting Finley a glance—the first hint that he knew something was going on.

But he said nothing, keeping up his usual stream of chatter.

And for once, Finley was glad of Archie’s words to fill the space between him and Daphne.

Just as he’d hoped, as the first three hours ticked away, she gradually relaxed back into some semblance of her normal self. She laughed with Archie and even replied to Fin’s comments with her usual wry observations.

The suffocating band around Finley’s chest lightened.

“What about that man?” Archie cried in exaggerated alarm, pointing at a man approaching the village on the main road.

He was easily visible from their position in the trees and was equally clearly not a threat. Daphne sighed, but Finley could hear the amusement behind it, and he could have hugged his brother in thanks.

“I think that one is even older than the last one you pointed out,” she said with a small gurgle.

“He must be past seventy, and I think he might collapse if he wasn’t leaning half his weight on that horse he’s leading.

If he’s an example of your attackers, I’m going to have to question why you’re running at all. ”

“It isn’t for my sake,” Archie told her earnestly, placing a hand on his chest. “But Fin here is a lot weaker than he looks, and it’s my duty as his brother to keep him from any and all threats. Even the…er, weak-looking ones.”

“Yes, after all, he might be a master in unarmed combat,” Finley said in a straight voice. “And then where would we be?”

“Where, indeed!” Archie nodded. “You wouldn’t believe the number of situations I’ve had to rescue Fin from, Daphne.”

“No,” she said dryly. “I wouldn’t.”

“But,” Archie added, “now that I’ve had a better look at his face, I have to admit that man is a total stranger.

” He turned a wheedling look on Fin. “Don’t you think we should just swing by Lord Castlerey’s manor before we head back?

We’ve been watching the roads for nearly three hours!

They might have arrived early this morning, before we got away from the cabin. ”

Daphne threw Finley a pleading look of her own, clearly wanting to indulge Archer, and he was helpless to resist the plea in her eyes.

“Fine, then,” he said. “I was planning to walk back that way anyway. There shouldn’t be much harm in going early.”

“It’s a thin line between harm and gain,” Archie crowed, rubbing his hands together.

Finley eyed him. “Is it?” he muttered.

How had he never seen the similarities between his brother and their father? He had been trying to ignore it ever since Daphne first pointed it out, but he couldn’t pushing the thoughts away. Not if he wanted to be true to what he’d told Daphne the day before.

But it was one thing to speak easy words and another thing to follow them through.

Could he really let go of his anger toward his father?

Could he acknowledge how much of his father was lurking in Archie’s bright person and…

possibly even in Finley himself? If only because of who Fin had chosen not to become.

He drew a deep breath. The middle of patrol was hardly the place to be asking himself those questions.

He let Archie take the lead, and he took them through the trees, passing behind the lord’s manor and close to the abandoned barn where Archie had slept.

Seeing it always made Finley shudder, remembering his fear the first time he saw Archie lying so still on the barn floor.

But then he had found Daphne, and she had saved Archie.

She had changed everything—forcing Finley to see a future beyond protecting Archie and dealing with his father’s mess.

Finley didn’t intend to let her go easily, even if it meant finding a new way to see his father.

“Do you hear that?” Daphne hissed silently, grabbing Archie’s arm.

Archie responded instantly, falling silent and looking to Fin. Finley strained his ears, listening for anything out of place.

“Voices,” he whispered. “We need to get closer.”

He moved forward silently, using skills he had practiced so often that they came as easily as second nature.

Daphne followed behind, not quite as silent but close.

She had improved a lot in the weeks of their patrols.

Archie brought up the rear, making as little noise as Fin.

Everything Finley knew that might keep a person safe he had forced his younger brother to learn as well.

The voices grew louder, and Finley stopped, keeping himself out of sight of whoever was lurking at the back of Lord Castlerey’s property. Peering around a particularly broad tree trunk, he scanned the area. Three men stood huddled together behind the barn.

Archie appeared at his side, pulling urgently at his sleeve.

But Finley didn’t need his brother’s warning to recognize the men.

He still didn’t know any of their names, but he would recognize their faces anywhere.

They were the three who had been pursuing the brothers the longest—the three who had first seized Fin and Archie, back when they were clueless and unprepared.

“Is that them?” Daphne breathed in his ear, her breath sending shivers across his skin.

He nodded.

“Now what?” Archie whispered.

Finley looked away from the men to find two faces trained on his, waiting for instructions.

“Now we wait. We need to see where they go and follow them if possible.”

“I told you this is where we should patrol,” Archie whispered. “If they were going to circle back to where they last found us, that meant this barn.”

“I’m surprised they’re lingering so near the lord’s house, though,” Daphne murmured.

“When they move, I’ll follow,” Finley said. “You two stay here.”

“What? No!” Archie’s protest remained soft, but his eyes shouted defiance.

“It’s not as easy to follow someone covertly as you seem to think,” Finley hissed. “Keeping them from noticing one person will be hard enough, let alone three.”

Archie opened his mouth to protest, and Fin played his trump card. “I could let you come with me, but what about Daphne? Do you want to leave her here on her own? Those three won’t be alone, and the others could be lurking anywhere in the area.”

Archie’s eyes darted to Daphne’s face, his expression changing to one of resignation.

Daphne, on the other hand, was giving Finley an unimpressed look that said she knew exactly what he was doing.

But she didn’t say anything, accepting the need for the two of them to stay behind.

She was always good like that—quick to grasp the practicalities of a situation.

It was one of the many reasons he loved her.

Love. The word echoed through his mind. When had he become so certain of his feelings?

“He’s here.” The words from beyond the trees made Finley snap back into the moment. They’d been seen!

But no sound of running feet reached his ears, and when he cautiously took another look, all three men were looking toward the manor, not the forest. Did they have another target besides Archie and Finley?

The men began to move, but their steps were measured, and they circled the barn toward the manor.

Finley gestured for the other two to remain in place and carefully eased around the tree.

His quarries hadn’t gone far, stopping on the far side of the barn, but it took Finley longer to weave his way through the trees until he found a place that allowed a view of them while keeping Fin himself hidden.

From his vantage point, he watched a tall, slender man approach from the back steps of the manor.

He was dressed in much richer clothes than the men waiting by the barn, and his hair style must have taken at least thirty minutes to arrange.

If he was their new target, they had set their sights higher than Finley and Archer.

But the men by the barn made no attempt to approach the newcomer, instead waiting for him to approach them, their faces lined with impatience.

Finley frowned. It was even less believable that the men could have business with the lordly man from the manor than it was that they planned to abduct him. What in the kingdoms was going on?