Eventually, he’d need to look for Tristan. But right now was the first time he didn’t necessarily want to go venturing anywhere else. He was content. Maybe that was what troubled him the most. Any time he had a sense of contentment in his life, something always happened to disrupt it or strip it away from him.
Taking a deep breath, Gavin closed his eyes. “I’m going to rest a little while.”
“Now?”
“Gaspar is going to get the details I need for this job, and I figure that between the two of you, you can look into anything she tells you. She has a marker that she says was left behind when her son was abducted. Why don’t you look into that, see if there’s anything you can find out about it?”
“What did it look like?”
“A series of triangles with a circle around it.”
“What?” Wrenlow sat up and cocked his head, looking at Gavin for a long time before turning to watch Gaspar and Erica. “Are you sure about that?”
“Pretty sure. Why?”
“I need to know what exactly it looked like.”
Gavin leaned over, and he traced the shape on the table. He watched Wrenlow as he did, and the other man’s eyes widened.
“What is it?” Gavin asked.
“I recognize that symbol. That’s a marker for the Captain.”
Chapter Three
Gavin opened his eyes but couldn’t see through the darkness all around him. A haze clouded his mind. Tristan knew how much he hated the darkness and how much he struggled with it.
Why would he do this to me now?
Tristan must have placed something over his eyes. Gavin tried to shift and throw the blindfold off of his face, but there wasn’t any way for him to remove it.
A binding pinned his arms to his sides. Was it leather, or was it rope again this time? Each time Tristan had bound him, he’d wanted Gavin to focus on that core strength, that energy that filled him, to break free. Gavin understood that each one was a test, Tristan’s way of challenging him, but he’d succeeded every time so far.
There would come a time when he wouldn’t, but he hoped it would be quite some time before that happened. He didn’t want to disappoint Tristan.
He tried again to look around, to see anything at all, but he couldn’t. He moved his hands and feet, which were free, but the bindings around his torso, arms, and legs trapped him in such a way that he could do little else.
“Tristan?” Too much panic crept into his voice. That was a mistake. When it came to his training, revealing fear was considered a weakness. Gavin knew better than to show any vulnerability.
He gathered himself, holding onto his strength balled up inside, and tried to focus on the bindings around him. The last one had been made of leather, which meant that this one would be something stronger. So far, Gavin had been able to snap his way free of all the bindings Tristan used, but eventually…
No. He couldn’t think about what would happen when he failed.
Tristan did not suffer failure well.
He tensed and strained, and something cut into his arms and legs. It took Gavin a moment to decide what it was.
Rope.
Tristan had bound him in rope.
The thickness of the rope suggested that it would be almost impossible for him to break free. He struggled against it but couldn’t escape.
He thought about what Tristan had told him before, the way he’d wanted Gavin to find someplace deep inside of himself, to tap into a different sort of strength. But even as he focused on that, Gavin wasn’t entirely sure there was anything for him to draw upon.
He strained again and again, and he failed again and again. His body grew sore and numb as he lost track of how long he was there, focusing on the energy within him and the power he strained against. Each time, he tried to push outward, holding pressure against the ropes.
There was movement near him, and he stopped struggling. Gavin turned his head in its direction and listened to the sounds coming toward him. It was soft; the steady footsteps of somebody approaching him.
Something struck him on the side of the face.
Gavin’s head rolled with the force of the blow. It hurt, but he’d learned how to push that pain down, to suppress it so he didn’t experience anything. The next blow came, sharper, from a different angle.
The wind guided him, the soft breeze of the blow telling him with just enough time how to anticipate it, and Gavin twisted his head so he could absorb most of it. At the same time, the blindfold came off. He could see.
Tristan stood in front of him. He was a muscular man, about the same height as Gavin, and brown of complexion and hair. There was a blazing intensity from him. Whenever they trained, he was always dressed in leathers that protected him. Gavin rarely managed to strike with enough force to injure him, though he had never really wanted to hurt Tristan. It was more the challenge of it and a desire to break through his protections.
“Better,” Tristan said.
“I’m not going to be able to break these ropes,” Gavin said.
“Are you so sure?”
“I can’t tear through these.”
“You can’t because you choose not to.”
“It’s not a matter of choice. It’s a matter of knowing the ropes are too thick to work through,” he said, struggling against them while talking to Tristan.
“Then you will stay here,” Tristan said.
“For how long?”
Gavin was accustomed to being forced to stay in one place for extended periods of time. He wasn’t at all surprised that Tristan would hold him here.
“Until you break free of the bindings.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then you can’t.”
Tristan slapped him, catching him on the left cheek with a sharp blow that overwhelmed his ability to ignore the pain. That pain sent
