She looked perfectly healthy with a pink face and a fuzzy shock of blond hair. Briar was relieved the tiny little sleep curse hadn’t hurt her, even though it hadn’t lasted long. The baby made a gurgling, mewling sound, still staring at the person who had carried her away from her mother. Briar felt a delicate flicker of hope, a moth wing fluttering against her cheek. Then the baby filled her lungs and began to wail.
“No,” Briar said desperately. “Please don’t cry.”
The baby cried louder.
“Please be quiet.”
The sound was piercing, echoing around the ravine, getting louder with each breath. Briar had never been more terrified of anything in her life. She looked around frantically for something to soothe the child. Nothing but rocks and uprooted trees surrounded her.
“I don’t know what you want.” She tried humming, but it came out more like a wail of her own. “Please, little baby. I got you this far. I need you to work with me.”
Her pleas had no effect on the baby whatsoever. It was probably hungry, and she couldn’t do anything to fix that. She would have to curse it to sleep again, though she feared she wouldn’t be able to make the curse small enough in the dark. As the baby cried louder, Briar buried her face in the blankets and began to sob. This was a disaster. They were going to be caught, and all their efforts, all the sacrifices that Archer and Mae and the team had made to get the little girl out of Larke’s clutches would be wasted. Briar had tried to do something good, and she had failed. She couldn’t keep from destroying things. She couldn’t save the tiny, innocent being. She couldn’t be anything other than her parents’ daughter.
The sound of movement reached her over the baby’s cries, rocks skittering away beneath heavy footfalls. Briar lifted her head, teeth bared, preparing to make one final stand—and found herself looking directly into a wrinkly face covered in slobber.
“Sheriff!”
The big dog whined and began licking all over her face. He switched to the baby next, showering affection on the tiny creature that would almost fit inside his mouth. The baby broke off crying, hiccupping softly, and stared up at the dog.
“What are you doing here, Sheriff?” Briar asked. “You’re supposed to be with the horses.”
Sheriff pulled back and gave her a reproachful look.
“You’re right. What am I saying? I’m so happy to see you.”
Briar wrapped her free arm around the big dog’s neck, wanting to cry again at the thought that she’d thrown a curse straight at Sheriff’s master and friend. How would she explain to him that Archer was lost? But the dog reminded her she wasn’t alone. She had joined a new family, and she wasn’t ready to give up on them yet.
“Sheriff, I need you to take care of something for me.”
The dog looked up at her curiously. She pretended not to see the skepticism in his gaze as she explained what she wanted him to do.
Chapter 31
When Archer opened his eyes, he was severely disappointed Esteban wasn’t there to sing him a healing lullaby. Every inch of his body hurt, and he feared he’d broken his back for the second time in two hours—and maybe his head too. There had to be limits to how many times that could happen in a day.
He struggled to sit up, and no one moved to help him, mage or otherwise. Dust, smoke, and groans of pain filled the corridor. It took Archer a minute to realize most of the groans were coming from him.
His father sat on the ground a dozen paces away, his face covered in blood from a gash in his forehead. He was surrounded by his soldiers, who were making a group effort to stop their lord from bleeding to death. The blood that also ran in Archer’s veins leaked out beneath their hands.
Archer wanted to run before the men realized he was awake, but first he had to stand, and that seemed like a lot to ask right then. He prodded his dust-covered body, trying to assess where the damage was. The answer seemed to be everywhere. Again.
His back didn’t appear to be broken this time, though, and he managed to stagger upright and prop himself against the nearest wall to get his bearings. A massive crater split the stone floor not far from him, where Briar’s curse had erupted.
Briar.
The details were coming back to him. Archer, his father, and the Drydens had walked right into Briar and Mae in the eastern corridor. Briar had reacted the quickest, diving to the floor to paint the curse that had taken out half the corridor. Mae had run for it. Archer had been too busy being blasted off his feet to see which way she’d gone.
He remembered Briar’s sorrowful eyes right before the blast, though. She’d seen him running toward her and decided to finish the curse anyway. Good for her. He’d had some idea of tackling Saoirse before she reached Briar and Mae, but Briar’s curse had taken care of the threat handily—and had possibly destroyed several of his internal organs.
Let’s worry about that later, shall we? Archer needed to determine what had become of the curse painters. Donovan had been closer to Archer’s father, but he wasn’t in the crowd fussing over the lord. Saoirse had been right in front of Archer. He rubbed his dusty eyes, wondering if she’d gotten past the curse and reached Briar after all. A jolt of fear went through him at the thought of losing Briar. She wasn’t even really his in the typical sense, yet the idea of anything happening to her hurt as much as all his injuries combined. He pressed a hand against the crumbling wall, trying to summon the energy to seek out those horrible painters before they found her.
Then an object Archer had taken for a
