Jacobs froze.
Something dripped onto Adam’s skin, warm and slick in contrast to the cooler water of the stream.
Adam’s shoulder howled with relief as Jacobs loosened his grip.He lifted his head from the water, coughing out what he had inhaled.
Propping himself up with a shaking arm, he glanced at the boulder at the edge of camp.
The rock was empty.Vanika was gone.
Victory rushed over him giddily as he staggered to his feet, clothes plastered to his body with water and sand.
The feeling died as he looked at Jacobs.
The man’s shirt was torn.Where the fabric parted at the back of his shoulder, pale skin was marred by a bloody red gash.
Borthwick faced them with his whip casually unfurled at his side.
“Jesus Christ,” Adam breathed out as shock washed over him.
Ellie watched from behind the circle of soldiers, her face drawn with horrified surprise.
Borthwick had given Jacobs the full fury of his flail.The injury needed stitches—dozens of them.The scar would be there for the rest of Jacobs’ life.Adam couldn’t even imagine how much pain the man was in right now.
Not that he showed it.All Adam could read on Jacobs’ face was cold fury as tension stretched between him and Borthwick like the plucked string of a cello.
A whip wasn’t meant to be used on a man like that.Adam wouldn’t be able to stand by and let Borthwick strike out with it again—not even against a man like Jacobs.
That left him wondering, bizarrely, if he was about to throw himself into a fight to protect a man who had just tried to kill him.
Jacobs’ shirt had pulled open to the waist.The tattoo on his chest was fully visible now, covering the flat surface of his left pectoral.
A pair of swords crossed beneath a broken tower.Over it, a Latin motto blazed in blocky capitals.
PER ARDUA
Adam had always had a knack for Latin.He translated the words by reflex.
Through difficulty.
The soldiers watched Jacobs like a feral animal that had just wandered into their camp.A few put their hands on their rifles.
Blood glazing down his back, Jacobs pinned Borthwick with a glare that would’ve turned Adam’s blood to ice.
It felt like a promise.
Then he walked away.
Singh Rao came to Borthwick’s side.“Colonel, the girl is missing.”
Borthwick’s attention fixed on Adam with an intensity that stripped him bare.“Tie him up.The woman, too.”
A pair of men stepped in to follow the order, others cocking their rifles at Adam’s head.He let them wrench his arms behind his back and lash them there… and tried not to worry that his likelihood of surviving the day might now lie in the hands of a twelve-year-old girl.
?
Thirty-Five
Ahot gustof wind churned the dark clouds over Neil’s head as the trees that thickly crowned the ridge whispered with the promise of a coming storm.He lay beneath them on his stomach in the long grass as he stared down into the startling beauty of the ravine, where rock-cut chambers peppered the soaring ocher walls over an uncanny sprawl of bones.
