“There it is, right up ahead!” the guard called as he rode beside her.
Emily didn’t want to believe it, but the moment the carriage came into view, she knew that it was true. Clan Reid’s coat of arms and colors were painted on the door of the carriage, and the whole thing was off kilter.
She couldn’t see straight off if they had thrown an axle or broken a wheel. But more importantly, she didn’t see her parents anywhere.
The leaden weight in her stomach only seemed to grow heavier as she searched the area for any sign of them or any of their things.
“Where are they? Are they all right?” she breathed as she moved closer.
The driver came around the side of the carriage to see who had come to their rescue, but she did not recognize him.
Her brow furrowed in confusion as she started to put the pieces together. They were the first ones to arrive on the scene, and she didn’t see any of Kaden’s other guards.
The guard behind her dismounted and moved to say something to the driver that she couldn’t hear, while she dismounted and moved to the door of the carriage.
“Maither?” she called, trying to fight the rising panic in her chest.
She pulled the door open and leaned inside, only to find an empty cabin and no sign of either of her parents anywhere. She attempted to back out of the carriage, but a large body behind her blocked her path and knocked her off balance.
She yelped in surprise and fell forward into the carriage, her panic rising further. She tried to spin around quickly, grateful that the dress she had chosen that morning was a simple one. She didn’t have to fight against too many layers as she kicked and twisted to leave the carriage and see why she had been pushed. But then the door slammed right in her face.
“What are ye doing?! Let me out at once!” she demanded and lunged for the door.
The carriage lifted back center, as if it had not been broken in the first place. She tried to door, but it wouldn’t budge. Before she could attempt to squeeze herself out of the window, the carriage started moving, far more quickly than was safe.
“Stop this carriage at once!” she shouted, banging on whatever surface she could until her hands hurt.
She screamed until her voice was hoarse, but she knew as well as anyone that it was unlikely anyone would be able to hear her here. She had been foolish enough not to tell anyone where she had gone. She could kick herself for that, but the carriage was beating her up enough as it was.
She didn’t know how much time had passed, but the carriage stopped as suddenly as it started. Her frame was slammed forward into the thankfully padded wall.
With the wind knocked out of her, it was nearly impossible to scream, and her whole body ached, but she had to try to move at the very least.
She stumbled upright, when the door was wrenched open. The guard from earlier filled the small space. She tried to scramble to the opposite side, but with no luck, for she was grabbed by her skirts and hauled forward.
“Daenae make this any more difficult on yerself than it already is!” the guard barked.
But she knew that if she stopped fighting for even a moment, she would never forgive herself.
It was strange, the things that flashed through one’s mind when one was faced with imminent death. The faces of her family—Maggie, Skye, Freya, Ailis—flashed before her, but the one who loomed the largest was Kaden.
He was never going to forgive himself if something happened to her, even though it wasn’t his fault in the slightest.
The grip on her arm was nearly bruising, but she was helpless to try to pull away.
She couldn’t believe just how weak she had become in the years since her father had stopped allowing her to go hunt with him. Since he had banned all those activities, struggling became more difficult than she remembered. Didn’t help that the guard was at least twice her size.
“Where are we? Do ye have any idea how stupid this is?!” Emily attempted to either reason with or intimidate him. She didn’t care which it was, so long as it made him pause for even the slightest moment. “Kaden willnae stop until I am found!”
The guard glanced over his shoulder at her with a smirk that made her blood run cold.
Was that the point? Perhaps whoever was behind all of this didn’t care about her in the slightest and only wanted Kaden. She couldn’t allow herself to be used as bait; she simply couldn’t.
She tried to dig her heels in as they came up to a small house in the forest that looked abandoned. Ivy crawled up the walls, overgrown grass and weeds surrounding the place as far as the trees. The cooking setup in the front looked like it had not been used for a long time, if the moss and rust were any indication.
Emily was terrified that if she went into that house, she wasn’t going to come back out again.
“Please, stop,” she pleaded, but the guard had no intention of stopping as he kicked open the door and dragged her inside.
