Page 98 of The Familiar

“We’ll be free. Look.” He bobbed his head to where Santángel was disappearing into the woods, Luzia bundled between his arms. “He will know the way to safety.”

He dragged Valentina to where one of Doña Beatriz’s men stood watch over her horse.

“Doña Beatriz is returning to the city in Víctor de Paredes’s coach,” Marius declared. “We are to take her horse.”

“I’m not certain—”

Marius seized the reins. “I don’t require your certainty.” Before the groom could protest, he’d mounted in a single fluid movement and offered Valentina his hand. For all his talk of horses, she had never been with him to ride and it had never really occurred to her that he would be a gifted horseman.

“Help her,” Marius demanded, and the groom lifted Valentina up to him, depositing her between his arms like a sack of millet.

She had a bare moment to catch her breath, and then they were moving through the trees. “We’re Luzia’s patrons,” Valentina said as she tried to shift her position to ease the jabbing of her corset. “If they want to question us, they will.”

“Then let them come to our home and question us there. I won’t be taken to prison while Víctor de Paredes sits comfortably in his palace.”

He kicked the horse into a trot, trailing after Luzia and Santángel. But Valentina could hear other hoofbeats, men shouting ahead.

“They’re being pursued,” she gasped out, her voice trembling. “There are soldiers in the woods.”

She heard the high whinny of a horse and then the path before them seemed to vanish, the brambles and branches forming a wall.

Marius yanked on the reins and the mare shinnied backward, feet dancing. But he soothed her easily. He slid from the horse and pressed a finger to his lips. Valentina nodded.

Slowly, he led them around the clearing, following the bramble wall.

“There,” Valentina whispered.

They had circled to the far side and through the branches she could see Santángel propped on his elbow, arrows jutting from his back. Luzia was on her knees, tears on her face, her dress covered in blood.

“He is injured!” Valentina cried. But Marius cut his hand through the air, demanding silence.

She could hear Santángel gasping for breath. “Go,” he told Luzia. “If you value your life as I do.”

She slid down from the saddle, struggling to keep her feet.

“Help them,” she whispered furiously. “Luzia won’t stand a chance on foot. Give her your horse.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

Maybe she had, but she could see the love and fear in Santángel’s eyes. He wasn’t afraid for himself, but for the woman he loved. Demon he might be but he was trying to save her.

“I’m not leaving you,” Luzia wept, her voice raw and red, a new burn. Valentina didn’t care anymore that she had lived a life without love. She wanted only to know that it existed in the world and could be saved.

“Help them, Marius. I am begging you. If you ever cared for me at all, help them.”

Marius opened his mouth, closed it. “Do not ask this of me.”

“What have I ever asked of you?”

She heard men calling to one another, footsteps moving through the brush. Luzia stumbled through a path she’d opened between the trees. Her eyes were frantic, her hair full of leaves, her cheeks laced with narrow cuts where she’d been stung by branches.

“Give her your horse, Marius.” Valentina was begging now, and she wasn’t sure what she was begging for. For Luzia? For herself? That there was more to Marius than a man who liked fine ponies and good food? Who was only kind when life was easy?

Luzia’s gaze focused on Valentina, then Marius.

“Marius,” Valentina pleaded.

He gave a single stubborn shake of his head.