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I turned to him with hatred in my eyes. “And how much am I worth exactly? How much is my sister paying you?”
For a moment, it seemed as if the weight of the world rested on Devon’s shoulders. “From time to time we all have to do things we’re not proud of.”
“If you’re not proud of it, then why are you doing it?” There was more emotion in my voice than I would have liked. I hated him, but I wasn’t done with a bunch of other feelings yet. Hopefully, I would be soon—and I had to admit that the hatred was starting to win out.
He looked at me, his face etched in flickering shadows by the firelight. “Because I have to.”
Chapter Eleven
The Arrow
In the already muddled mess of my feelings towards Devon, it was hard to say if those words made any difference to me, but they certainly fed into my confusion about my mercurial captor.
Something about the way he spoke made me sure that this wasn’t just about the money, as I had always thought. He always said it was about the money, and I think he found it convenient to have me believe as much. But I was increasingly sure that there was more going on—more to which I wasn’t privy. There had always been something unknowable about Devon, a sense of secrets beneath the surface.
I was more compliant after our little conversation by the fireside. Maybe I was kidding myself once again, but I’d always had a sense that he didn’t want to be doing what he was, and that now seemed borne out by his words. It was hard to imagine Devon doing something he didn’t want to though. So, I began to ask myself; would he go through with it?
More and more, I thought of the Devon whom I’d gotten to know in the hills at Martha’s croft as being therealDevon, while the kidnapper I saw on an everyday basis was someone he’d been forced into playing by as yet unspecified necessity. Despite everything, I believed in the good man under the mask.
Which, perhaps, was just my way of surviving and staving off the thoughts of what awaited us at the end of our journey.
Truthfully, I didn’t know who the real Devon was.
I just had to hope I was right.
***
Since he was now alone, looking after Uther and me, Devon had to be careful in ensuring I didn’t flee as he slept. I knew he still sometimes left the camp by night, so there was theoretically an opportunity for me there. But Devon was careful, and tying me up to make me ready for bed had become something of a nightly ritual. He’d secure me to something sturdy and then tie my hands and feet, so I was going nowhere and unable to untie anything. And even then, Devon usually slept up against me, so he would feel if I moved in the night.
I’d gotten used to sleeping in such a way.
Rolling over in my sleep one night, though, I found him gone. That wasn’t unusual, and I assumed he was off on one of his ‘hunting’ trips, no doubt confident that I was securely bound, and that I wouldn’t be able to get far with Uther in tow.
Even so, as a matter of course, I tried to bite through my bonds. As long as Devon was gone, I had to try—he’d have expected no less from me.
As I was picking futilely away at the rope with my teeth, I heard a noise from out in the darkness. You can’t underestimate the darkness of the wilderness on a cloudy night, when not even the stars and the moon are there to alleviate it. The campfire still glowed red, providing a limited circle of low light, but beyond that, there was simply blackness, inky and total.
Any noises that came out of that darkness were made eerie by the fact that you couldn’t know what was making them, but this noise seemed especially so. It was a leathery sound, accompanied by a rushing of air that did not at all sound like wind. It was almost like the heavy breathing of some gigantic animal and was terminated in a loud thump, and the noise of something big hitting the grass and scrub, crushing it.
There were then a few moments of quiet before a keening whine slid out of the night, like a lost soul. It could have been the wind whistling, or an injured wild dog. It was a melancholy sound, that reminded me of something, though it took me a few seconds to work out what. It had the same tone as the ballad I’d heard Devon sing when I was bathing, sung in that guttural and unearthly language.
“Devon…?” I chanced.
The keening sound was replaced by more human sounds; gasps and grunts.
“Devon?”
Out of the blackness, I saw a figure emerge, barely revealed by the glow of the fire’s embers. It walked unsteadily, wending from side to side, stumbling in a way quite unlike Devon’s confident, casual swagger.
But as the figure came closer, I saw that itwasDevon. He was completely naked and…
“Devon!” I cried out as my captor collapsed not far from where I was sleeping.
The red light of the old fire revealed something more to my astonished gaze as the light picked out the feathered fletching of an arrow sticking out of Devon’s side. He’d been shot.
As I watched, Devon dragged himself up to all fours, managing to suppress the groan of pain that reverberated within his chest. He shuffled closer to the fire, then went down again as the pain proved too much for him to move any further.
“Devon.”
