“They will be avenged,” Apollo promised.
The wolf yipped, bobbed his muzzle, turned and ran through the smolder.
“What was that?” Maddie asked, her voice breathy, now for a different reason.
Apollo looked down at her.
She was staring after the wolf.
He lifted his head and gave a different kind of whistle.
Anguish trotted to him.
He heard Maddie gasp as he lifted her up and planted her arse on his mount. He didn’t delay in swinging up behind her, jerking up his chin to Frey, dipping it to Finnie, clamping Maddie close to him and bending into her and his steed.
He dug his heels in Anguish’s flanks.
His horse shot through the smoke.
Destination Brunskar.
And the path to vengeance.
* * * * *
His boots sounding sharp on the black stone floors of the Brunskar dungeons, Apollo was not surprised at what he saw at the end of the hall when he turned the corner.
Madeleine and Frey facing off.
She was wearing what he assumed was one of Melba’s soft, peach gowns. He assumed this as he’d left her to Melba, a guard, one of Calder’s witches, a physician called in from the village, as well as Meeta. They were all seeing to Loretta.
In other words, outside Melba, who’d essentially been elbowed aside by a rabidly protective Maddie and an equally rabidly protective Meeta, they were generally getting in the physician’s way.
As he had things to do that didn’t include watching a physician stitch flesh as his Maddie fanned Loretta and Meeta threatened the poor man if the stitches weren’t tidy and straight, he’d left them to it.
Now she had found her way to the dungeons, the torches lit along the walls casting spare light into the gloom.
He was finding that was his Maddie. Assassins. Hewcrows. Dark magic. She was a fighter. She most definitely did not like to be kept in the dark and she didn’t shy away from much.
Except emotion.
And she was learning to face that head on too.
And all of this, all of Maddie, pleased him very much.
Which meant the thirty minutes where he knew not whether she was still with him in this world, or she was not in any world, had been unadulterated anguish.
Apollo could not dwell on that however, for as he got close, he saw her face was set.
As was Frey’s.
She heard his boots, looked his way and greeted, “Hey, honey.”
Even as fury and fear still smoldered in his chest, at her greeting, Apollo nearly smiled.
However, he did not.
This was because she turned instantly back to Frey and opened her mouth.