Ever the Hunted (Clash of Kingdoms #1)(8)

“These belong to Cohen Mackay, and Saul’s blood is on both items. This coat was ripped off Mackay, and this dagger”—?his long fingers wrap around the handle—?“was pulled from your father’s back.”

I flinch. “But . . . Cohen’s gone.” I hate how shaken I sound. I take a breath and start again. “He couldn’t have done it. Someone must want it to look like Cohen killed my father.”

“Perhaps.” Lord Jamis’s gaze softens into a look I don’t see often—?pity. “However, Cohen was seen in the same town as Saul on the night of the murder.”

“A coincidence,” I argue. The boy I knew isn’t a murderer. He was a small-town boy who had shown unusual skill with hunting. When my father asked the king regent to find someone worthy to be trained, Cohen managed to earn the high honor of becoming apprentice to the king’s bounty hunter. He loved his family so much that he worked tirelessly on their farm spring and summer and then trained with my father every winter. Everything he did was to give his parents and siblings a better life. That’s not the kind of person who murders his mentor.

“There are two witnesses.” Lord Jamis pauses. He sits so still, it doesn’t even look as though the man is breathing. The weight of his silence is crushing. “Two men who say they saw Cohen murder your father.”

Truthful heat crawls through my belly. Breaks me apart.

For the first time in my life, I loathe my body’s strange ability. I cannot believe . . . don’t want to believe what he’s saying. Not Cohen. Not my Cohen.

“There has to be an explanation.” The words trip out of my mouth. “He couldn’t have . . . he’d never . . . my father was like a second father to Cohen.” I choke out the last word. No matter how badly I need the high lord’s claim to be false, I don’t have a good explanation for Cohen’s whereabouts, the evidence, or the truth in Lord Jamis’s words. Such damning truth.

Lord Jamis frowns. “I’d hoped this would be a relief to know.”

A relief? I stare at the blood-red stitching on the chair, sorting through the destruction and shock and fury crashing around inside me. “D-did he admit his guilt?”

Lord Jamis places the dagger beside the book and flattens his palms to the desk. He doesn’t need to say anything; his stolid expression says it all. They haven’t caught Cohen yet. When it comes to tracking, hunting, hiding, no guard has ever matched my father’s skill. No one other than Cohen.

No one other than me.

I take in Lord Jamis’s pressed suit and carefully combed hair. To be the right-hand man to the king, he’d have to be educated. Clever. He’d already know the best person who has a chance of catching Cohen is right in front of him. “You want me to track him,” I say, shock weighting my words.

“Yes.”

I lift my chin, staring at Lord Jamis but seeing nothing. “Why would I do that for you?”

“Your poaching evidence is enough to warrant a hanging, and Captain Omar demands justice be served. It would be a tragedy to see someone of your skill discarded, so I’ve proposed a trade to the captain, one that will satisfy payment for your crime.”

I glance down at the filth on my hands and then back to the high lord.

The angry swoosh of my pulse echoes in my ears. “You want to trade my life for Cohen’s?”

He smiles with a hint of pride, displaying a row of large teeth. “Precisely.”





Chapter

4


LORD JAMIS’S ACCUSATIONS TUMBLE THROUGH ME, turning me inside out with doubt and grief and horror. I sit silently as Lord Jamis crosses the room and opens the door to let in three guards. The captain, the same young brute who restrained me earlier and is thick with muscle and built like a bull, and a scrappy fellow whose pinched features remind me of a fox.

Lord Jamis claps the captain on the back. “As the head of my guard, Captain Omar will ensure your safety.” He means the king’s guard, but of course I don’t correct him. “Leif and Tomas will also assist on this hunt.” The Bull and the Fox. “Once you’ve found Mackay, they’ll return him to the castle.”

I meet Captain Omar’s stern gaze and wonder if he’s pleased with this development, or if he’d rather justice was served by the noose. Nothing about traveling with him or his men has any appeal. Beside the captain, Tomas has beady eyes that shift about, making me think he’s the type who would stab a sleeping man. And the bigger fellow, Leif, is too brawny to have the grace a man needs to move silently through the woods. Then again, Cohen isn’t much smaller and he always moved like a cat.

Cohen. He couldn’t have killed Papa. Could he? And yet, there’s no denying the evidence. I crush my fingernails into my palms, needing the distraction of pain.

I pin my attention on Leif. “Three guards are unnecessary and will make traveling harder to go undetected.”

Leif shifts his weight, and a frown glances over his mouth.

“The objective is to catch Mackay,” the captain interjects in a dour tone, dismissing and sharing his dislike. “You may be considered a good tracker, but you’re no fighter. Yesterday should be enough reminder you’re easily overpowered.”

Yesterday was an exception is what I want to tell him. Then I remember how he responded before to my brazenness and hold my tongue.