Page 16 of Their Queen

Callum paused in his pacing to glare at Brannoc. “What’d she say?”

“She’s still insisting that she doesn’t want us to join her and that she’s safe, but I got the impression that she was injured somehow.” His hand ghosted his abdomen as he spoke as if remembering the sensation.

“Of course she is,” Callum snarked out, pacing again before whispering more to himself than anything else. “I knew she was nothing but trouble. Damned stubborn woman. When I find her, she’s going to think twice about leaving us again.”

My mouth twitched with a hint of a smile, somewhat amused by how much Rhowyn had gotten under his skin and left him completely riled up. Turning back to Brannoc, I asked, “That’s it?”

“She said she loved us and was trying to rejoin us as soon as possible, but she did say that this was something Avalonia wanted her to do alone. That this escapade of hers wasn’t just to keep us safe. It may have started that way, but her reason for staying away seems to have changed.”

“Yeah, well, she’s not alone, now is she?” Callum snarked, indicating that Cyerra was allowed to tag along while we had all been left behind.

Trying to look on the bright side, I said, “At least she’s not alone. Cyerra will watch her back.”

“I’d rather it be us there to watch her back,” Callum snapped at me.

I simply held up my hands, indicating I wasn’t going to fight him on this. Arryn looked at him, his mind racing as he asked, “Did you happen to sense anything that might give you an idea of where she is?” Arryn looked almost as shitty as Baer, a clear indication that he wasn’t sleeping either. With Rhowyn shutting the bond down, it felt like we were all missing a part of our souls.

Brannoc sighed, running his hands through his already messy hair. “No. I didn’t get anyth…” He stopped suddenly, his eyes widening. “Wait, I heard what sounded like a bell ringing, and then there was some chanting in the background, but I don’t have a clue what that could mean,” he rushed out.

Callum froze in his tracks. “Did it sound like a church?” His eyes held Brannoc’s, hope shining through. His intensity had me shifting forward in my seat, eager to hear the response. Callum had an idea, and everything hung on the Raven’s next words.

“Now that you mention it, yeah. Yeah, it did sound like she was in a church.” His words became surer as he thought about it.

Callum didn’t say anything, just stomped out of the room on a mission. I looked at the others, puzzled by his response. I called out after him, seriously worried he’d completely lost it this time. “Hey buddy, where you going?”

When he didn’t answer, I jumped up from my chair to follow after him. The others trailed behind me, obviously just as concerned as I was. I followed the sound of a door slamming into a wall, rushing to the library, where Callum stomped from shelf to shelf, pulling books from their resting places seemingly at random.

“Callum?” I questioned from the doorway.

He growled, ignoring me completely as he threw one book after another to the floor. His frustration peaking, he swung to where Brannoc stood in the doorway with me. “Do you have any maps of the Autumn territory?”

“Yes, why?” Brannoc responded hesitantly, just as puzzled as the rest of us as to why Callum was acting so frantic.

“Just get me a damned map!” Callum snapped.

Brannoc rushed to the opposite side of the room, digging through some wide, thin drawers. While he searched for what Callum was asking for, I slowly walked up to him, my hands held up to show that I wasn’t a threat.

He turned to me and rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to snap.” Turning back to Brannoc as he pulled a few large maps from one of the drawers, he asked, “Is that it?”

Brannoc brought them over to one of the tables in the room and laid them out. “Yeah. Well, I’ve got several of them. One of the whole territory and the others are more detailed versions of the villages and roads.”

Callum stomped over to look at the maps, grabbing a black pen from the desk and placing “x’s”. His eyes roved over every square inch of the document. Arryn walked up to stand beside him, leaning over to study what he was doing. “Care to explain what’s going on?”

Callum didn’t even bother looking up; just kept writing down marks on the paper. “So, while other territories may have tons of churches and abbeys, Autumn has very few. Our population tends to be a lot more spread out, and the need for space is important for us to be able to grow the crops needed to support Avalon. That said, there are villages that the farmers tend to flock to for their own supplies. One church is usually responsible for serving a much larger area than, say, in Spring Territory where the land and population is much more condensed.”

“Okay…” I said, not quite following where he was going with this.

He made a final mark on the map before looking up at me, his intense gaze sending a flush through my gut, and despite missing Rhowyn like hell, I couldn’t help my attraction to him in this moment. “Which means,” he paused to sweep his hand over the map, “there are very few places she could be.”

“Oh, shit!” I exclaimed, walking forward as we all crowded around the table to see the map.

“Exactly,” he said smugly. Turning to Brannoc, he asked, “You said that the time before she reached out, she was near a creek and woods?”

“Yeah, but that could be anywhere in the forest,” Brannoc said, not fully on board with this method of tracing Rhowyn’s movements.

“But,” Arryn started, catching on to what Callum was saying, his eyes scouring the map, “if she was injured like you thought, then Cyerra probably took her to a church nearby, which narrows our options even further.”

Holy Shit! I thought. Did this mean that we’d be able to leave soon to go get our girl?

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