Page 60 of Scarred Resolve

Now, we were looking for that fight.

26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

We got to the cabin quickly enough, not running into a single soul who might pose a threat to us. We knew the cabin’s fate long before we could see it. The smell of the smoke hadn’t left the area, though we were fortunate not to be dealing with a forest fire. I did a run around it, looking for anyone who may have still been around, but all the scents of those who had attacked us went in one direction and were gone. With that, I met Niko and Davor, where they waited farther away.

“There’s no one else here. They moved east together. The witches did. The werecat’s scent trail was erratic, but I didn’t see or hear any evidence it was still nearby either.”

We moved forward together, approaching the cabin. All the wood was either black or ash, and much of it had collapsed entirely.

“How did it burn so fast? We weren’t gone that long, right?”

“Six hours,” Niko said, glaring at the destruction. “It probably would have burned naturally in that time, but they probably sped up the process by feeding the flames with magic.”

“They must have,” Davor agreed. “It’s already cool. They would have gotten what they wanted, realized we were on therun, and made their own hasty retreat. It strikes me as odd that they wouldn’t want to make sure we died. They must have other priorities.”

“Like hiding the werecat they’re controlling,”I said, stepping closer to the cabin.“We should see if anything of ours survived, I guess.”

“We should,” Davor said with a sigh, clearly the more upset brother with the idea that our things were gone. I was sympathetic. He brought a lot of technology, things that would have been really useful, but now he was probably going to have to remake all of it, and the idea of testing any of it was lost to this disastrous turn in our mission.

Niko just seemed pissed as he stomped to the cabin. We moved large pieces of burned wood together, me having to use my shoulder thanks to the lack of proper hands. We found Niko’s bag first, at least what remained of it.

“Let’s see…” It wasn’t ash, but nothing about it was salvageable. “So much for fireproof,” Niko muttered.

“Keep looking.” Davor was still clearing stuff, and I could smell the desperation coming from him, the need to find anything. His movements were hurried and frantic, and I could smell blood before I saw his hands, carelessly cut on pieces of metal and stabbed with splinters.

“Hey, be careful,”I said, adding a chuffing noise to make sure he knew I was talking to him.

“It’s fine. They’ll heal,” he said in return, digging through the debris without pause.

“Davor, come on. You don’t need to hurt yourself.” I padded toward him, but a growl made me stop.

“I have to find it. It would have survived the flames, and I need it to be here,” he said as Niko approached.

“Davor, take a deep breath.” Niko reached for him.

“If they have that case, our entire family is at risk!” Davor snapped, pushing him away. “And I’m not exactly in the right place to make sure it doesn’t pose a threat right now! I can’t even warn the rest of the family. They can give false reports to Jabari. They can possibly hack my log-in and see all the conversations I’ve had for years with everyone in the family. I have access to all of your accounts. They would have Tribunal secrets through Father!” Davor went back to clearing debris, throwing it as he hunted. “I should have grabbed the entire damn thing before I ever came outside. I can’t believe I was this careless.”

Niko and I started digging through the debris as well, hunting fervently as it sank in just what sort of problem we were actually looking at.

“It’s not your fault, Davor. None of us thought about it. We were blindsided by witches with a werecat on a leash,” Niko said, huffing as he moved a large piece of the wall or roof. I pushed my body against it, giving Niko all the help he needed to get a better grip on it and chuck it away from the wreckage of the cabin with more ease.

“I should have thought about it sooner,” Davor hissed. “I know what you’re saying, but I brought a sensitive object that can put our family at risk?—”

“We weren’t thinking about others being involved in this. We had no reason to think of extra protections or anything.”I spoke up because I had to, trying to talk him out of the guilt spiral we were about to see.

“And lost it!”

“Jacky is right,” Niko said, moving more as I used my mouth to pull a beam out of the way. “We didn’t think anyone else was involved in this. If this was just the werecat, we could have dropped it and gone back for it without a problem. We weren’t prepared for this.”

We went through all of it. We found sad scraps of our things among the mostly ashen debris of the cabin, but there was no secure case that might have survived. Not a single warped or dented bit of it.

Davor, fully defeated by the time we stopped, sat down on the rocks by the creek, leaving Niko and me still in the messy debris. Soft splashing told me he was cleaning himself up, and I knew Niko and I probably needed to do the same, but I wasn’t certain Davor wanted both of us bothering him.

“I’ll go sit with him if you want to check the scents to verify what I said,”I said, beginning to pad over to Davor.

“We should stay close to each other right now,” Niko murmured and followed me. “I trust your nose.”

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