Chapter 1: Fear

The night was silent.

Predators were on the prowl. They had already killed once. The animals in the forest had quietened and were listening for movement.

The girl huddled into the small cave created in the giant oak where a fire many years before had tried to eat it. Several lavender bushes grew close to the base of the tree screening her from searching eyes. Her brown hair and clothes blended into the shadows. She just had to stay silent.

“Bugger it, Paul, we should have brought dogs. I thought you were the best tracker in the country. Your nose doesn’t seem to be working tonight,” she heard one of the men muttering quietly.

She was thankful that they hadn’t. She almost wanted to giggle in her hysteria. Whoever heard of bandits using dogs? She shivered and a branch rustled at her movement. She wanted to move from its touch, but she had to remain still and quiet.

She heard one of the men turn in her direction. An Old God must have been protecting her as a breeze faintly rustled all the dry branches around her. She hunkered down and breathed shallowly to help her stay as silent as she could.

“Shit Harry! Why is she so important anyway?” Paul grumbled.

Harry slashed at the outermost branches of the bushes that concealed her. He was standing in the spot where she had crawled through between the bushes, blotting out her trail. The scent of lavender pierced the air. It overrode the smell of her blood. Paul sneezed as the robust lavender scent fouled his sense of smell.

Harry was standing close enough to the girl that if the breeze had blown the other way, even he would have smelt her blood. “Because she saw us and the Boss’s son said he wants her alive, you idiot. Just fuckin’ find her,” Harry snarled and hit the bush again.

Paul sneezed again, “Crap Harry, now I can’t smell a bloody thing. Look, I know you hit her. She stumbled after the shot, and she cried out. I could find the scent of blood up until now. She must be hiding around here somewhere.”

A blast of lightning lit up the sky overhead. Less than a second later, the thunder cracked around them. The breeze had picked up, and it was now swirling around them, as if angry that the men were in the grove.

Paul crossed himself, “I hate these places. I got lost in one a couple of years ago. Bloody farmer chased me into it. They say these groves are protected by the Old Gods. Why in hell were her parents out here anyway?”

“Fool, everyone knows the Terrell’s have the old blood in their veins. It is said that if you bring your child to one of these groves, in the hour of their seventeenth birthday, they will be blessed. Old Baron Terrell hasn’t had much luck of late, thanks to us,” Harry chuckled.

“He was hoping that if she was blessed with one of the Gifts, he could convince someone to marry her and fill his coffers again. The boss has other plans for her, though,” he finished as he looked around and shuddered.

He then thought, ‘It’s bloody dark in here. Fuck I hate forests, give me nice a dry, warm Tavern any day.’

The wind increased in strength, and the smell of pending rain permeated the air over the smell of lavender. Paul looked to the sky and continued grumbling, “Why this Grove? It’s in the middle of bloody nowhere.”

The storm was worrying Harry too. It had intensified, and he hated getting wet. “It’s on their land and has been protected by their family for a long time. Paul, if Willow doesn’t die of her wound, she will be lucky to get back to civilisation if we don’t find her.”

Harry glanced around, “Buggar it, I’m not staying out here all bloody night. Let’s head back to the camp. We’ll have another look in the morning after the storm has gone. The rich bitch might be more cooperative after a night alone in the forest, and she might leave you some footprints for us to find,” Harry said.

Paul happily agreed. Not that he relished spending the night in the camp with dead bodies. He planned to get under the wagon, as at least it might be dryer there.

Willow shivered, as she heard the men head back in the direction she thought that she had come from.

Lightning flashed, and thunder cracked overhead.

A tear rolled down Willow’s cheek. She had been so excited when her parents had brought her here. Her mother was confident that she would be blessed and her father was so desperate, he went along with her. She had been in this Grove many times over the years.

Like the man Paul, she had been lost in this Grove when she was young. Yet, she had never been frightened of the Grove. It had always been a place of peace until now. She didn’t understand why the Old Gods let those men hurt her parents. More tears rolled down her cheeks, and she sobbed quietly.

Willow’s family had been growing nadack for centuries. It was a potent healing plant and highly prized. During the last couple of autumns, at least half of their crops had been destroyed just before harvest. Her father had to borrow heavily to get the last crop in the ground, and now half of it was gone too.

He believed someone was trying to ruin him, as the fires had been deliberately lit. They’d had a bumper crop, and her mother believed she was the cause because she was Gifted. Willow suspected her Gift was with plants. It seemed that any plant she touched flourished.

It was said that many of the chosen showed signs of their Gift and that the Gods enhanced the Gift if they chose to. Her mother had said she was also deft at healing, so Willow wasn’t sure what would happen this time.

She huddled in under the overhang created by the Old Oak’s burnt trunk. She felt as if it was protecting her. They should have found her. If she hadn’t stumbled against the bushes and then crawled through, she would never have found this hiding spot.

In the darkness, she placed her hand on the wound in her arm. If she hadn’t tripped over the root, she would surely have been shot in the back. She felt the wound wasn’t too deep. The bullet had sliced through her muscle and then exited. She would probably have a scar as a reminder.

The problem was it had bled profusely in her flight of terror, and it had led the man called Paul to her hiding place. She needed to staunch the wound. Willow ripped at the material binding the wound and felt it start to bleed again as her arm throbbed with pain.

Ignoring the pain as best as she could, she pulled up her loose flowing skirt. She untied the flap on the pouch that was tied to her thigh. She removed a length of bandage and some dried nadack leaves. She placed the leaves in the hand of her injured arm and gently crumbled them.

She worked some saliva around in her mouth and then spat into her palm and mixed it into the crumbs. She transferred the mixture to her good hand and slathered it onto the wound, hissing, as the two became one. It stung. With difficulty, she wrapped the clean bandage around the wound.

Exhausted she leant back onto the tree. She let the tears drip down her face as she mourned the loss of her beloved parents. As she cried, she felt her anger rise, like the wind that was now howling outside her meagre shelter. She vowed to the trees and the Old Ones that she would avenge her parent’s senseless deaths.

Hers was an old and once powerful family. They said the old blood ran deep in her family and she felt it rise within her, as she spoke the vow of vengeance. Willow had never wished harm to another in all her life. However, on this night she knew she would uphold this pledge.

She didn’t wish for any of the Gifts to be blessed upon her as her mother had instructed her. She didn’t wish for guidance, and she didn’t ask for help. She told the God of Justice that her family would be avenged.

The first drops of rain found they couldn’t reach the little brown ball hunkered in the protection of the old oak. The wind tried to blow the rain into soak her and make her shiver at its might. The old oak tree and the lavender bushes refused to allow a drop to fall on the one they protected.

It was a long cold and wet night as the Gods showed their displeasure at the desecration of their grove.

Asleep on the other side of the grove were two men.

They were snuggled inside the new down sleeping bags, in their new canvas tent. The younger man was curled up with his knees pulled up to his chest. The older was content on his back. They were unaware of what had transpired on the other side of the grove. The storm had woken the men, but neither was concerned, and they both drifted off to sleep again to dream their dreams as the rain fell.

Duke Tyshawn Arrondale was twenty-four years of age. He was on his second pilgrimage to the Grove. He’d been told that if you were blessed the first time, the second would cement the blessing. Tyshawn was better known as Ty. He had been blessed with the Gift of Truth-Seeking when he was seventeen.

Vincent had commiserated with Ty when he had told him that at times, it was more of a curse than a blessing. Ty had become a favourite of the King, and the King refused to have a business meeting with anyone outside his immediate council without his presence.

When the King had learned that Ty was due his seventh birthday since receiving his Gift, he told him to take his cousin Vincent and return to the Grove. Vincent had been eager to accompany his cousin on this trip, as he had turn seventeen, three days after Ty’s birthday.

They had originally planned to camp out for a week, but they had decided to stay an extra night. Ty had been enjoying the peace and quiet, and Vincent had felt that he needed it. Having to listen to dignitaries lie, even the white ones meant to flatter, gave Ty excruciating headaches.

Ty knew that many men at court avoided him, but he had no control over their guilty consciences. The women, on the other hand, seemed to seek him out. Apparently, he was fair game. The smart ones made no pretence as to why they wanted his favour. He was happy to let them try, but none had managed to snare him again since the first time.

However, Ty did treat women warily. He had learnt they were much better liars than most men were. When he was trapped into marriage the first time, the power of the Gift had been new to him. He was alone, young, stupid and very full of himself, as the new Duke of Arrondale.

Ty’s father, Henry, had died in a strange accident two weeks after his eighteenth birthday. His father had been visiting his sister and her husband to investigate an incident that had happened on their estate. His Uncle Iain and Aunt Annemarie lived about three hours ride from their own estate, and his father had decided to stay overnight.

During the night, the house was engulfed in flames. His cousin Prudence, who was about eleven months younger than him, had been burnt as a result of that fire. She had been rescued by her old Nanny Harriot. Her parents and his father hadn’t survived. Thinking about the fire and its cost to his family, still saddened him.

Ty hadn’t wanted to believe that the beautiful woman he married was only using him as a means to an end. He’d since surmised that he hadn’t been thinking real straight at the time. He had been more affected by the death of his family than he had realised.

He’d been an easy target for a sympathetic ear and a woman practised in the art of pleasing a man. She had been an expert at twisting the truth to hide her lies. He had been in lust with her from when he had first set eyes on her and ignored his inner mistrust.

Ty’s thoughts suddenly changed track. He hoped Bethany was behaving for her nanny. At four going on five, she was becoming very willful with no mother to guide her. She had become spoilt by the servants. Lately, a nanny barely lasted three months before giving up and leaving.

He still wasn’t sure, if she was his daughter or his cousin. He liked to believe she was his. In all honesty, he didn’t really care if he was the biological father or not, Bethany was his in his heart. The memory of finding his beautiful wife in bed with Vincent’s father, Albert, barely six months after his marriage still irked him.

He remembered hauling his uncle out of Maria’s bed and thrashing the living shit out of him. In the argument that followed he discovered that she had been his uncle’s paramour for many years. The guards had to pull him off his uncle before he killed the man.