Rebel's Cage (Book 4) Read Free

the Prophecy had said. He would have destroyed her. Even though he loved her.
    The voice that came to him was not his own. Nor hers. This was a man he’d left behind too many years ago.
    ‘You are strong, Robert Douglas. Very strong. Your will is unbroken. But you are also weak. You hesitate. You will never win unless you can learn to be ruthless.’
    Before him stood David Maclean, old, white-haired, looking too much like his son, Micah – the man Robert had once considered his closest friend. The father now shook his head, disparaging as always, determined to prove that Robert had always been a traitor to his people.
    ‘You are weak, Douglas. See, even now you hesitate. The power sits within you. Strike her down now and rid this country of her evil. He has said you must give her up to beat him. Fulfil your destiny as it is written in your heart and destroy her now.’
    He felt a trickle of something warm flow over his eye, then saw the red blood as it trailed from a wound on his forehead. He could barely see her now, even as she stood close to him, her hand upon his arm, concern in her gaze.
    ‘I never loved you, Robert. How could you think otherwise? How could I love a man with such darkness inside him?’
    ‘Strike her down now, Douglas, while you can!’
    And voices rose along with this chant, loud, surroundinghim, coming from the armies in the field, their swords raised and glinting in the cold grey sky. The heavens wept, as he wished he could.
    The chant became deafening as his knees gave way beneath him, his sword falling from fingers already dying. He’d wanted this to end, and now it was ending. Only the chanting didn’t stop. Instead, it changed pitch, quieted, became a plea. A cry. A call for—
    ‘Help! Help me!’
    Robert wrenched himself from sleep, scrambling out of his snow shelter, eyes blinking back the bright morning light. For a moment, he recognised nothing, then the cry came again and he stumbled forward, the old wound in his side screaming protest. He staggered and slipped down the hill, reaching out for any hand-hold, keeping track of the faint voice, tiny, desperate and young.
    He tripped and rolled, coming to a stop on flat ground. A horse, choked and panting, eyed him warily, reins dangling against cracked ice. Before him, stretched out into the distance, was a lake bound in winter, an ice-hole black on its surface out of which thrashed limbs even now losing their last strength.
    Robert moved, so swiftly, the horse had no time to react. He wrapped the reins around his ankle, then knelt on the ice, stretching out on his stomach to reach the ice hole. He called out, urging, reassuring, calming. He could hear the ice creak and groan beneath him, feel it shifting, cracking further. If he didn’t get the child to safety soon, they’d both be dead.
    He pushed further, until his hands reached water, grasping hold of an arm mid-flail. The cold sent shock waves through him and the arms slipped from his grip. He came forward another inch and the ice cracked open beneath his chest. But it was enough to get hold of the boy with both hands, grab his clothing and pull. Chunks of ice splashed up into his face, the water blinded him and the stabbing pain in his side sucked the breath from his body, but he didn’t let go. He dragged the boy clear of the water, soaking himself in the process, using his legs to inch them back towards the bank, calling out to the horse to back up, to help pull them both to safety.
    The boy was still and silent now as Robert hurried the last few feet off the ice. Even as he dragged the frozen body towards the trees, he was already rubbing limbs, stripping off sodden clothing, pulling his own cloak free to wrap around the boy. He set him down carefully, then immediately set to work, kicking snow aside to find damp scrappy wood he could use for a fire. He didn’t care what it looked like, it just needed to be warm. He used his powers to set it alight, turning it into a blaze