"General!"
Lyra emerged from her tent, the sudden call cutting through the night's silence. Her eyes adjusted to the dim moonlight, finding her lieutenant and another soldier, Ava, standing grim-faced. "Shawn, what's wrong?"
Shawn's jaw was set tight. "The girl has been kidnapped." He hesitated for a moment, his gaze meeting hers, before the confession finally came. "I had her under surveillance..."
Lyra looked at Ava, remembering this was the soldier Shawn had assigned as a guard for Selene. Her gaze turned fiercer at Shawn's admission, but she held her tongue.
"General, the captor is one of our own soldiers," Ava said, her voice strained.
"The bastard stole a horse and several weapons," Shawn added. "He was headed east."
A cold, hard knot formed in Lyra's stomach. Her fear, which she had been suppressing for days, now had a name. "I wonder what the purpose of kidnapping her could be," Shawn mused aloud, his curiosity overriding his usual caution.
Lyra's response was sharp and immediate. "Fetch me my horse!" she ordered the soldier.
"Yes, General."
"Wait, don't alarm the others," she said, her voice low and dangerous.
"Should I get one more soldier, General?" the soldier asked.
"No, I'll go alone."
"We'll chase them together," Shawn said, his voice firm. His gaze held no trace of his previous suspicion, only a renewed loyalty.
A Desperate Deal
A few hours into the unforgiving journey, Selene and her captor were forced to a halt. Four scouts from the enemy Valerian army blocked their path.
"Tsk, let me through," Selene's captor snapped, trying to rush past them. "I've got nothing to do with the war now."
The Valerian soldiers laughed, one of them striking a menacing pose. "Our army was heavily damaged by your people. You think you can just walk away?"
"Your head is a small consolation for the thousands your fellow soldiers killed!" another soldier roared.
The captor's face went pale. He knew a beheading was a certainty, a swift and brutal end for a deserter. In a desperate gambit, he blurted out, "Wait! This girl, she has magic! A healing ability!"
The soldiers' laughter roared again, a harsh, mocking sound. "What a lousy excuse! Do you think we're that gullible?"
"It's the truth," the captive insisted, his voice desperate. "I saw it myself. She brought a man back from the brink of death."
"How convenient," a soldier sneered, his hand on the hilt of his sword. "You think we're going to fall for that?"
"No, you don't understand," the captor said, his voice rising in panic. "It's not a trick. It's a miracle! She has the power to... to mend the broken and breathe life back into the dying."
The soldiers' laughter roared again, a harsh, mocking sound. "What a lousy excuse! Do you think we're that gullible? Of course you'll tell tall tales just to get away."
The captor's face was a mask of terror. "It's the truth," he insisted, his voice a desperate, frantic plea. "I saw it myself. I swear it on my mother's grave. She brought a man back, a man who was already dead and cold."
The soldier with the scarred cheek, whose name was Joric, watched him closely. There was something in the man's panic that didn't feel like a lie. A man running from the enemy with a prisoner wasn't an uncommon sight, but a man so visibly terrified of an almost certain death that he would invent such a fantastical story? It was a flimsy excuse, but the sheer desperation in his eyes was authentic. Joric held up a hand to silence his men.
"Wait," he said, his voice low and serious. He looked at Selene, her bound wrists and the defiant set of her jaw. "Look at him. He's not just scared, he's shaking. Maybe we should reconsider. Let's take them to the captain."
Joric dismounted and approached Selene, his eyes narrowed with a mix of suspicion and intrigue.
"Is it true?" Joric asked, his gaze fixed on her. "Do you have the power he speaks of?"
Selene remained silent, her mind racing. This was her chance. Her one, desperate chance to escape this man, to turn the tables on him. She met Joric's gaze, her eyes unwavering.
"If I had such a power," she said, her voice steady despite the trembling in her hands, "why would I be bound and taken like a prize?"
Joric's eyes flickered to the rope around her wrists, and then back to the captor. "Why is she bound?" he demanded.
"She... she tried to escape!" the captor stammered, his voice cracking with desperation.
Selene shook her head, she said trying to be convincing. "He's confused. He thinks he saw something that didn't really happen." She turned her gaze back to Joric, letting the silence hang heavy between them.
Joric's eyes narrowed, his gaze
flicking between Selene and the now-bound captor. He saw the pure, unadulterated terror in the man's eyes, but he also saw the cool, calculated confidence in hers. It was a strange contradiction; one he couldn't quite reconcile.
"I know what I saw," the captor insisted, his voice rising in panic. "Besides, why would the General assign someone to guard you?" He remembered seeing a soldier bring her to the medical tent several times. "She's protected, a valuable asset!"
Joric's mind raced. He had been told to be on the lookout for a special kind of prisoner, a person of interest who could turn the tide of the war. "The General... Now this changes things," he muttered, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Selene. Even if the captor's story of magic held no truth, the simple fact that the General of Oakhart had assigned a guard to her spoke volumes. Her value was undeniable, a prize worth more than any common soldier. She wasn't just a prisoner; she was a key, Their army was battered and defeated, but this was a bargaining chip that could alter the course of the war. They had lost the battle, but with Selene, they might just win the war.