The Trap Springs
The travel from Blackthorn Manor ballroom to abandoned chapel consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
# Chapter 5: The Trap Springs
The candle guttered. The silk rustled. And Iris knew, with a cold certainty, that there was no going back from this moment.
The man who had spoken those words remained half-swallowed by the shadows near the window, a figure cut from plain wool and anonymity. His face was unremarkable—a nose that had been reset poorly, eyes the colour of slate, a scar that bisected his left eyebrow and pulled the skin tight. He held no weapon that Iris could see, but his stance—weight balanced, hands loose at his sides—suggested he had no need of one.
Gideon had not moved from behind the desk. His fingers rested on the edge of the leather-bound ledger, motionless. The clock on the mantel ticked three full seconds before he spoke.
“You will explain yourself.”
The man’s mouth curved, just slightly. “I am here on behalf of Lord Blackthorn, Your Grace. He extends an invitation. The old chapel on the north moor. He wishes to discuss the future of the Voss holdings—and the boy’s place in them.”
The words landed in Iris’s chest like stones dropped into deep water. The boy. They had taken Liam. While she had been standing in this room, watching this man enter, reading the wrong threat in his posture, they had taken her son.
“He is unharmed,” the man added, as though offering a kindness. “For now. Lord Blackthorn expects you alone. One hour before midnight. If anyone accompanies you—if a single groom rides within a mile of the chapel—the boy dies.”
Gideon’s hand shifted on the ledger. Not a clench, not a tremor—just a deliberate movement, closing the book with a soft thud. The sound cut through the room like a period at the end of a sentence.
“Tell your master this,” Gideon said. “If Liam is harmed, I will not negotiate. I will not accept terms. I will burn Blackthorn Hall to its foundation and sow the earth with salt.”
The man held his gaze for the space of three breaths, then inclined his head and withdrew. The door closed. His boots receded down the corridor, and then there was only the ticking of the clock and the whisper of the dying candle.
Iris crossed the room before she knew she had moved. “We have to go. Now.”
Gideon had already pulled the bell rope. The chime was still fading when Jasper appeared in the doorway, his coat half-buttoned, a pistol tucked into his belt. His eyes swept the room in a single practiced arc—Iris, Gideon, the empty corridor beyond—and his expression hardened.
“They’ve taken Liam,” Gideon said. “Blackthorn. The chapel on the north moor. He wants me to come alone.”
Jasper’s chin dipped once. “Then we don’t come alone. I’ll take Forrester, Hale, and Dunn. All former military. We circle wide from the east, approach through the tree line.”
“I’m going.”
Both men turned. Iris stood with her hands clasped in front of her, pressing them together to still the trembling. Her voice came out steadier than she felt.
“He is my son. I have spent eight years keeping him safe. I will not sit in this house while strangers decide his fate.”
Jasper opened his mouth, but Gideon spoke first. “You stay behind me. You do not enter the chapel until I give the signal. If the situation turns, you do not argue—you run.”
She met his eyes. “I understand.”
He held her gaze a moment longer, reading something in her face that she could not name. Then he turned to Jasper. “Bring the horses. And the sword from the study—my father’s blade.”
—
The ride across the moor took forty-seven minutes by the clock in Iris’s mind. She counted every one of them in the rhythm of her horse’s hooves, in the gusts of wind that tore at her hood, in the dark shape of Jasper’s back ahead of her.
The sky had turned the colour of bruised iron. Rain began to fall in thin, slanting sheets, and the heath stretched out on either side, empty and indifferent. There was nowhere to hide on this land, and nothing to soften the fall.
The chapel appeared as a black silhouette against the grey, a stone skeleton with a collapsed bell tower and a roof that had fallen in decades ago. The windows were dark sockets. The door hung at an angle, one hinge torn loose, swinging slightly in the wind.
Jasper signalled a halt at the tree line. He raised a spyglass, scanning the ruin with methodical precision, counting in a low murmur. “Two men at the front entrance. One on the north wall, behind the rubble pile. Possibly two more inside—I can’t confirm through the roof gap.”
Gideon dismounted and handed the reins to Dunn. “Give us thirty minutes. If we’re not out by then, ride for the constable in Harlow.”
Iris slid from her horse before anyone could assist her. Her boots sank into the wet grass, and she moved to Gideon’s side, keeping her voice low. “I can draw the men outside. They won’t see a woman as a threat—it will give you a clear approach.”
Gideon’s hand found her arm, his grip firm but not painful. “You wait. That is the condition.”
She did not argue. But she did not promise.
They moved through the graveyard in a low crouch, using the tilted headstones and overgrown yew trees for cover. Jasper broke left, circling toward the north wall, his pistol drawn and held low. Gideon led Iris to a gap in the eastern side of the chapel, where a fallen beam had created a narrow passage through the stone.
The interior of the chapel was a cavern of shadows. The brazier at the far end cast a pool of orange light that flickered across broken pews and crumbling pillars, throwing long, dancing shapes across the walls. The air smelled of damp stone, wood smoke, and something else—something metallic that Iris did not want to name.
And there, at the altar, was Liam.
He was bound to a wooden chair, his wrists tied behind his back, his ankles lashed to the legs with rough hemp rope. His face was pale, and there was a dark bruise forming along his cheekbone, but his eyes were dry. When he saw his mother step through the gap, his chin lifted. He did not call out. He had learned, in eight years of hiding, when to be silent.
Behind him stood Grant Blackthorn, a pistol in his hand, its muzzle aimed casually at the floor. He was a broad man with silver hair and the kind of smile that came from years of wielding power without consequence. At his side stood Victor, the heir, younger but wearing the same expression of entitled cruelty.
Grant’s smile widened when Gideon stepped into the light of the brazier. “Your Grace. I confess, I doubted you would come. I thought perhaps the boy meant less to you than the title.”
Gideon did not respond. He drew his sword, the blade sliding from the scabbard with a sound like silk over steel. He set the scabbard on a fallen pew and advanced, his boots crunching on broken stone.
“The boy is innocent,” Gideon said. “Let him go. This is between you and me.”
Grant laughed, a dry sound that echoed off the stone walls. “Between you and me? You think this is personal? No, Duke. This is arithmetic. Your family has held the North Riding seat for four generations. My family has held nothing but debts and grudges. I am simply correcting the balance.”
Victor stepped forward and grabbed Liam by the collar, hauling him to his feet. The boy stumbled, his bound ankles catching, but Victor held him upright, one hand twisted in the fabric of his shirt. Liam’s eyes found Iris in the shadows, and she saw him press his lips together, holding back a sound.
Iris pressed herself against the cold stone of the pillar, her hands flat against the surface, her breath held in her chest. She counted the distance between herself and her son. Fifteen paces. Open ground. No cover. The pistol in Grant’s hand could cover that distance in half a second.
“Here is how this will proceed,” Grant said, raising the pistol so that it rested casually in the direction of Liam’s head. “You will sign a document—I have it here—renouncing your title, your lands, and your seat in Parliament in favour of my family. Then you will leave this county and never return. If you refuse, or if you attempt to resile, the boy dies. If you go to the authorities, the boy dies. If you so much as look at me with hatred, the boy dies.”
He pulled back the hammer. The click was sharp and final in the silence.
Gideon stood motionless, the sword held low, his weight balanced on the balls of his feet. His eyes moved—from Grant’s face to the pistol, to the position of Victor’s hands on Liam’s collar, to the shadows where the other Blackthorn men waited in the darkness. He was not hesitating. He was calculating. Iris could see it in the set of his shoulders, the controlled stillness of his breathing.
She understood, in that moment, that he was not going to sign anything.
He was going to fight.
And she saw, with a clarity that cut through the fear, that she needed to be where he could see her. She needed to be a variable he could account for—not a liability, not a distraction. She stepped out from behind the pillar, into the edge of the firelight.
Victor saw her first. His head snapped toward her, his hand tightening on Liam’s collar. “Father.”
Grant turned, the pistol shifting with him, and his smile faltered. “The village woman. I should have known you would follow. Sentimental attachments—they are always the easiest to exploit.”
Iris did not look at him. She looked at Liam. “Close your eyes, my love.”
The boy did not question her. He squeezed his eyes shut.
And Gideon moved.
He crossed the distance in three strides, the sword cutting a silver arc through the firelight. Grant’s pistol came up, but Gideon was already inside the line of fire, the blade turning in his grip. The flat of the sword struck Grant’s wrist with a crack of bone against steel, and the pistol clattered to the stone floor.
Victor released Liam and reached for his own weapon, but Jasper was already emerging from the shadows behind him, the butt of his pistol connecting with the base of Victor’s skull. The younger Blackthorn crumpled without a sound.
The other men in the chapel moved—shapes in the darkness—but Gideon had already turned, the sword raised, the blade catching the firelight as he positioned himself between Liam and the threat.
Grant Blackthorn cradled his broken wrist, his face twisted with pain and fury. “You fool. You think this ends here? You think killing me will save your bloodline? There are others who know what the boy is. Others who will—”
“Silence.” Gideon’s voice cut through the chapel like a blade. He did not look at Grant. He looked at Liam, who had opened his eyes and was watching his father with an expression Iris had never seen before—not fear, not confusion, but something like recognition.
Iris crossed the distance to her son in four steps. She dropped to her knees and worked at the ropes binding his wrists, her fingers finding the knots, pulling them loose with the desperate efficiency of a mother.
Liam’s hands came free, and he threw his arms around her neck.
The brazier crackled. The rain whispered through the open roof. And Gideon Voss stood over Grant Blackthorn, the sword still raised, the firelight casting his shadow long across the stone floor.
“Let my son go, or I will end this bloodline here and now.”