He was not wrong to wait.

For Jellan heard Marian and Daemon come back, still calling for him, and he held his breath, and his magical cloak, as they entered the forest.

Marian had magic and Daemon was…whatever Daemon was.

They might sense him. Even though he was concealing his magic as well, they might sense his power and that he was using it.

Not only sense him and find him.

But also realize he had tried to escape.

He held his breath as they came into view around the end of the mound and Jellan sat very still atop his horse. As such, he prayed to every god he knew that he would remain undiscovered.

“Where the fuck is that arsehole?” Marian groused as their horse picked its way through the trees not thirty feet away from him.

“Can you not use your magic to track him?” Daemon asked.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Marian snapped.

It absolutely did.

Or it could, if you knew how to do it.

Jellan stared as they wandered, looking this way and that.

She did not only not know how to read the veil.

She did not have a very good understanding of her power.

By the gods, he wished he’d known that before.

But in the now, he relaxed, kept himself cloaked and felt the sneer hit his lips as they rode past him.

His sneer faltered when he saw, to his astonishment, that it appeared Daemon had cuts that were bleeding through his shirt at his forearms and one along his neck.

Marian had none.

The lash of a highwayman.

Ever the chevalier, he would never strike out at a woman.

However, he would a man.

But…

Daemon let it get to that?

And…

Daemon bled?

He turned in his saddle to watch them ramble away, but that was all he did, and he remained where his was, how he was, for a good long time.

After that, he closed his eyes, cast his senses, and when he did not feel them near his vicinity, he cast his senses to something else.

Remaining masked, he clicked his teeth, touched his heels to his now-beloved steed, for the animal had served him well, and started to amble through the forest, following where his perceptions told him to go.

And he was surprised it did not lead him back to the road where they were confronted.

It led him deep into the forest.

It was a long ride, in the opposite direction he should be taking, but he eventually saw the merrily roaring campfire.

He cautiously approached it.