The blade was sharp, sudden, and earth-shatteringly painful. Blood bubbled up and dribbled from my lips, strangling anything that might have sounded like a scream into nothing but a gurgle. My knees buckled, and the attacker behind me laughed hysterically into the dawn before Killian dove over me, pressing me to the ground with his body as a human shield. I could hear the frenzy, screaming, and pain, but everything was black Shadows and ice cold Darkness, and I couldn’t see a thing. Not through his power.
Eventually, the Shadows coiled and crawled back into Killian, opening the view to my attacker’s now headless body on the ground. Killian picked me up, and I slung one arm around his neck, the other failing to move at all. Just a few breaths from death, that’s what I was.
Pax tore open my shirt as Killian growled, “It’s mortal.”
Definitive. I was dying.
Pax ran a finger down my spine, his touch perfectly soft amidst the agony. Taking in all of me for the first time – ever. And the last.
My vision faded. Each breath shallower and shallower, the effort to take the next too great.
Their heads bowed to meet mine, forming a circle with me in the middle, and for a split second, I was sure the closeness was what accepting fate looks like. We’d all been there once before, circling me in the Spring, waiting for the air in my lungs to run out. Only this time our circle formed and the power pulsing through us doubled. I remember, because my Silvari soul was there, present and shouting for attention.
The earth hummed, and the trees, the air, the whole world vibrated.
And then I passed out.
“Beautiful, we’re here,” Pax whispers in my ear, drawing me away from the memories and the dreams.
All at once the sounds of a busy town crash into me, and I slam my eyes open.
We’re moving slowly down the street, cobblestones under the horses’ hooves, neatly cared for gardens lining either side of the road. The buildings are two and three stories high, with pretty timber trims around glass windows and decorative posts on the verandas. For something on the soot side of the border, it’s all very pretty.
“Where’s my cloak?” I whisper.
My gaze scans over smiling women in functional dresses, blues and purples and greens with white aprons over the top, kids with ribbons in their hair, and men in workwear or suits. Carrying baskets or parcels or folders of papers. Talking, smiling, or rushing. So much is happening that I can barely track it all.
Even as I marvel I slip myself closer to Pax’s chest.
“Why?” he asks.
The air is cooling, night fast approaching, and everyone is in long sleeves with shawls or coats to fight off the heavy winter, but that’s not why I need my cloak. We didn’t have this problem in Drayden because we arrived in the middle of the night and left minutes later.
But here, in broad daylight… “It’s only been a few weeks. Lord Martin will have a price on my head.”
Thane growls, his rumble soothing as it vibrates through me.
“Bull,” he snarls before Pax’s voice takes over.
“That man will never touch you.”
“I know you think you’re invincible, but we don’t need the trouble. If I wear my cloak, no one will –”
“We,” Thane begins, his voice distinctly deeper and more gravelly, “eliminated the creature.”
I stiffen, straightening as much as I can with the pain running down my back and a saddle between my legs.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Pax guides the horses to a railing outside an inn and slips from the saddle behind me. I don’t reject his help down, his arms moving softly over me as he guides me to my shaky feet, but I can’t relax either.
“Inside,” he suggests, pointing at the door but not rushing to move me there.
And maybe because he’s talking softly and not commanding, or because I’m concentrating on keeping myself upright, I obey.
“Can you walk?”
Walk? Not sure. The most walking I’ve done since being injured is from the horse to a tree so I can pee, and back again. Thank every god in existence that I’ve not needed help to squat behind a tree. Mortifying doesn’t even begin to describe how I’d feel if I needed Pax to help steady me and bear witness.
Our relationship isn’t at that level of comfort yet.
The inn involves climbing stairs up to the veranda, then stairs up to the rooms – two sets of them if they give us third-story accommodation. But I nod, gripping the stirrup leather for balance as Pax lets go of me to slip a coin purse from his saddlebag, then hesitates. Making it clear he doesn’t want to let me out of his sight right now.
Just get it over with, I order myself, taking shaky steps and gritting my teeth against the rawness in my calves. He moves in behind me, his hand resting lightly on the small of my back, probably feeling for any hint that my muscles aren’t going to get the job done.
“I should just carry you,” he murmurs.
“No, I want to stretch my legs, and I need to move around. Killian said the more I stay still, the more the muscles will cramp up.” And honestly, in this busy street, being carried is just going to stand out.
He leans in close, not to whisper a secret but to make sure he has my attention before saying, “Take your time.”
I do, my muscles warming up with each step. When we reach the top, he steps around me, putting his shoulder to one of the inn’s double doors to open it. Anyone would be a fool not to notice the way he straightens, his gaze sharpening as he inspects the room before I’ve had a chance to enter it. I doubt there’s a dark corner he doesn’t look into or an entry point he doesn’t assess. He may not be worried about Lord Martin spotting me, but he’s clearly still got threat, threat, threat on his mind.
The door swings closed behind us, and his gaze meets mine with a look that says, stay behind me.
I offer him one in return that he hopefully translates to, where else would I be? But I’d be equally happy with, no shit.
He nods once then steps in front of me, doing his best to hide his bristling and replace it with his princely air of importance. He’s missing his brothers, the team he usually has at his back – and he’s not the only one.
Where are they now? Safe, I hope.
No, not just hope. They have to be safe.
I thumb the smooth glass on my wrist, aware of a deep need inside me to catch up with the Elite warriors I’m tethered to. Speed, skill, technique, knowledge, they’re all drastically lacking. But none of that is going to happen while my back burns with every step.
We’re technically on the edge of town, with the wide dead expanse of land that stretches toward Drayden, then all of the way to the manor and the Enchanted Forest, just out of sight behind us. So it surprises the crap out of me to look up at the windows behind the bar and see green.
Green grass. Pastures and small, plump cattle with black and white coats, and far off rolling hills.
It’s so chuckin’ pretty.
“Aye, one room. I’ve plenty of those,” the guy behind the bar says, which goes to show how entranced I was with the view that I missed the beginning of their conversation. Pax has deliberately put himself between me and the guy behind the bar, and I don’t have the energy to crane my neck and watch their transaction when the view outside is so amazing. “We’ve rooms upstairs, but we have contracts for women renting by the hour –” The guy stops short when Pax places a gold coin down.