20. Run Into the Night
20
RUN INTO THE NIGHT
*Blanca*
“Hand me the key, Kieran,” I tell him as I see guards coming closer to where he’s standing on the other side of the gate I just squeezed through. Right now, the guards are preoccupied, fighting the birds I’m sending to distract them. But it won’t take long before the birds get scared and fly off or the soldiers get the upper hand. If he is actually coming with me, which I still can’t believe, then he’d better get his ass over here soon.
But he can hardly unlock the gate in his wolf form, so he needs to hand me the key.
“Give it to me,” I whisper to him.
Kieran stares at me for a long moment before shaking his wolf head and dropping the key–on his side of the gate. I think this means he’s not coming with me, and if I don’t hurry up and run, maybe he’ll change his mind altogether and work with the guards to get me back inside the castle. I take a few steps backward.
In a blink, Kieran shifts into his human form. He’s standing there naked in front of me. Flashes of images from that night we shared together come back to me, and I have to pull my eyes away. Even though it’s quickly becoming a reality to me that Kieran can’t be my brother, old habits die hard, and I avert my eyes as he picks up the key, unlocks the gate, and steps through, locking it behind him. Then, he drops the key into my backpack. “Let’s go.”
He doesn’t wait for me. Instead, he takes off running, leaps into the air, and shifts back into his wolf. I want to do the same, but I have the backpack. I take a few rushed steps away from the gate, hearing shouts from the guards as I do so. When I’m about ten yards away, I drop the backpack, undress, shove my clothes into the bag, shift, and slide it on. Then, I take off sprinting as my wolf, reeling in the feel of the air brushing through my fur. I see Kieran up ahead of me, even though it’s dark, and the moon isn’t much more than a sliver these days. Still, I can see his white fur in the darkness, and I push myself until I’ve caught up to him.
He turns his head slightly, probably surprised that I am this fast, but I think I see a smile as he bounds off even faster, and I have to kick it into another gear to be able to keep up.
I want to run as fast as I can to get away from the possibility of the soldiers following us. I’m certain they will once they realize the prince has also left the castle. They may assume I somehow kidnapped him. Best case scenario, Kieran can convince them that he’s pursuing me. Then, maybe they’ll back off, and if he does get caught, he can say that he was hunting me down.
Seeing how fast he is, how agilely he can slip between trees and over fallen branches, I’m glad he’s not tailing me now. I’m not sure about any of the fumbling, bumbling guards we left back there, but I don’t think any of them could be as fast as Kieran. He’s graceful when he runs, too. He glides through the air, his light-colored fur falling softly around him with each descent.
We rush on through the night. After about an hour, I begin to think there’s no way we’ll be caught from behind. Those guards would’ve caught us by now if they would’ve been able to fight off the birds long enough to slip out. But I’m still concerned. There are other groups of guards stationed in various locations throughout the kingdom. They have a chain of mind-link relayers who can easily contact anybody at any time and then move it. So it’s possible another group of soldiers will intercept us before we can get to Escuro.
My only hope is that Kieran is tapped into that channel and that they think they can trust him enough to prevent them from leaving him out of the messages. If he knows where they’re coming from, maybe he can find us a path that goes around or behind them.
It’s really our only chance of getting out of here.
I have to wonder if I ever would’ve been able to even get through the gate without him. I think I would have, but they probably would’ve caught me by now.
I want to trust him. I really do. Watching him fly through the air with every step of his majestic wolf makes me think we could be friends one day. Maybe once we figure out what’s going on to make it seem like the impossible is possible, we can even discuss what happened between us again.
But in the back of my mind, I keep thinking about the brute who used to shout at me, call me names, and occasionally even hurt me.
What if he’s doing this for some ulterior reason I am not privy to, and he doesn't actually want to help me at all?
I hate to even think that, but it’s not like Kieran Solberg has ever done anything to help me for even one day in his life, and I doubt he’s helped very many other people either. Charity is often left to the Luna and her wards, and since his mother isn’t very giving, there’s not a lot of it in Dun’s Crossing.
The Crown Prince would be near the bottom of the list when it comes to generous individuals.
So it’s nearly impossible for me to accept that he’s here to help me. When he shifts directions and starts running away from the bright star we’ve been following and more to what I believe is the east, it makes me nervous.
Could he be taking me to someone who’s going to punish me for what happened with him during the Haze?
If there’s one thing about the Solbergs I do know it’s that they often tend to mete out their punishments themselves.
I drag myself forward, despite questioning his motives, and press on. My lungs are beginning to burn. My back legs feel heavy, and my heart is thumping in my chest.
But I need to do this. Maybe the Crown Prince could make something up and go back to how things were before he followed me out into the night, but for me, there’s no going back.
I can never go back.
Running to the east brings us into an obstacle of the sort I’ve not given too much thought to. Up ahead, even though it’s dark, I can see the outline of several high mountains coming into view. Kieran slows his pace considerably as both of us stare ahead at them. He turns his head to look at me and makes a face I cannot read. Then, seeing that I don’t understand, he lets out a little annoyed grunt and then gestures for me to follow him.
I continue to do what I’ve been doing for the past several hours and stick tight to his heels as he picks his way through the rocks. We are going up now, but we are also going back toward the north a bit, so the degree of ascent isn’t that noticeable.
Kieran is keeping himself close to the base of the mountain. I’m beginning to wonder if he intends to just walk along their bases until we can head back due north, but then he makes another sound, like he’s surprised, or maybe happy, and pushes his large form between two bushes.
I’m confused as it seems the bushes swallow him whole, but I follow, and when I squeeze through the bushes, I step inside a massive space and look up into the mouth of a cave.
Awestruck, I stare at the darkness around me. It’s hard to see anything at all, even after my wolf-eyes adjust. But then, when I turn my head to where I’m expecting to see a large white wolf, I only see icy blue eyes.
Kieran is in his human form again. It’s hard for me to see anything at all, but he tugs at the backpack, and I shimmy out of it. He pulls out his clothes and then tosses the bag back to me. I pick it up with my teeth and move away from him before shifting and getting dressed myself.
“Where are we?” I finally ask him, stepping back over.
Kieran lowers himself to the ground, shaking his head. He tugs up the sleeves of his shirt so that they’re almost to his elbows and says, “Man, do I have a few things to tell you.”