4. Sabine
Chapter 4
Sabine
I don’t dare look back.
Chest heaving, I race through the maze of towering trees, throwing glances upward in hopes of seeing the sun through the thick mist. My boots crush a crop of glowing orange mushrooms that release a stench like rotting corpses. As I duck under a low pine branch, a vine falls on my shoulder, slithering with a mind of its own.
I clap my hand over my mouth to muffle my shriek as I fight to free myself from the vine and plunge deeper into the woods. I run blindly, as hard as I can, until my thighs burn. When I can’t run another step, I drop to my stomach behind a copse of waist-high ferns that I hope will conceal me.
I’m no fool—I’ve seen how fast Iyre can move. She’s practically godkissed with speed. Trying to outpace her in a foreign land would be a mistake.
All I can do is hide.
My breath strains against my ribs. My shoulder-length hair is a mess, filled with tangled thorns. My arms are covered in scratches and welts. The ground beneath me is unnaturally cold, so cold the mist around me leaves the ferns frost-tipped.
Closing my eyes, I listen, wishing I had Basten’s senses.
Leaves rustle in the steady wind. An insect trills overhead. At any second, I fear footsteps approaching.
The last thing I expect is for a curious voice to chirp, Whatcha doing, girlie?
I flinch, swallowing a yelp, and go tense in case I need to fight. But when I look to my left, a friendly face with a lolling tongue greets me.
My lips part, but I only sputter for words.
The creature is the size and shape of a fox, with a fox’s thin lupine face and sly black eyes, except that this one’s feet don’t touch the ground. Its glossy silver-blue fur floats like it’s swimming, its silver-clawed paws treading the air.
You’re a cloudfox , I say in surprise.
It paws the air to float up higher, nose sniffing, tilting its head this way and that to examine me. Its head jerks sharply to the right, silver ears swiveling toward a sound I can’t hear.
Girlie is being hunted , it says. Follow me!
Before I can utter another thought, the creature bounds off through the trees. Its paws barely skim the ground as it does its floaty-swimmy movements, gracefully arcing around vines and ducking under branches.
Wait! I cry, frozen in a moment of indecision. Hiding still seems like the best course of action.
But the cloudfox is nearly out of view…
I curse and shove to my feet. In the next breath, I’m racing after it.
There’s no hiding my sound now. My boots are loud on the fallen leaves. Branches snap as I rush to keep the cloudfox in sight ahead of me. Its silver-blue color is so striking amid the shadows that it’s easy to spot as it effortlessly bounds deeper into the woods.
Wait! I cry out. Please, take me south! To the border wall!
Girlie, follow me! it answers in a sing-song voice.
A frustrated huff slips out of my mouth, but I duck under a branch and go after the cloudfox. My feet ache, my thighs burn, and a stitch in my side has me clutching at my ribcage.
Not far now! it chirps with a lupine laugh.
I muster my strength and push myself harder over the steep, rocky terrain. It’s a scramble for me, but the cloudfox merely floats on the updraft.
If I can get to the border wall, I know I can find a way across it. Basten and Rian discovered a tunnel, and if there’s one, there’s probably more.
As I scramble up an outcropping, a brief ray of sun breaks through the mist to warm my face.
I pause to catch my breath, and my thoughts turn to Basten. My hand drifts to the twine ring on my left fourth finger.
Where is Basten now? Is he safe? Does he remember anything about me? For so long, he’s been the one looking out for me. He’s been there for me when I didn’t even know I needed someone. Sheltering me. Watching over me.
The truth is, the only home I’ve ever had is with Basten. And now? Has he forgotten me completely? If I have to turn the world upside down to right that crime, I will.
Almost there! The cloudfox floats backward on its skipping paws to encourage me. Just ahead! Hurry, hurry!
My fingernails are broken and bloody by the time I heave myself over the outcropping, drag myself onto my knees, and then stagger to my feet. The cloudfox circles me, yipping at my heels in encouragement.
I don’t know how much longer I can go on.
My muscles are growing slack.
My vision begins to blur.
The trees sway around me in a way where I can’t tell if it’s in my head or if they’re actually moving in a sentient way. The cloudfox’s faintly reflective fur is my beacon, the only thing I cling to.
Just keep going…
The next step takes me out of the trees.
I’m in a clearing. The smell of roasted meats and campfire smoke hit my nostrils. Indistinct voices and a nearby blacksmith’s hammer pound against my ears. Ahead, a moss-covered, thirty-foot-high stone wall runs as far as I can see in each direction.
The border wall.
Reeling and weak, I take in canvas tents painted indigo with a starburst emblem, and my heart surges again—this time in fear. I’ve strode into an army encampment that flanks the border wall.
A Volkish encampment.
The cloudfox winds between my feet, grinning up at me with a cruel smile that reveals its sharp silver canines.
Silly girlie!
Anger tears through me like an avalanche, pushing past my exhaustion until I’m lunging toward the floating creature. “You deceitful thing! You tricked me!”
Surprised soldiers rise to their feet from around a nearby campfire, taking me in warily. A few of them carry axes strapped to their backs. Others have rows of small knives belted to their leather breastplates. From somewhere beyond the tents, a roar that belongs to no animal I’ve ever encountered shakes the ground.
Whatever it is, it’s big .
I sink into a crouch to steady myself. My adrenaline surges out of control. Every voice in my head tells me to run .
But my body can’t keep going. I’m worn out as a dish rag.
I take a single step backward, and the circle of tents seems to spiral as I sway on my heels.
The soldiers around the campfire make no move to attack me, but two women in indigo cloaks emerge from a tent and silently move behind me, cutting off any retreat into the woods.
I stumble, on the verge of panic.
“Little princess,” a voice sneers as Iyre steps out from behind one of the tents, her glowing fey lines reminding me of the sentient vines, the cloudfox, and all the other deceitful magic in this cursed kingdom. “How kind of you to run exactly where I was going to bring you anyway.”
From behind her, the cloudfox gives a lupine snicker.
I narrow my eyes as rage burns through me.
I had thought there was no strength left in my bones. That I was one breath away from crumpling like a leaf. That my beautiful future with Basten might be closed off forever when Iyre sealed the fae portal.
But I underestimated my hatred for the gods.
“You.” I jab a finger at the cloudfox. “You and I aren’t finished.” Then, I square up to Iyre, my real enemy, and lift my chin. “You think you rule this land? You think you rule me ?”
“Well, yes .” She stands before me with her hands primly folded in a farce of modesty, the exact pose from the statue of Immortal Iyre back at the convent.
In a flash, I’m back within those high stone walls.
My hands are blistered and bleeding from scrubbing the Sisters’ floors for hours on end. Finally, I reach the end of the hallway where an alcove holds that damnable statue. The vines have been growing like crazy since I arrived—no matter how many times I pull them off, they grow back within days.
“Immortal Iyre showers the righteous with good fortune,” Mother White’s grating voice drones from behind me as her boots stop an inch from my scouring brush. She adjusts a candle set in the statue’s clasped hands. “Because we worship her, she gives us the bounty of strong cider, a roof over our heads, and lamb stew enough to feed the entire convent.”
She turns, hiccupping from all that ‘strong cider,’ and leaves fresh, muddy tracks where I just finished cleaning.
I clench my jaw. I harvested apples and brewed their cider. I climbed onto an unsteady ladder to rethatch the roof. I slaved over a fire all day, stewing lambs who had only hours before pleaded with me for their lives. And I never even got more than a few bites to soothe my groaning belly.
Now, that beaten-down, ten-year-old girl inside me cries out for help. I’m not a child anymore.
I’m a force of nature.
I dig my nails into my palms for the grounding bite of pain.
The sly cloudfox has slunk over to the campfire, still grinning its self-satisfied smile as it paws around a turkey bone dropped in the dirt.
Like a lantern, my rational mind switches off.
I’m only dimly aware now of what’s happening, as though I’m watching myself like an owl from overhead branches. I feel outside my own body. This has only happened once before, in Duren’s arena, when Rian let a tiger loose upon an innocent boy. He’d wanted to test my powers. To push me to the limit of my capabilities beyond where I was willing to go.
At the time, I hated him for it.
Now, I whisper a word of gratitude that he showed me what I’m capable of.
Watching from above, I see myself rise to my full height, no longer bowed by exhaustion. The scratches on my arms ooze blood that dribbles to the ground. My eyes are cloudy, glazed over with a strange silver sheen.
The soldiers shift their stances, murmuring uncertainly to one another, preparing to block me should I try to run.
My head snaps like a child’s doll toward the cloudfox. Lips moving silently, I feel like I am both in my body and outside of it.
Light up this camp like a fireball , I command it.
The cloudfox snarls and paws the dirt, fighting against my compulsion.
I focus more intently, thrusting my will into its mind until it must obey me. It contorts its body, leaping through the air in strange, jerky flails, but I drill my thoughts in further until I can feel its rapid heartbeat stuttering behind its small ribs. So delicate. So small. If I wanted to, I could crush that heart with a single thought like stamping out a butterfly .
Light it up! I demand.
The cloudfox twitches one final time before its soul retreats into some dark place to make room for mine.
Now, it’s my mind within the little fox’s body, baring its silver teeth, moving its feathered paws. Dimly, I’m aware of the soldiers’ cries of confusion, but they might as well be gnats in my ears. My hands twitch as I puppet the cloudfox, forcing it to jump in unnatural, jerky leaps toward the tents.
Already, I can feel a strange energy crackling within it. A bright power I somehow knew was there even though I’ve never seen a cloudfox before.
In the Book of the Immortals, cloudfoxes are described as playful, mischievous creatures. Unlike starleons, who spread plague on their wings, or goldenclaws, bears the size of carriages, they present no real threat.
But somehow, this deep, second self within my body knew that wasn’t true. That cloudfoxes have always been more powerful than those ancient scribes knew.
DO IT! I command.
The cloudfox’s final resistance vanishes as it falls entirely into my thrall. As its body quakes, a bolt of lightning shoots out from its feathery, floating fur to strike the roaring campfire. The logs explode with a shower of sparks, throwing out splinters and billowing smoke.
The soldiers fall back, confused, but they’re trained for the unexpected. The encampment fills with the sounds of iron blades being drawn.
I remain perfectly still, only vaguely aware of their presence on the edges of my periphery.
I haven’t stopped staring at Iyre once, not even to blink.
At my command, another lightning bolt shoots out from the cloudfox, striking an elm branch overhead. The branch snaps off, crashing to the ground to smash two tents.
Someone cries out in pain.
The nearest soldier, a beast of a man with a thick braided beard, draws a foot-long serrated knife from his holster. Before he can stab me, I force the cloudfox to hurl another lightning bolt at him. The man flies back five paces to crash in a roasting spit that impales his thick bicep.
All around, soldiers rush into fighting mode.
But Iyre?
Iyre remains calm. Amused, even. Her eyes flash with dark delight. “Is that the best you can do, princess?”
My rage boils over until I’m ready to break the world in two. It hurts the cloudfox to channel lightning bolts—I can feel its heart faltering, its small body gripped in pain. For a second, I doubt myself, but then another soldier comes at me with a mace studded in metal spikes.
With a cry, I force an explosion of lightning out of the little fox. Bolts radiate across the encampment, sending soldiers flying, tents catching fire and going up in flames. Shouts and screams pierce my ears.
The cloudfox’s body twitches on the ground. The ground. It doesn’t even have the strength to bound through the air anymore. Curled into a ball, it quietly yips in pain.
But this darker self within my mind? The one that can control beasts?
She knows no pity. Pain does not sway her. She wants revenge for a lifetime of wrongs at the hands of this deceitful fae goddess, and she will burn the world down with lightning until she is back with Basten.
I scream an inhuman cry, ready to tear the cloudfox apart to destroy the entire encampment and Immortal Iyre with it, when my voice is strangled.
My jaw is hinged open, frozen.
I can’t move my eyes from side to side.
Even my heart doesn’t beat in my chest.
Suddenly, the darker self within me is gone like morning mist.
Now, it’s just me, Sabine, a bloodied and spent girl. From my periphery, I can tell that it isn’t only me. Every single soldier in the clearing is frozen in time like a statue. Not even the flames flicker in the campfire.
Is…is Iyre doing this?
But then, from the corner of my eye, I spot one of the indigo-cloaked women moving among the bodies, her lips working silently as she holds her hands in front of her, lowering one finger at a time as though counting down.
She’s petite, though her broad-shouldered armor and cloak give her the look of someone much larger. Her skin is the soft brown color typical of northern Kravada, her silky black hair twisted into a loose braid. Above her cloak’s brooch, I can make out a godkissed birthmark.
“Lady Iyre,” she says to the goddess in Astagnonian, with a heavy accent. “I cannot stop time for more than ten seconds.”
Already, half her fingers are lowered—which means I have five more seconds of being immobile.
Iyre is the only other person impervious to the godkissed soldier’s frozen time. She approaches me languidly, smoothing back a strand of hair off my face.
Four more seconds , I count.
“Ten seconds is sufficient, Captain Tatarin,” Iyre replies calmly.
Three seconds.
Iyre picks up a heavy iron chain from a pile near the campfire that a blacksmith was mending. She hefts it in her hands, then approaches me with that ice-cold smile.
Two seconds.
“If you’re going to act like an animal, princess, then we’ll treat you like one.”
She wrenches my hands to my front, and I’m powerless to stop her. She binds them tightly together so that I can’t move my fingers to puppet the cloudfox.
One.
When time finally restarts, I’m a girl in chains.