Chapter 11
“AVEN!” I YELLED FROM THE shore.
The ground lurched sickeningly beneath me, and I stumbled, falling flat on my stomach right on the edge of the bank.
The bridge pitched like a boat in a storm. There was a loud crack, followed by a splash and a hiss, indicating the other end had dislodged from the shore and crumbled into the river.
Aven held on to the railing with determination, but the wood began to splinter, a deep crack running across the bottom at a dangerously fast speed.
Gritting my teeth to keep them from clacking, I pushed to my hands and knees as the world around me quaked, the tremors shaking up my palms into my arms and taut shoulders, rattling into my core.
Standing meant risking falling into the Simmer, which sloshed along the shoreline, waves splattering up the bank, but I had to get to Aven.
I lunged forward and crawled along the boards.
My fingers burned, and the wet heat scalded the fabric of my trousers at the knees.
Once near the peak of the arch, I flattened my body across the planks of the bridge, hooking my leg around one of the remaining pylons to stabilize my swaying body as best I could. I reached out my hand to Aven.
“Come on!” I yelled, fingers outstretched.
Aven pushed off from the railing just as it partially fractured and fell into the river, popping and crackling before the wood was swept downstream.
They sprang toward me and grabbed my forearm with a death grip, and then they dropped from sight as the surface gave way.
I yelped in surprise as the bridge split in the middle and toppled.
Aven fell with a shout, my shoulder jerking over the edge with their weight, my body sliding with them until my knee caught and the jagged edge of the bridge bit into my chest. But I held on.
They held on. And now Aven, a royal of the kingdom, dangled several feet above the Simmer and certain death, and I had no leverage to pull them back up.
Okay, new rule of questing: When crossing a bridge, cross it quickly.
My shoulder burned. Broken wood dug into the flesh of my bicep, and my fingers tingled with pins and needles, threatening my already-tenuous grip.
“Ellinore!” Zig’s voice thankfully came from the other side of the river.
“Zig!” I yelled. “I need…” Help. I needed help. Aven’s boots were surely melting, and my skin was slick with sweat and mist, and I knew both of us were going to die right then, because I wasn’t going to let go. I couldn’t let go. But as suddenly as it had all begun—the quaking ceased.
I gasped, releasing the scream I’d held behind my teeth in a loud, ragged breath, before sucking in air. I choked on the hot mist, sputtering, as I looked over the edge of the remaining wood. Aven peered up at me, blue eyes wide.
The boards beneath me groaned and cracked.
“Let go,” they breathed. “Don’t die with me.”
“Are you kidding?” I said, strained. “I’m Ellinore the Brave. Sometimes I’m even Ellinore the Strong. I’m never letting go.”
“Save Zig. Not me.”
“Shut up! I’ll figure something out.”
I didn’t know what. My bracelet to call Dave had slid down my wrist and was trapped between our forearms. He wouldn’t arrive in time anyway, and I knew the potion he’d given me couldn’t heal boiling to death.
I had no purchase or grip to pull Aven up.
Best-case scenario would be for me to stand slowly, but strong as I was, I didn’t think I could lift Aven’s weight in that way without my entire shoulder giving out. Maybe if I swung them—
“Let me help.”
I startled at the light, calm voice coming from behind and almost dropped Aven right then.
Whoever it was crouched next to me and reached down to grab Aven’s other arm.
I caught the barest glimpse of golden-brown skin before her sleeve fell to her wrist, but I couldn’t risk looking at her and taking my eyes off Aven for a second.
Aven looked up at her with a questioning furrow in their brow.
“Why don’t we discuss once you’re out of harm’s way, Princet Aven,” she said. “Lift on three?” she asked me.
The boards beneath my body squeaked with her extra weight.
“How about lift on now?” I reached with my other arm, grasping Aven at the elbow.
“Okay. Now!”
She rose from her squat, taking the lion’s share of Aven’s weight, while I scrambled to my knees, then stood quickly to balance us out. It wasn’t pretty—I ended up grasping the back of Aven’s tunic to haul them over the brink—but we succeeded in not dying.
Once Aven was back on their feet, I grabbed their hand with my sweaty one and yanked them off the rickety remnants of the bridge and didn’t let go until we were on solid ground.
The mystery girl followed and stood with us on the muddy bank.
Only the first few steps of the bridge remained intact; the rest had been swept downstream or dangled off in splintered pieces.
I shuddered at how close we’d come to an agonizing death. But we’d made it. We’d made it.
I bent over, my hands on my knees, huffing and puffing from the exertion.
Aven stood next to me, their body pressed into mine as they trembled.
I wanted to ask them if they were okay, if they were hurt, if they needed a hug, but I didn’t.
I couldn’t. That was not the relationship we had.
And I wasn’t going to break protocol with the mystery girl there.
I settled for taking their hand in mine and giving it a quick squeeze.
Aven met my gaze and mouthed, Thank you.
“Ellinore!” Zig’s voice floated over the chasm. “Are you okay?”
I sucked in a breath, straightening, and yelled back. “We’re fine! How about you?”
“Same! Thank the ancients you’re alive. I thought I would have to finish the quest by myself.”
I chuckled and shook my head. The loose hairs from my ponytail clung to the back of my neck and my temples and the side of my face, wet with sweat and condensation.
“Do you have Mouse?” Aven called, voice pitched high with adrenaline.
“Mouse?” Zig asked. “Who’s Mouse?”
“Aven’s horse!”
Zig’s raucous laughter was probably the sweetest sound I could’ve heard at that moment. “Your horse is named Mouse? Seriously? That’s hilarious.”
“Zig!” Aven’s tone cut through his levity like a knife.
“Yes,” Zig said with a chuckle, undeterred. I imagined him wiping tears of laugher out of his eyes. “I have all three of our mounts.”
“Great!” I called, elbowing Aven lightly in the arm. They pouted, then glanced at the girl and schooled their expression. Huh. Interesting.
“What are we going to do now?” Zig asked. “I’m on one side and you’re on the other, and that is not going to work for me for very long.”
That was a good question.
The girl gently cleared her throat. “I know another way. It will take a few hours, but you’ll be in Ashin before nightfall.”
I whipped around to face her, my hand drifting to where the hilt of my sword should rest, and grasped air. Oh no! My sword… was on the other side of the river. Okay. Must recalibrate.
“Who are you, anyway?” I asked, doing my best to figure out where my hands should rest. Hips? No. Crossed? That felt confrontational toward someone who had just helped me rescue my… competitor? Frenemy? Rival-slash-situationship? Whatever. I went with the always-awkward one-hand-on-hip move.
“Yeah, who is that?” Zig asked. “That doesn’t sound like Aven.”
Aven sighed and pinched the bridge of their nose. I just knew they were wondering what had possessed them to sign on to this traveling circus. Well, their fault for inserting themself into the situation in the first place.
The girl merely smiled. She was about our age.
She was dressed in clothes that looked like she thought they might do well for traveling but actually made her stand out—a stylishly embroidered deep-green cloak that highlighted her bronzed skin and her brown eyes, and a flowy light-blue blouse that wouldn’t survive an encounter with a gnome much less any creature with claws.
Her shirt was tucked into a pair of trousers with elegant stitching at the hems, and her soft leather boots had never seen a speck of mud in all their existence.
Each detail marked her as a noble, as did the lift of her chin and the jeweled pins that kept her styled dark-brown hair in place.
She clutched a quarterstaff in one hand and had a travel bag looped across her shoulder.
She looked like she’d stepped out of the pages of a fairy tale.
“Do I know you?” I asked, squinting at her. “You look familiar.”
“We’ve met,” she said quickly. She smiled, obviously pleased, her cheeks dimpling. “Only once, but I’ve followed all your adventures.”
Oh. Oh no. A fan.
Aven stood by my side and crossed their arms. “Ellinore,” they said flatly, “meet Farrah. A lady of the court. The queen’s sister’s daughter.”
Oh no times ten. I swallowed around a tight throat. “You’re royalty?”
“No,” Aven said.
Farrah giggled and pressed her fingers to the base of her throat, her nails manicured, though one was broken, and her fingers sported calluses.
Interesting. “Not a royal. My mother is noble, but the line of succession comes from the king’s family.
You could say that Aven and I are cousins by marriage. ”
“Or you could not say that. What are you doing here?” Aven asked, without any of the courtly manners they used when in the castle.
I glanced at them. Though their tone displayed annoyance, their expression was back to that neutral one they always used at court. Except when bickering with me, of course.
“Saving you, apparently.” She batted her eyelashes. “The polite thing would be to thank me.”
Aven’s jaw ticked. “We’re not at court, so I don’t have to be polite. So again, why are you here?”
“I think the better question is why are you here, Princet Aven?”
Aven stiffened. Their glare hardened. “I’m here on order of the Crown.” They bit out every word with tense diction, making it sound almost like a threat.
“Really?” Farrah asked in an exaggerated drawl. “I don’t remember hearing anything official…”
“It was a closed-door meeting. Family only.”
“Uh-huh. Is that a fact?”
“Yes. And you’d do well to remember that even though you are the queen’s family, I’m the royalty here.”
Oh. And that was a threat. What was going on there?
Other than Aven tapping into something surprisingly attractive.
If I weren’t already parched from the steam, my throat might have gone dry.
Wait, ew. I could admit that Aven was objectively pretty…
They had always stood out in the sea of people at court…
But attractive? To me? That was… definitely not needed.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Farrah said, clearly unbothered. “But now that you mention it, I have a vague memory of a royal order. That’s not where I found out about Ellinore’s quest. Gossip moves fast, you know.”
Aven’s face turned red—either from frustration or the heat of the boiling water. I couldn’t tell. “I’m only going to ask one more time. What are you doing here?”
Frustration it was!
Farrah’s sly smile bloomed into something genuine and maybe even a little bit adoring. “I’m here for Ellinore.”
“Me?” I squeaked.
“I followed Aven from the castle, and I’ve trailed you for the past few days, and—”
“You’ve been following us? You’re who the faery was talking about?” I blurted in disbelief. “The hostile entity?”
She frowned. “I’m not hostile.” She glared at Aven. “Though I don’t know about Princet Aven.”
“Just Aven. Like I said, we’re not at court. No titles here.” Somehow their defensive posture tightened, and I worried their spine might snap. “So you went through our bags to see if—”
“What?” She crossed her arms as well, the staff placed in the crook of her elbow. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, don’t play coy. You went through our bags, looking for clues to figure out where we were going. And where is your horse?” Aven said, looking past her shoulder. “How did you catch up to us so fast?”
“I had a horse, but it was stolen last night! Or it wandered off, or whatever, I don’t know. Anyway, I did not go through your things.”
“Hey!” Zig called. “What’s going on? What am I supposed to do now?”
I broke away from their argument and walked close to the bank. “Go to Ashin,” I called. “Lead the horses and Carrot. And we’ll meet you there when we can.”
“What should I do when I get there?”
“Wait for us.”
“But—”
“Do not do anything that I wouldn’t do! Understand?”
There was a pause. “But what if—”
“No!”
“Fine,” Zig said, resigned. “I’ll be at whatever tavern or inn I find first. I hope to be handsomely compensated for being entrusted with the care of… Mouse.”
“Just be careful, Zig,” I said. “And no magic mirrors!”
“That was one time, and I was six!”
I sighed heavily and headed up the bank. Aven and Farrah were engaged in a staring contest that I did not want to deal with.
“You know another way?” I asked.
Farrah nodded. “Yes! I’ve studied all the maps! I know all the kingdom shortcuts.” Oh, not only was she a fan, but she was absolutely too bubbly. “There is an outcropping a few miles north that I know we can traverse.”
“We could always backtrack and take the other fork south,” Aven said, ducking their head close to mine, their earrings glinting gold in the rising sun. “We might even find a closer bridge. We can ditch Farrah there and send her home.”
“Might,” I replied. “Look, my sword is on Bluebell. Your bow and quiver are on Mouse. If she isn’t the person the faery warned us about, that means someone or something else is still out there. She at least has a way to defend herself… and us.”
“I’m good with it too!” she chirped while twirling the staff. “I learned from a knight.”
Aven shifted uncomfortably, apparently feeling as naked without their weapon as I did. “You barely tolerated me, a verifiably good quester, and now you’re okay with her? A noble that you don’t even know?”
“I’d like to remind you that you basically threatened your way into this quest. Your presence wasn’t exactly my choice.”
They blinked. “Okay, but that’s different because—”
I cut them off. “For the record, and you can report this back to the king, I didn’t want any of you to join, because as I said before, I work alone. But she’s what we have. And we’re wasting time. There’s no telling what kind of trouble Zig can find unsupervised in a new town.”
“Fine,” they said. “But I’m warning you, she can be a little much to take.”
“I grew up with Zig. I think I’ll be fine.”