Chapter Six Samira
SIX SAMIRA
I was rocking. Back and forth, back and forth. My back was cradled against something soft and warm. It was comforting, especially compared to the frigid chill raising goose bumps on my arms and legs. I curled further into the warmth, turning my head to bury my frozen nose against it.
A gravelly chuckle sounded in my ear—right in my ear.
My eyes snapped open, and I jerked away so sharply that I nearly fell out of my seat.
A large arm caught me around the waist and pulled me back against a fur-covered chest. The still-healing lashes on my back barked in protest, bringing everything into startling focus.
Hooves clomped loudly against stone. The hard seat beneath me was a saddle.
I was on a horse.
It carried me calmly through a stone tunnel, unnaturally smooth, like a chisel had speared straight through the earth. I was cold. So cold. My panicked breaths fogged in front of me.
And then I heard more clomping behind me.
I whipped around—and nearly fainted again.
The Kald who’d strangled me sat directly behind me in the saddle, holding me firmly against his torso. He smirked. “Good morning, Majesty.”
Behind him, dozens of Kaldfolk followed. Most of them splattered with blood.
No! Everything inside me rebelled at the reality that was unfolding before me, and I bucked wildly against the Kald, trying to throw myself out of the saddle.
He clicked his tongue in annoyance, arm tightening around my waist, and used his other hand to yank on the chain attached to the shackles I hadn’t even realized bound my wrists.
They clanked loudly as he forced me down in my seat.
His hot breath seared the side of my neck.
“You get one warning. You really want to use it up now?”
Bile burned my throat, but I stilled. “Where—where are we?”
“Don’t worry about that.”
White light shone up ahead. The exit. I drew a deep breath to dredge up whatever courage I might have and peered around the Kald again. Behind the militia of Kaldfolk was the entrance to the tunnel, and I could just make out the domed roof of Khada Palace.
“What did I just say?” the Kald growled.
“Sorry,” I whispered, and turned back around. I’d never been out of Khada Palace, not since I was a child, but I’d gazed at these mountains enough times to know exactly where I was.
The Frozen Sands.
Somehow, inexplicably, we were in the mountains. The mountains King Zaid had pushed the Kaldfolk behind seventeen years ago, the mountains that were meant to be impassable without alerting the Ashoran scouts.
This was how they’d done it. They’d dug a tunnel straight through the base of them. Then they swam down the Lotus River and right into the castle. Tore their way through anyone who got in their path until they found the Gods-Chosen.
Except that wasn’t who I was. And if they discovered that… I remembered the sound of guards choking as their throats were torn out, and nearly wet myself again.
We neared the tunnel’s exit, and thick, dark clouds over sharp peaks came into view.
Kaldfold.
Holy gods.
“Rules are pretty simple here, Majesty,” the Kald said, his arms a cage around me as he held the reins. “Do as I say, and we’ll all be friends.”
“Wh-what do you want with me?”
“You sure you want me to answer that?”
My mind raced with thousands of tortures they could be planning.
Mutilation, drowning, stoning. I remembered a story Nadia told me once, of when King Zaid marched into Kaldfold.
Wide-eyed, rabid monsters, stuck between human and bear, feasting on their own kin, both carnally and physically.
King Zaid rode through the mindless rutting in the streets, the cold-blooded violence, the hunger for human flesh.
Was that what they had planned for me? Would I—
“Relax,” the Kald drawled. “Your fear smells like shit, and we’ve still got three days’ travel ahead of us.”
“Then maybe you should tell her,” snapped a female Kald who pulled up alongside us.
“A little suspense will keep us all entertained.” I could hear the grin in his voice.
The Kaldfolk behind him chuckled, even as the woman sighed.
When we emerged from the tunnel and I chanced a look back at the Frozen Sands, my stomach dropped.
The mountains were enormous summits of ivory sand, as hard as ice, with none of the give of snow.
They would take days, if not weeks, to trek.
A straight path right through their center was not only less visible, but so much faster.
The Kaldfolk could have been crossing this bridge into our land for years, using it to pick off Ashorans or steal from the Lotus River. They had been right under our noses all this time, watching us. Just the thought made my skin crawl.
I glanced down at my legs hanging on either side of the horse. They hadn’t been bound. If I could get free from this Kald, I could run back to—
“Try it and see what happens,” he said like he could read my mind, a touch of excitement in his voice. Hoping I would run, perhaps. Just so he could chase.
My blood ran cold, and I shuddered hard enough to rattle my shackles.
“Enough, Keir,” that female Kald said.
Keir. I recalled the name now. Harsh and cutting, like the creature himself.
She gave him an exasperated look. “Rade’s going to be pissed as it is. You really want to make it worse by having her show up a terrified mess?”
Rade. King of Kaldfold. I swallowed hard.
“But we’ve got days until then,” the large Kald reasoned.
“Keir,” she said sharply.
Keir held his hands up placatingly. But his dark chuckle rustled my hair.
I kept my eyes on the road, spine ramrod straight, and didn’t look back again.
A camp awaited us among a cluster of spindly, leafless trees.
The Kaldfolk had come prepared with cloaks and tents, so many of them that it looked like a small village had popped up in the forest. After learning of their tunnel under the Frozen Sands, I shouldn’t have been surprised that they’d thought so far ahead, but I was.
They’d even brought food and some thick white liquid with too many chunks in it to be milk, which they gulped down eagerly.
The woman I’d come to learn was called Velka, Keir, and four of the others sat separately from the rest of the Kaldfolk. They each took a log or a stone instead of one of the prearranged tents, creating a circle around a sizeable fire.
They left one seat conspicuously empty.
Keir held my chain like a leash. I stood awkwardly behind him, my sandaled feet nearly blue as the cold of the earth bled up into my soles.
My queen’s nightgown was made for Ashorah’s heat.
Thin, breathable. In Kaldfold’s tundra, it was a useless scrap of fabric.
But I wouldn’t dare ask to sit by the fire or—gods forbid—to borrow one of their large fur cloaks.
Since making camp, Keir had almost seemed to forget about me, and I was grateful for it.
Even if it meant standing in the freezing cold in nothing but a silk nightgown.
“By the gods!” one of the Kaldfolk around the fire exclaimed suddenly, making me jump.
He turned to me, yellow eyes gleaming above high cheekbones, and the blue tattoos on his hands seemed nearly black in the firelight when he waved them at me.
“Sit. If I have to hear your teeth chatter one more time, I’m going to lose my mind. ”
My eyes darted to Keir. He debated a moment before nodding.
I stepped hesitantly into the circle. The warmth of the campfire washed over me. Every muscle in my body had been tensed from the moment I woke up in Keir’s saddle, and they begged for an opportunity to rest. I headed straight for that empty spot.
Already, I could feel the chill in my bones melting away. I didn’t think I’d ever been this cold. Winters in Ashorah could be brutal but never like this. There was an added bite to the cold here. Like the wind had teeth—
“Not there!” they all burst out.
I scrambled away from the unassuming rock, confusion and fear sparking through me. “I—I’m sorry. I thought you said—I didn’t mean to offend—I’m sorry—”
“Gods, stop apologizing,” Keir grunted, shifting over on his log. He jerked his chin at the space beside him. “Sit.”
I glanced at the Kaldfolk again, expecting to see fury or bloodlust. But Velka just lowered her gaze to the ground, elbows braced on her knees, a tin cup practically forgotten between her hands.
Shadows painted her face, not just from the fire.
I’d seen that look more times than I could count in Khada Palace. That was sorrow.
In fact, though some tried harder to hide it, they all wore similar expressions. It made my brows draw together, but I would take their sadness over their wrath.
Staying next to Keir was the last thing I wanted to do, but I sank down onto the petrified wood beside him.
Even with several inches separating us, I could feel his body heat.
I’d noticed his exaggerated warmth on the horse and guessed it must be a Shifter attribute.
Between his warmth on my right, the fire in front of me, and the adrenaline that had shot through my blood when they’d yelled at me, I was no longer cold.
Silence descended on the group. Velka hardly looked up.
The Kald who’d told me to sit stared blankly into the fire.
Beside him sat a mountain of a woman. The lines on her face told me she was somewhere in her forties, and she was as big and brawny as the men around her, with tattoos curling up the back of her neck and wrapping around her ears like tentacles, reaching for her cheeks.
She was also scarred. Twin slashes cut from the bottom of her eyes to the corners of her lips.