Chapter 15
Fifteen
Fear
The ground beneath the building was hot through my boots by the time we cleared the outbuildings, the fire racing through the lower passages as Nez’s hoard caught fire.
Cara was three steps ahead of me, clutching the knife against her chest.
Something had happened in that building beyond the theft. “Horses. Now.”
Kiegan had them moving before we reached the treeline.
“What did you do, kitten?” he demanded. He seemed amused.
I did not love him calling my wife by that kind of nickname, but survive first, clarify later.
I caught Cara’s arm as she reached the horse and half-lifted her into the saddle. I came up behind her in the same motion, her weight settling back against me before I had fully landed. My arms came around her for the reins, and then we were riding.
Obsidian could be heard before they could be seen, their horses’ hooves beating the ground with the cadence of eight mounts being ridden hard by a clan made to look foolish. They were in formation already moving through the trees behind us, which told me clearly who was leading.
Colm. Third blade of Clan Obsidian, the most disciplined of the three, though not the brightest. I had watched him operate before, from a distance.
He would send his fastest riders wide to flank, keep the rest in the center line, and use their numbers to funnel us.
It was not an elegant strategy, but it worked reliably on lesser targets.
We had not met in direct engagement before. Hopefully today would not be that day either.
From the corner of my eye, I caught the rippling in the greenery of their movement.
Two widening, I noted. Trying to get ahead in the trees on the left, but they hadn’t succeeded yet.
I leaned right, applying pressure through my thigh against the horse’s side. Cara shifted her weight in the same direction, her lithe body fitting against mine as if she had been made for me, or me for her.
In reality I had been made to be the queen’s empty vessel, and she had been made to be Lightbringer’s.
Ahead of us, Kiegan moved through the thickening trees with the ease of someone for whom this was not terrain but memory. To Obsidian, at this distance and this speed, he would hopefully read as a hired orc. At any rate, they were focused on the mortal thief who had stolen from under their noses.
I did not savor the thought of what they would do to Cara if they caught us.
“They are gaining,” Kiegan said calmly, without turning. “They had longer to rest their horses.”
“I know.”
Colm was trying to close before the trees got thick enough to matter.
He was being optimistic and incorrect, as he often was; we would beat him into the thickening forest. After that he would pull the flankers back and consolidate, and then we would simply be eight horses against three in whatever terrain came next.
“Not enough for it to matter. Yet.”
“Are you sure you want to keep leading them up orc territory?”
“Can’t have them tying us back to Bismyth.”
Cara’s voice was breathless with the riding, each breath almost a grunt. “Where there’s trouble, don’t they know there’s you?”
“And now you, mortal.” We were a pair.
“A pair.” Shadowbane sounded typically self-satisfied with himself. “Lightbringer will like her very much.”
“As long as I keep her alive and get her to the Claiming,” I reminded him. The clock was ticking. Orc territory was a shortcut as long as we didn’t end up fighting for our lives.
“We’re moving further from the border. Orc clans won’t take it well if they catch them.” There was no need to clarify, but Kiegan grunted, “Or us.”
Obsidian had avoided the orc territory on the way in—I should’ve cut through orc territory and outpaced them—but now they would follow us in.
Regaining the knife was worth the cost, though they would fear the orc by our side meant we had permission from the orc king.
That provided an opportunity to scare them off our trail.
Hopefully, we didn’t find ourselves meeting with the king.
A wisp of memory rose for me: getting a shoulder under Kiegan’s arm, staggering under his weight for a moment, helping him through the academy gates, so covered in blood and gore it was hard to tell what was his shattered pieces and what was his brothers’.
Behind us and to the side, the pace of hoofbeats slackening; Colm’s adjustment was happening a little early, the flankers pulling back, the line consolidating. Close enough.
A branch whipped toward us. I raised an arm to shield Cara from it, and it stung sharply across my arm, then cheekbone. She flinched against my chest, drawing back into me, then looked up, her eyes widening at the sight of the blood now damp against my face. It didn’t matter. Not now.
The orcs rose out of the shadows of the trees. Three of them, large and unhurried, letting themselves be seen now because it served them. They were a line, spaced far apart; we could rush the horses and slip between them. The problem would be what came afterward.
I whistled to Kiegan. He glanced at me sharply—I never whistled with Bismyth—and understood my ask better than I could’ve hoped. He was already checking his horse and swinging down. I drew to a stop beside him, and he threw the reins at me.
Hoofbeats, behind us, suddenly drew to a stop.
Obsidian calculating: the line of trees, the orcs, the border suddenly growing teeth. They could potentially take three orcs. But it would cost them.
None of them crossed.
Colm didn’t know Orcish. Obsidian in general was not studious. I doubted they could hear at their distance, and I doubted even more they could understand if they did. Hopefully, they would believe we had passage through Orc territory.
Kiegan greeted the orcs in their own dialect. I had enough of it to follow the bones, though not to speak well enough without insulting.
I dropped my lips low to Cara’s ear to translate. “Let us pass. Stop the shifter clan behind us.”
I might’ve savored the flash of admiration in her eyes if I’d been more certain we would make it out of this vise formed by enemies before and behind.
It was an audacious request, and even if I had not known their language passably, I would’ve been able to guess from their body language and laughter that they also found it audacious.
“You can ride from your own funeral without our help, halfling,” I murmured into her ear. “That’s…a more polite version.”
I wished I didn’t have Cara in my lap now because it would complicate things if I had to swing my sword. If she were on her own horse, I could send her running and keep them from reaching her.
Kiegan offered them a short, harsh laugh of his own.
Cara had her hand on the hilt of the knife I’d given her. I rested my hand lightly over hers as I translated, because we were not going to need to draw blades. “How do you not recognize the king’s son? I might be half another, but I am all Braegan’s son.”
He had not used that name since he had come into the clans with his brothers’ blood drying on his hands, since I had hauled him to the healer.
“He’s a prince?” Cara whispered back to me.
“He is. It is a useful card to play.”
He had not thanked me for dragging him to the healers. This moment, his usefulness to me when I needed him, was how he would show his gratitude. Now that he was part of Bismyth, it would be how he showed his gratitude for the rest of his life.
The orc in the center looked at him for a long moment, long enough that my fingers twitched, eager to reach for my sword hilt. But I did not touch it. In case they looked back at us, I took Cara’s hand from the hilt and held her hand instead. Her pulse was wild in her slender throat.
They bowed their heads and stepped aside. Then, more meaningfully, they moved forward, blocking us from Obsidian.
Now the only thing that mattered was what was before us. Obsidian would have to backtrack to avoid combat and move up outside orc territory, tracing the boundary and hoping they managed to find us.
Kiegan remounted without looking at either of us.
Behind us, Obsidian did not cross.
We rode hard after that, trying to make the most of the lead we had from Obsidian so they could not intercept us again when we left orc borders. Kiegan led, picking the line through trees that thinned and thickened in turns. Cara braced against my chest.
Braegan would hear, sooner or later, that his son had invoked his name. I would like to be far from orc territory when he investigated.
“Kiegan’s heritage being a useful card.” Cara’s voice was uneven from the roughness of our strides, rising and falling as the horse galloped.
She was going to be miserable later from the ride, but it was unavoidable.
“I begged you to bring him into Bismyth. I was touched you listened to me. You were always going to bring him into Bismyth, were you not?”
“Honestly now. It does no good to lie to one’s mate.” Shadowbane warned me. Then, more warmly: “She is trapped with you anyway. You are safe.”
I did not feel safe from Cara’s contempt. My own mother despised me; it did not seem unlikely that my wife might as well. “Yes.”
She shook her head. “I will need a list. Soon. Of all the ways you’ve tricked me.”
“She will forgive you,” Shadowbane spoke as if he and I were already in an argument. “She is your mate.”
“All right,” I told her. “When we’re not riding for our lives.”
Kiegan’s voice carried back to us, low. “The king will send assassins.”
“I know.”
“He’ll have wondered why his worthy sons never came home. Now that he’s going to know I’m alive…” He did not finish the thought. He did not need to, and probably could not bear to.
“Good thing I’ll likely burn alive at the Claiming,” Kiegan added, and he slowed his horse to come aside us, his heavy brows crinkling. “Save him the mess of dragging me back to torture me to death.”
I scoffed. “It’s unlikely. Some do burn, yes. The unworthy. You wouldn’t be here if you were unworthy.”
The choice of words was deliberate. His father saw him as unworthy. My mother saw me as unworthy. Someone would always see us as unworthy, and it was our work to not allow ourselves to be particularly interested in their assessments.
“You think the dragons are going to choose an orc with a reputation for murdering his brothers?”
“Very much yes. Dragons have terrible judgment.”
Cara’s startled laugh was something I felt through my body, with more sense of accomplishment than I felt overcoming any enemy.
When he still looked unconvinced, I added, “Shadowbane chose me.”
He looked as if he found that a little more convincing, which was insulting.
“I have excellent judgment,” Shadowbane muttered. “I’m just early in the stages of molding you into a hero. Or even someone bearable.”
“Many of the Bismyth dragons despise orcs,” I admitted. “But that could serve your interests. You are a horrible orc.”
He made a sound. Short, compressed, the laugh he made when something had caught him before his defenses were fully in place.
“That is not reassuring,” he said.
“It wasn’t meant to be reassuring. It was meant to be accurate.
You rebelled against your father, and you’ve got orc blood on your hands.
You’re the son of our lost shifter, and the dragons have long wanted revenge on your father.
” I debated what else to say. “I wouldn’t usually have bothered dragging a half-dead orc to the healers, either.
My ministrations to wounded orcs have generally run in the opposite direction.
I didn’t claim you just to watch you burn. ”
He was quiet for a moment. “How long have you known who I was?”
“I was pretty sure from the beginning.”
“Of course you knew,” he said, without heat. “Right.”
The story of our lost dragon shifter had haunted us all, but we’d assumed she’d been killed by the orcs. If we had known she spent years in captivity, that she gave the orc king a son…“We would have come for your mother if we had known.”
He scoffed. “And probably killed a monstrosity like me.”
“That sounds like a bedtime story the orc king would tell. Not our reality.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe in a story of the past that I could’ve been rescued from.”
“Bismyth would’ve burned down the orc kingdom to get her back…and you. And so would the other clans.” Most of them, anyway. Lazuli was more focused on their texts than on their honor. “You were just a child.”
Kiegan exhaled, the look on his face pained, and urged his horse even faster to get a few paces ahead of us. He needed to be alone with his thoughts.
“I wish things had been different,” Cara said to me quietly.
I thought of Tesa and Ander’s suffering. Of Cara growing up thinking Corbyn was a monster. Of wherever my unknown father’s bones were decaying.
“I wish that every day.”
Night fell. But we dared to keep riding. We were so close to the border.
At the next ridge Kiegan reined his horse to a sudden stop.
In the valley below, between us and the border, spread a series of fires glowing orange against the darkness.
An orc war camp.