Chapter 45 No Harm Done
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
NO HARM DONE
ADELINE
“How are you feeling?” I ask her sometime later, straightening, satisfied that her heartbeat is strong and steady.
Ardruna lifts her white head, her ruby tongue flicking over her chops. “What did I miss?”
“I don’t know, nothing much… your own death?”
She lets out a bark of laughter. “Good one. Now pull the other leg.”
“I’m serious. The centaurs killed you. You died.” I show her my bloodied hands. It’s her blood on them. Fresh tears track down my cheeks, unheeded. “You were dead and then… then your body knit itself back together.”
“No way.” She stares at me. “Then I hope you avenged me.”
“I did.”
She gives a slow blink. “Is this then… the otherworld? Am I wandering the passages between the worlds before I’m reborn?”
“Actually, you never left. Roane brought you back.” I frown. “He has the power to regenerate creatures… Bring them back from the dead. Has it happened before?”
“Not to my knowledge.” She pauses. “Are you sure this isn’t a prank?”
“A prank? We were in the middle of a battle with the centaurs!” I spread my hands. “Who would have time for that?”
“And Talton?”
I had completely forgotten about the raven, caught up in the fight and Ardruna’s death. “I don’t know.” I stroke her fur, the symbol on her upper leg. “Ardruna…”
“Let’s go get Talton and head back!” Roane calls out. He has mounted the horse and now trots toward us. “Druna, are you up for it?”
The lioness slowly gets to her feet. “Yeah. Get Talton first.”
“Don’t worry.” Roane reaches a hand down to me, beckoning. “Come. We ride together.”
My hesitation is infinitesimal. Getting up on shaky legs, I grab his hand and it engulfs mine.
Then he’s hauling me easily up onto the horse, my shoulder screaming.
In a swift move, he bends and wraps his other hand around my hip, somehow getting me into the saddle so that I’m seated sideways in front of him.
“It will be more comfortable if you face forward,” he says, the deep rumble of his voice, the heat of him seeping through me, making every part of my body tighten and ache. “Let me help you.”
He places his hands on my waist and lifts me—again, with seemingly infinite ease—until I can swing my leg over the horse’s back and settle astride before him.
Which makes things even worse. Now my entire back is flush with his broad chest, my ass ensconced between his muscular thighs. When he sweeps aside my long hair, a shiver wracks my entire body.
“Have you ridden before?” he asks.
“Only once on a neighbor’s mule,” I admit.
“Well, this will be nothing like it,” he promises and without another word, he nudges the horse forward into a canter.
We slow down as we move deeper into the gorge, the horse whinnying and shying away from the corpses of the centaurs we took down—now split into horses and riders, both dead.
I brush my hand down the horse’s strong neck, through the short mane. There’s a symbol there, stamped into the flesh, some sort of flower, and I’m fascinated by these brands on every creature of this world. It reminds me of the symbol on Ardruna’s leg.
It’s nagging at me, poking at my mind. Different symbols for different stories…
“There.” Roane’s voice vibrates against my back. “Do you see them?”
The rolled-up rugs I’d seen? Two are lying on the ground, shaking.
Our horse stops a few feet away from one as it unrolls and a woman scrambles out of it, eyes wild.
Her long hair is pale and tangled, her body skeletal and bluish.
When she sees us, she stumbles backward, standing on cloven hooves instead of feet, and lifts her hands in a placating gesture.
“It’s the nymphs they took,” I whisper.
“We mean you no harm!” Roane shouts. “We’re looking for a raven.”
Now she looks stricken, even as she nods. She gestures ahead. “Please…” Her voice catches. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“We won’t. Free your sister. We only want the raven.”
We slowly ride past her. I twist around to see her rush to the other rolled-up rug and frantically work to unroll it.
Then we’re stopping at a smaller bundle lying on the ground.
It’s still. Too still.
“No,” I whisper. “Talton? No, it has to be something else. They wanted to sell him, right? They wouldn’t let him suffocate.”
With a curse, Roane dismounts and crouches down to undo the knot at the top. The fabric falls open.
I hiss when I see the raven lying inside, legs up in the air.
“They must have bundled him up when we attacked, to keep him from escaping,” Roane says, his voice like a distant roar in my ears.
“Then you turned the centaurs into horses and men, and we killed the one holding the bundle. Talton must have fallen.” He gently pokes at the bird. “His body is broken.”
Fresh tears are streaming down my cheeks and yet inside I feel cold and numb. “But you can bring him back, can’t you? Can’t you, Roane?”
Roane is very still, and I think, he’ll say no. He’ll say he doesn’t have enough juice to do it a second time. That the laws of this world don’t allow it.
It takes me a moment to realize he’s nodding, long hair sliding forward to hide his face. He says something that sounds like, “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Excuse me?” Is he referring to Ardruna, or were there other times when he’s had to bring his friends back? My mind is awhirl, but this time I’m calmer and able to observe what he’s doing more carefully.
He doesn’t seem to be using the ring, although that’s only my perspective. He lays his hands on Talton, as he’d done with Ardruna, and says, “Come back to us.”
As I watch, leaning over the horse’s neck where I’m still sitting astride, the raven’s body twitches. Then his black wings spread and his beak opens.
This is… madness.
Instinctively, I flinch back, as if I can get away from this incredible event unfolding in front of me.
I know stories of people who defied death and remained alive—changed, though, turning into an animal or a monster.
If you accept that those stories are real and that such things can happen without any direct intervention from the Gods…
Too many ifs.
I shudder when Roane places Talton on his feet and the raven croaks, fluttering his wings and looking around.
He tilts his head and his gaze fixes on me. “Aline.”
“Talton.” I clear my throat. “Nice to have you back with us.”
“I never left.” Now he looks at Roane. “Did I?”
“Don’t you remember what happened?” I ask, my voice hoarse. It doesn’t want to clear. Then again, the tears are still sliding down my face and my airways are full of snot. “Don’t you recall the centaurs?”
“Oh yeah! Those bastards took me!” He hops around, agitated. “They were grabbing the nymphs from the river like they were plucking fruit from a tree!”
“And you tried to stop them.” Gods, my throat is clogged up. “You’re a hero.”
“Well, not to boast too much…” He struts about in circles. “I happened to be there. I’ll always protect pretty girls.”
Roane chokes. “Yes, you always do, you big idiot.” I think he’s laughing, but I catch the shimmer in his eyes. Wait. Is he… is he crying, too?
Talton finishes preening and spreads his wings again, flying up to me. The horse prances about, uneasy, but allows Talton to land in front of me, claws digging in the thick mane.
I stroke his feathers. “Hey, Talton.”
“Hey, pretty girl. I take it we won this battle?”
“We did.”
“Are the nymphs safe?”
I glance at Roane for guidance, because frankly, I don’t know.
“Two of them are free.” Roane rises to his feet, every movement slow and heavy. “The rest, they took with them.”
Talton squawks. “You let the centaurs carry them away?”
“Fuck you, Tal, we did our best,” Roane snarls. “Without Aline and her book, we’d have lost this battle.”
“It’s unlike you to admit you could have ever failed, Ro,” Talton says.
“Yeah, well. It’s time I started admitting the truth.”
“That sounds ominous.”
Roane pulls his black hair back and twists it into a knot at his nape, his face devoid of all emotion. I must have imagined the tears in his eyes. “It’s time to go.”