Chapter Seven #3
I suddenly realize I moved too far away from my defenders when I stepped away from Elianna and her fire balls.
At Trick’s shout, I instinctively fall into a crouch, glancing back to see an attacking Fell who must have been hiding in the tunnel.
The breeze from his claws swiping at my head is strong enough to ruffle my hair.
My first instinct is to scream.
My second is to run.
I do neither.
I hurl myself toward Chitai, who’s engaged in hand-to-hand combat with one of the Zhagarn.
I snatch one of her daggers out of an ankle sheath.
Then I throw myself to the side and stab upward with all my strength in the split second before the monster tackles me to the ground.
My head slams into a rock, and I cry out, my vision going hazy.
The amulet pulses with blazing heat that I feel even through the warded locket against my skin.
Hot drool from a wolflike muzzle drips onto my forehead. I just have time to think I don’t want to die with Fell spit in my hair when the heavy body flies up and away from me, and I look up to see the prince holding the creature in the air by the back of the neck.
The dead creature.
Because the dagger I took from Chitai is sticking out of the monster’s chest, and its eyes are already glazing with death.
I scramble back and away, and Kaelen hurls the body to the ground next to him before holding out a hand to help me up. I take the help, not sure if I’m steady enough to stand on my own after that blow to my head.
After I just killed someone.
Some … thing?
A sentient being, at the very least. I killed a sentient being.
My conscience mounts a half-hearted attempt to feel even a tiny bit bad about this, because the rest of me—the Soli who wants so desperately to survive—is completely and euphorically glad I killed it.
Better it than me.
“Are you harmed?” Kaelen is holding my shoulders and scanning me from head to toe. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was frantic with worry.
For me.
But I know that can’t be right. Why would a prince care about a nobody?
Oh. Of course. He needs me to carry the amulet.
I silently nod and pull away from him to look around the battlefield. All the attackers are down—dead or dying. Kaelen studies my face for a moment longer, then wipes his sword blade on the coat of one of the dead Zhagarn. “There may be more coming. We should leave.”
“I’ll get our things,” Bern says, racing back to the tunnel to collect the valises, cloaks, and satchels we dropped when the fighting began.
Neville turns to the sorcerer. “Lady Elianna. Can you set these on fire to destroy the bodies? Or do some Air Touched magic?”
I’m not sure what he thinks “some Air Touched magic” might be. Maybe make the bodies fly away? But it doesn’t matter, because she won’t be doing anything at all, Air Touched or otherwise, after her eyes roll back in her head and she collapses in a dead faint.
Chitai leaps over to catch the sorcerer before she can hit the ground. With surprising strength, she lifts Elianna into her arms and nods at the prince. “Lead the way, riverlander. Looks like we ride or we die.”
As we race after Kaelen to the stable, the import of Chitai’s words strikes me. I skid to a stop. “Wait. We ride? We ride what?”
“Horses, obviously,” Trick mutters, catching up to me, still careful not to walk too close.
Shaking my head, I back away. “Oh. No.”
“No, what?” Neville demands.
“Um, no, thank you. I don’t ride horses.” I haven’t ridden a horse since I was four years old, and I don’t plan to ride one now.
My mother would still be alive if it weren’t for horses.
I’d still be unscarred and living happily with her.
Kaelen walks out of the stable, leading the biggest horse I’ve ever seen, and pins me with his dark-purple gaze.
“They were calm because one of the stable hands was hiding in there with them. I sent him to the front of the palace to get help. The horses are geared up and ready for us. And Soli, you don’t have to ride one if you don’t want to. ”
“I don’t?”
He swings up into the saddle. Before I can run, hide, or race back into the tunnel, he walks his mount toward me, leans down, and scoops me up with one powerful arm. “No. I’ll ride the horse. You can just sit with me while I do it.”
The overwhelming reality of the horse, its heat and scent, and the man, with his strong legs surrounding me, shoves me out of my impending panic. There’s something too grounded and normal about a horse, after the terror of the Fell and Zhagarn, that helps calm my fears, despite my childhood trauma.
While I try to find a comfortable way to sit in front of him, preferably without touching the horse, Chitai carefully hands Elianna up to Bern, who sets her down amid the bundles in the back of the wagon.
Trick and Bern climb onto the driver’s seat.
Chitai mounts her brown-and-white horse with the ease of long practice and nudges it over next to Andras, who sits elegantly on a tall gray horse like the aristocratic lord I’m sure he is.
“I could ride in the wagon,” I venture, although it wouldn’t be much of an improvement. It was a wagon that struck our horse, causing the accident that killed my mother.
“You’re fine here,” Kaelen says, pulling me back against him. “We need to get moving.”
I stop protesting and clutch the saddle horn with both hands, trying to stop shaking, and we set off. Neville leads the way on a stout chestnut. Bern drives the wagon behind us, Trick silent next to him. A pair of brown horses pulls it, and a lively black-and-white mare is tied alongside.
Within minutes, we’re heading down a narrow road toward one of the lesser-used gates out of the city.
I’m on a horse.
I’m still alive.
On a horse.
With a deadly amulet around my neck.
In search of two keys, guarded by unspeakable evil or impossible to retrieve.
Nobody ever said the Fates didn’t have a sense of humor.