Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Aelia had never sat so long in a saddle, and she soon became aware of a whole new type of soreness. To distract herself from the relentless rocking of joints that pleaded with her for rest, she opted to try and glean what information she could from Keeran.
Drias had made her aware just how sheltered she had been.
The Peregrinian armourer who’d refused to serve Mirra had warned them, had told them how clueless they were, but how could they ever have realised just how much their little village had been protected from?
Keeran had been travelling with the Peregrinians; she would be foolish not to pick his brain whilst she had the chance.
She pushed her horse on so she was level with him and cleared her throat, breaking the silence they’d both been comfortably riding in.
“Are all towns in Demuto like Drias?” she asked, moving her horse slightly further from his as the huge black beast Keeran rode flattened its ears back and swung its hindquarters towards them, unhappy with their proximity.
Keeran soothed it with a hand on its neck, murmuring something too quiet for her to make out.
“They’re not all that pretty,” he replied once his horse looked less likely to boot her.
Aelia couldn’t bring herself to smile, let alone laugh— not when her heart felt heavy enough to drag her tumbling straight from her horse.
“You said the situation was no better anywhere else in Demuto, that everyone everywhere was too scared of the Astraea to stand up for the humans. How can that be? How can they be getting away with this?”
Keeran gripped the reins with one hand and rubbed his brow with the other, suddenly looking as tired as she felt.
“It’s got worse, more quickly than I would have ever thought possible.
I passed through Drias with the Peregrinians about eight months ago and it was nothing like that.
The Astraea stopped us on our way to the forest about a week ago, but we had no humans with us so they just stole what they needed and knocked a few people about, under the pretence of suspecting them of selling to humans.
Just flexing their muscles, really. From the number of empty buildings we saw, I imagine Drias has been hit hard.
They probably once belonged to humans, or people who were unfortunate enough to be made an example of.
The Astraea are scaring everyone into not employing the humans they haven’t rounded up yet. ”
“Where are they taking them?” Aelia stared at him, eyes wide with horror as he spoke. How had it been allowed to escalate so quickly?
Keeran shrugged. “I don’t know, but a few people I spoke with suspected they’re being taken to the coast.”
“The coast?” Aelia repeated, thoughts stumbling over one another too fast for her to untangle them. “Why?”
“No one seems to know.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Aelia argued. “Why would they risk going so close to Llmera when that would take them right under the King’s nose?”
Keeran avoided her gaze, sighing through his nose, before finally answering.
“According to the people I spoke to in Drias, the Astraea have the King’s full support.”
Aelia looked at him from under her brows, jaw clenched to the point of pain. “What?”
“The red insignia on their uniform belongs to the King. No one seems to know why or how, but there’s no doubt that it’s true.”
“So what do we do?” she wondered out loud, staring off into the distance as she tried to make sense of it.
“We push on. We know they’re headed to the coast. If we can’t catch up with them on the way, we’ll head to Llmera.”
Aelia’s brows dropped with a sudden realisation.
“Why are you doing this?” She watched his face carefully, but his features gave nothing away.
“You saw the people back there, kicked onto the streets, just waiting for the Astraea to come back and pick them up,” Keeran said, staring at the horizon.
“Yeah, but why now? How long have you been with the Peregrinians? You must have seen that all before.” Aelia was surprised she hadn’t questioned it sooner. He’d left the Peregrinians to chase after Beserkir all on his own… why?
This time, he twisted in the saddle to face her, and she almost flinched at the depth of the black in his eyes. It was as though something other than Keeran was looking back out at her. Whatever it was, it was the very thing that had scared her so much when she’d first laid eyes on him.
“Because after I saw what happened in Callodosis, I decided that man needed to die.”
Aelia had to look away. Not because she disagreed, far from it, but because whatever it was that was looking out of Keeran’s eyes sent shivers scuttling over her skin.
“Who is he to you?” Keeran asked, surprising her enough to make her look back up. To her relief, his eyes were dark brown again. “The man you’re rescuing?”
Aelia wasn’t sure how to answer. He was more than a friend, he was as much family as Otis had been. In the end, she settled with the truth.
“He’s the only friend I have left.”
Keeran nodded before looking back out at the horizon.
“Then we'd better get him back, but right now, we need to find somewhere to shelter before that hits.” He gestured with the reins up ahead, drawing Aelia’s attention to the dark storm clouds rolling towards them.
Aelia glared at them with bitter exasperation. It looked like, on top of everything else, they were going to get soaked.
Soaked didn’t even come close to describing the state they were in when they finally found a disused barn a little way off the road.
Lightning forked through the sky, illuminating the abandoned building just long enough for Aelia to spot it, the clap of thunder reverberating in her chest. The horses skittered sideways across the road, moving in any direction but forward in their terror, and Aelia clung on for dear life as her exhausted legs threatened to give up on her.
Eventually, they reached the barn and Keeran leapt from his horse with more energy than Aelia thought he had any right to have. He encouraged his terrified beast to follow as he tried to open the barn doors.
“Wait there,” Keeran yelled to her over the torrential rain, before he disappeared inside to tie up his horse.
There was no way he was helping her out of the saddle, especially not after he’d had to heave her into it in Drias.
Her horse panicked as Keeran’s disappeared from sight, and she tightened her reins.
She tried to calm it, but all that came out was garbled nonsense as fear tied her tongue in knots.
Deciding it was now or never, she freed her foot from the stirrup.
The rain had her already tight trousers clinging to her, making movement infinitely harder than it needed to be, but she managed to swing her leg behind her.
Her ribs screamed, pain lancing through her chest like she’d been branded, but she clenched her teeth, her momentum taking her past the point of no return.
Lightning tore its way through the sky, followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder that broke her horse’s self-control.
With her not fully in the saddle, she was powerless when it reared onto its back legs, sending her crashing to the ground beneath it.
She curled into a ball as hooves trampled around her, seeming to come from every direction, making it impossible for her to move out of the way.
Just when she thought she would die there, her skull crushed in by her own panicking horse, a booming voice carried over the tumultuous beating of hooves. The next moment, the horse was moved from over her.
“Aelia.” Keeran dropped to his knees next to her, the hard lines of his face transformed by worry. “Aelia, are you ok? Where are you hurt?”
“I…I’m not.” She thought she wasn’t, anyway, either that or the adrenaline was making it impossible to tell if she had any new injuries.
Another flash of light pierced the sky, and Keeran hooked a hand under her arm, hauling her to her feet.
“Get inside, I’ll fetch the horse,” he shouted and, for once, she didn’t argue, splashing through puddles on numb feet into the barn.
Keeran ran in after her, practically dragging the horse behind him, its eyes rolling as it passed through the wildly swinging doors.
The moment he was through, she threw her weight against them, battling the wind to get them closed.
Her fingers were like blocks of ice as she tried to slide the beam of wood into place, but after a momentary struggle, she managed to bar the doors shut.
The relief of being out of the rain was instant, the relative quiet blissful after the complete barrage on her senses for the past few hours whilst they searched for shelter. Releasing a shaky breath, she turned to where Keeran was tethering the horse.
She didn’t hesitate, moving to help him untack it on unsteady legs.
“I’ll do it, Aelia, just go sit down.” Keeran didn’t look at her as he spoke, but she could hear the irritation in his voice clear enough for her to suspect his eyes would be jet black. She ignored him; it was her horse to look after, even if he technically owned it.
She fumbled with the girth, her fingers next to useless with cold as she tried to wrestle the buckle free. It eventually gave in, and she let it swing beneath its belly, reaching up to try and lift the saddle off the horse’s soaked back.
She got it halfway off before her back spasmed and it slipped from her grip.
It crashed to the floor, sending her horse skittering into Keeran’s horse, with him wedged between them.
It was sheer luck that the two horses were too preoccupied with the storm still raging outside to exchange kicks over personal space, and Aelia clapped her hands over her open mouth until she saw Keeran squeeze his way out from between them.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he shouted, the barn mercifully too dark for her to see his eyes.