Chapter 30 Leila #3
Her cry dissolved amid the crashing waves, and She reached for the man as if there was still time to catch him.
She scrambled across the raft only for Raphael to stop Her, linking his arm with Hers and pulling Her back.
No, She couldn’t, wouldn’t leave them behind, but he was guiding—no, dragging Her across the raft, then across rocks, and then onto dark soil.
They’d reached Kovahr, and She’d barely noticed.
Leila didn’t bother to catch Her breath. She ran across the shoreline, knees nearly giving out beneath Her. “Enzo!” She cried. “Hylas!” She would rescue them. They would not be casualties of Her father’s war.
White and grey stretched far ahead, but no brown skin, no fur pelts. “Enzo?” A sob escaped Her lips. “Hylas!”
A man burst from the water—Hylas, black curls plastered to his neck as he gasped for air. He carried someone large, heavy, and stark white.
Leila ran their way, Raphael trailing close behind.
Hylas could barely lift Enzo, so Leila and Raphael took each of his arms and hauled him across the shore, sending him flopping against the ground with a wet slap.
Leila couldn’t muffle Her cry. He was quickly turning from white to greyish blue, his body limp and still.
Hylas dropped to his side, tilting his chin and pressing his lips to his.
The pounding of Leila’s overworked heart consumed Her. She couldn’t lose another comrade. Seconds passed like decades as Hylas breathed into Enzo’s mouth, and suddenly Enzo lurched beneath him, hacking up water like a sputtering spigot.
Leila’s knees buckled, and She collapsed to the snow, each and every pain She’d endured lancing through Her. Halla’s death was on Her hands, but Her allies had been spared.
Hylas searched Enzo’s face. “Are you all right?”
Enzo merely nodded, staring up at Hylas unabashedly. The rise and fall of his chest slowly normalized, and suddenly Leila was out of place, as if observing the two, eyes locked and hands entwined, was an invasion of privacy. Hylas leaned in closer to Enzo, the two breathing as one.
And then he turned and spewed onto the shore, emptying the river water from his stomach.
Leila sank into the rough soil, deadened to the sharp rocks and stabbing twigs. They’d made it. They’d survived. Her breath billowed above Her like white smoke, and She shuddered against the icy air.
They had reached Kovahr.
Leila dragged Her feet across the road. She wasn’t sure how long Her limbs had ached with numbness, but it was long enough for Her to have lost all concept of discretion. Her sopping cloak lay abandoned at the riverbed, and Her holy light, though muted by the grey clouds, was on display.
People in leathers and fur pelts watched Her and the others as they passed, and She didn’t bother to meet their prying gazes.
Kovahr was the one ally realm that hadn’t bent to Brontes’s demands.
There were no Thessian soldiers here, and if by some chance there were any, She’d faced far worse already.
Even the cold wasn’t quite as formidable as She’d anticipated.
The snow melted beneath Her footsteps, turning to slush from the heat of Her light.
At another day or time, She might’ve taken in the realm around Her, but it was all She could do to simply walk.
Her eyes bore through the back of Enzo’s head.
He was standing, was living, leading the way to the citadel.
Hylas strode alongside Leila, as did Raphael, who sometimes interpreted what the passersby were saying.
She spoke the language, but Raphael didn’t know that, and She hadn’t the energy to tell him.
Instead, She concentrated on each weak step, on the strange tingling of Her limbs and the icy claws of the wind.
This is what victory felt like. Exhaustion. Pain.
The citadel loomed before them, massive and imposing, the obvious home of a warrior queen.
It bore a likeness to the castles Leila had seen in historic scrolls, except dark and foreboding with black stone towers reaching toward the sky.
Lines of light-skinned men in fur pelts and leathers stood guard in front of the gate, and Enzo barked back and forth with them, swinging his arms as he spoke.
Finally, the gate was lowered, and they marched inside, a haggard army of four.
They trudged past rock gardens, sparring squares, and soldiers.
The trek was endless, and for a moment Leila wondered if the Kovahrians were mocking Her, sending Her in dizzying circles for their entertainment.
But at some point between torture and detachment, Leila stood in the throne room, and the Queen of Kovahr sat before Her.
The queen looked so different than the first time Leila had met her.
Her face was heavily adorned with silver hoops and rods hanging from her ears, lancing through her nose, puncturing her eyebrows and chin—far more nahvalya than Enzo wore.
Her long brown braid, threaded with scant white hairs, lay over Her shoulder and down Her armored chest, and her legs were tucked neatly beneath a long, olive-green skirt.
Salvation in the form of a woman.
A guard introduced them to the queen in their language. “The Savior of Thessen, along with Her advisors.”
Enzo stepped forward, then dropped to his knee, bowing his head in reverence. “My queen,” he said in Kovahrian. “I have brought gifts.”
Gifts? Leila glanced at Enzo, then his queen. Before She could react, the queen snarled, speaking in the common tongue.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”