Chapter 11 #2
I looked behind us to find Night Court soldiers pouring down the side of the ridge like a dark tide, with at least twenty of them closing the distance. More spilled from the narrow pass behind them, chasing after the other Dusk Court warriors.
The Night Court wore dark, angular masks that covered their entire faces. They had the same cut-out portion as the visors we wore, and they prevented us from being able to identify them. It made them look less like soldiers and more like something else entirely.
Faceless. Relentless.
Hunters bearing down on us with weapons drawn.
With wolves nipping at our backs and sides. If Fate was real, the bitch needed to help us.
The wolves poured over the ridges and ledges of the other two mountains that flanked the sacrificial site as the eagle soared overhead in the brightening dawn, its gray and black wings cutting through the air as it shrieked.
The cries seemed to drive the wolves into a deeper frenzy.
They were massive, bigger than any dog I had ever seen, their silver eyes burning as they charged.
More than fifty yards away, one launched itself at a Night Court rider and latched on just like the one that had attacked Kai. That rider didn’t stay mounted and went down hard.
The caribou ran forward, keeping to the side of the pass but not entering it. Behind us, the peak of the mountain that held the Blood Basin loomed, covered in a thin layer of powder over a compacted shelf of snow.
My mind snapped back to the avalanche I had seen before in a landscape similar to this. The force of it and the way it had swallowed everything in its path had been terrifying, and I didn’t want to relive that experience.
Caribou had climbed the sides of the pass then, too, but Kai had warned his men. None of them were entering the pass, but the wolves were.
And so were the Night Court soldiers.
Kai’s blood soaked through my glove. His arm stayed locked around my waist, but it wasn’t holding me quite as tightly.
He was weakening, which made this situation even better.
Dumbass should’ve let me bind his shoulder.
I had to figure something else out now, because we were in this together. If he died, so did my ass.
I fisted one hand in his cloak and yanked the scarf from my head. The fabric snagged in my hair for a second before tearing free. I twisted it tight in my hands and turned toward his shoulder.
His arm clamped harder around me, pulling me in. “Keep it on. Your hair—”
I snorted. “So you’re saying you would rather die than risk people seeing my hair?
’Cause I’mma be real with you. That would mean I would most likely die too, and I kinda value my life.
” I shoved the scarf against the torn flesh of his shoulder.
Blood soaked through it, and the fabric slipped against the wound as I tried to force pressure on it.
My temple brushed his chin, and I could feel his jaw tighten.
“Hold still,” I said, dragging the scarf tighter and forcing it down and around him as best as I could with the caribou lurching beneath us.
“This is useless,” he bit out, breath rough against my hair.
He was the most ungrateful man I’d ever met. And that was saying a lot. I’d dated some doozies. “Then you can bleed out and prove me right.” I yanked the ends harder. “Now stop talking.”
He grunted as the fabric slipped.
“Dammit to high heaven,” I muttered and leaned in closer, bracing my forearm across his chest to steady myself as I pulled it tight again. The angle was wrong…. Hell, everything was wrong. The saddle shifted beneath us, the caribou’s gait uneven.
His hand caught my arm, not stopping me, just steadying me long enough to force the knot into place.
It barely held, but it had to be enough.
“Don’t even think about sneezing,” I warned.
“What?” His brows furrowed, and his grip went back to my waist.
I looked over his shoulder and tensed, wishing I’d chosen to remain oblivious. Granted, being oblivious was what got me into this whole mess by falling through a mirror. Yet, nothing could change that, and the wolves were gaining.
They tore through the snow in long, powerful strides with their bodies low. They were closing the distance every second, and the eagle still circled above. Each pass of its wings stirred the surface of the ridge, sending loose powder drifting into the air.
A Dusk soldier behind us broke from the line and turned in the saddle, raising a crossbow as he looked out through the freaky visor. But one bolt wasn’t going to do much against our pursuers.
My gaze slid past him toward the ridge above, just left of the rising sun.
The overhang loomed there, thick, heavy, and wrong.
The snow jutted outward in a wide shelf, the edge already splitting. A dark line cracked through the white, and fine powder sifted down in thin streams, more breaking loose with every sweep of the eagle’s wings. It looked like the snow was ready to tip over, and worse…
The facture was deepening.
Oh, hell no. Not another avalanche.
Then my gaze landed on the sun, and I blinked twice. Yeah, we were going to die.