He hauled me up. My legs wrapped around his waist, and I sobbed into his shoulder. With his hands pressed into my back and cupping the nape of my neck, he said, “We’ll get them out.”
I fell into his warmth, leaning into the softness of his skin. I held onto him tighter as reality crashed into me, as if the mountain peak broke off and crushed me beneath it.
62
Dae
Never before had I pushed this hard for so long in my shifted form.
Without The Order members to clear the veins of the Black Pool through Witches Pass, we needed to hug the mountain. The constant change in incline and jagged declines strained my joints. My body was desperate for sustenance, but only meager scraps remained from our packed bag.
Still, I ran at a steady pace with Ro clutching my back.
Days had passed since we’d last slept for more than a couple hours at a time, since we were the ones on patrol two nights ago. Something about a behemoth dragon nearly roasting us to death made it difficult to sleep soundly on the mountainside on our way back through the Pass.
Not only did my animal senses beg me to turn back as we again neared the Black Pool, but so did my common sense. Fleeing the outpost had been one thing, but reentering The Order’s settlement after that was quite another.
We faced a difficult task: enter the settlement unnoticed, free her friends undetected, and leave without being followed. Ro would make it out, and so would her friends. I would ensure it, no matter the cost. It was that resolve that pushed me as pebbles and uneven stone dug into my paws with every bound.
Our best chances lay with capitalizing on the fanfare that bringing in two magic wielders would stir. What had once been a steady flow of magically blessed had diminished over several months to a pathetic trickle. Greedy members would fight for their shot at infusing themselves with secondary and tertiary magic.
If what Ro told me was true, that the woman, Melody, wielded light, something unknown to the magically blessed in our time, she would ignite a frenzy. Her friend, Tio, would make an adequate sacrifice as well.
Exhaustion began weighing me down, each jump less graceful than the last. The sun was halfway to setting. Maneuvering the mountain greatly hindered our travel time, even in my shifted form.
My paw slipped on loose shale, sending pebbles and stones careening down the steep decline to my left. For the first time since the morning, I paused.
“What’s wrong?” Ro asked. She wouldn’t say it, but I knew she was exhausted, too. Her body must have ached straddling me for so long. And not in the way I wanted her to.
“Nothing,” I lied, continuing with less fervor than before, disguising my fatigue as decisive consideration on the slippery terrain.
“Dae,” she spoke into my mind, her celestial voice entrapping my heart, just like when she held that mad glimmer in her eye the day she stood above me, aiming her arrow.
“I love your voice, do you know that?”Maybe it was the tiredness gnawing at my awareness, or a hopeful distractionfrom the soreness wrapping my muscles. Or maybe it was simply a truth that I wanted her to know.
“What?”she asked, confusion clear in her mind’s voice.
“Your voice. When I hear it, it’s like a birdsong in a lush forest. Meant to be there. It sounds the same in your mind, you know.”
My feline lips curved at her silence. “And your hair. When the light hits it, it almost glows, like the gleam of a roaring fire.”
More silence.
“And your eyes. Warm brown like the hue of fresh soil, but tinted green like life blooms from within them.”Filling my mind with thoughts of her distracted from the pain.
“You’re welcome to compliment me anytime, you know,” I teased.
“I’m scared,” was all she said when she finally replied.
Maybe some would have been offended that she didn’t reciprocate, sharing flattering words in return. But those two words she offered held more value, and my heart swelled at the same time that it ached.
Vulnerability. A part of her she so rarely shared with anyone, something she buried deep beneath capable skills and quick retorts. It was more intimate than cheap flirtation and praising words.
“When we get them out, where will we go? Straight to your camp?”All I could offer was distraction.
My elbow cracked as I prowled over a fallen log in the sparse trees, physical evidence of the wear on my body.
“We should go to your brothers.”
