His steadying hands gripped my arms. “We have to move. Kasia can shield us. We won’t be seen, but we need to keep quiet.”
So I wasn’t going crazy after all. “Thank the gods.”
She reappeared again so we could carry Tio and Mel, and then we were off. I wanted to run, to put as much distance between us and the camp we left disoriented. Until we could blend in with Windguard citizens in a populated town, I felt like a glowing beacon. We would be the only living things in these woods, a clear target for anyone who followed.
From the way we slowed our pace, I recognized that Kasia and Dae knew sentinels were stationed nearby.
Tio groaned. The noise might as well have been a howling wolf against the soundless night. Kasia paused and scanned the trees for a hint of someone watching. I did the same, readying to drop Melody’s arm to reach for my arrow.
He groaned again, and the bushes rustled. I saw movement in the dark, shadows lurking about, sentinels searching for the origin of the noise. At the opposite end of our lineup, Dae spotted movement from his side of the path, too. In a coordinated effort, Dae gently placed Tio on the ground, and once he finished, Kasia released her hand from him. The moment she let go, her shielding fell and Dae shifted. Wastingno time, I released Melody and poised my arrow, firing it into the woods.
A woman gasped for breath as she clumsily stumbled in the growth, cracking branches and snapping twigs on her way. A man’s scream started to paint the air to my left, but was snuffed out a second later. Dae leapt back onto the path, his feline teeth glistening with a new dark sheen.
“The next set of sentinels probably heard that. Let’s cut west, now,”Dae commanded.
Easier said than done. Tio hadn’t woken after he’d stirred, so we still had to maneuver two unconscious bodies through the uneven brush and thickets for hours. Whenever exhaustion begged me to stop, I recalled what awaited behind us—and ahead.
A peak of the mountains came into view through the canopy of trees, and I shuddered with relief. Kasia had stopped shielding us a while back, saving her power in case we needed it.
“Did they know?” I asked through wheezing breaths. “The Order, about your shielding?”
“Nope. Kept that to myself. I have some herbalist abilities. Very useful skill set when they’d started running off the wildlife up here. A few berries are better than none, so I made myself integral to the organization. Not high enough to warrant getting siphoned magic from others, not low enough to be considered useless.”
“Why hide it from them?” I asked. “Don’t you want to help their cause?”
“Fuck no. These assholes kidnapped my husband, drained his magic, and because he survived it, they kept him as a prisoner. I wanted to get them out, tried thinking of ways to do it, but…”
She didn’t have to finish for me to understand. She was one woman against the entire Order.
“They deserve to burn for what they’ve done.” I glanced down at Melody, her head bobbing between us, her golden ponytail bouncing with every step. Still no signs she’d wake soon. A brief thought of Nora crossed my mind, of how she might single-handedly raze The Order for harming her sister twice.
Kasia sighed. “They won’t. They’re too powerful already. From what I’ve gathered, they’ll be making their move soon.”
“To do what?” Dae asked.
“I don’t know. It won’t be pretty, though. I doubt they’ll leave much of Windguard left to tell the tale. A populus of magicless civilians? Bugs beneath their boots. Any they keep will be slaves like my husband, no doubt. I’m going to get him off this cursed continent. We’ll sail across the ocean to Duski, a place where magic wielders and magicless alike live together freely.” Kasia halted abruptly. “I need to rest.”
I definitely wasn’t opposed to that idea. We adjusted Melody, laying her head in my lap. My muscles screamed in relief, and I wondered if I’d even be able to get up again. Braxius had tracked us down and stashed himself in my hood. He crawled out and stretched his little wings, landing on a branch above and chomping on a leaf.
Dae placed Tio against a tree, then sat at my side, pulling me in by the back of my neck to press a kiss to my temple.
“I was worried about you,” he said. “You were late.” We hadn’t gotten a chance to speak about how everything went down. But there were things I wasn’t willing to share.
“Do you think they’ll wake up? What do you think happened?” I stroked Melody’s bangs away from her forehead.Remembering the way Tio’s eyes brightened when he spoke about her made my own well with tears.
I needed him to be okay, and he needed her to be.
“Sedation should wear off before the sun gets too high, based on how long we’ve had them,” Kasia said, stretching her limbs. “Good news is the prisoners fled east, we’re headed west, and chances are The Order will be searching south. Now we’ve just got to survive the travel. Lucky we’ve got an herbalist with us.” She smiled beneath the faint blue of the coming dawn.
The world seemed so dark. The sun would surely rise, but it would take no darkness with it.
We managed a few more miles of travel, broken up by many breaks, our bodies far too tired to carry on in that manner.
The sky transformed into a beautiful shade of orange when I rested my head against Dae’s shoulder during a break I hoped would last longer than five minutes. With the rising heat, I didn’t doubt any bodily contact would soon become too stifling, so I soaked in the feel of his sturdy strength while I could.
Tio groaned and murmured, the first sounds he’d made in hours. I scrambled across the leaf laden ground, racing to his side. “Tio! Tio, are you awake?”
I cupped his face in my hands, his beard stubble stabbing like tiny needles. His eyes fluttered, eventually finding the strength to hold them open. “Ro?” he mumbled, barely audible.
