A blind guess, we’re headed into the forest.
That makes sense, with the packed-dirt trail, narrow and windy, firm under my boots, and the sudden rich smell of wet grass and leaves, and with where we are in Canada.
I mean, I don’t knowexactlywhere we are, not since we ran from the lake, but from the trees surrounding the remote town, I’d guess we’re headed into the thick of national park territory.
The packed dirt beneath my boots firms my steps, and I’m grateful for it, because I’m not slipping all over.
But I am leaning—leaning too much to the side, staggering into the warrior’s solid arm every other moment, and I can’t even summon the care to worry about it.
It’s not the throbbing sensation in my mouth, slicked with the metallic taste of blood, that’s exhausting me, or the constantthrumming ache in my back, or even the hot burn in my shoulder.
It’s all of it, woven together into a tapestry, and I fight it with every step.
My lashes are lowering that bit more with every heartbeat, until my boots are scuffing on the dirt trail, and my balance is tilting me into the cold warrior.
He notices.
He matches the steady pace of the unit through the forest, his steps unfaltering, but—as the torches are lifted throughout the unit, and light illuminates the fae and the forest all around us—I see that his chin tucks to his shoulder as he looks down at me.
His stare holds for a while, heartbeats, and I have the distant thought that he’s waiting to see if I’ll collapse right on the path.
I push through the lull as best as I can.
The ragged sensation drawing through my serrated lungs is hoarsening my breaths.
From the waist up, I loll with every staggered step, and it must be annoying somehow, because there’s a huff on my right, where the female keeps our pace.
The rope that tethers me to the cold warrior’s belt is a swing between us, just swaying and swaying in the spotted crimson torchlight.
In that shadowy light, his pale hand reaches for me.
I flinch as his hand grips my bicep, firm, and he hoists me closer to him.
My shoulder knocks into his muscled arm, hard enough that I grunt, but before I can stumble at the impact, his hold hooks—and he supports my weight with that one grip.
Like I’m nothing more than a doll, like I weigh less than a breath in the breeze, he just holds me by the bicep, and it keeps me upright.
He turns his cheek to me.
We follow the path in a row of three, three, three, all the way down to the captives and backed by some guards.
Eventually, the trail spills out into a small clearing, barely two metres wide, and surrounded by trees.
Way too tight a fit for the whole unit.
Ahead, the general tugs on the reins of her steed, turning it in a crescent around the clearing—and that triggers stillness through the unit.
She speaks, and her tongue is sharp.
Like all the other times I have heard their barbed language, it sets me on edge.
In my daze, my attention drifts from the words I don’t understand to the clearing.
It’s not exactly spacious.
It’s no open grass area with a frosty meadow. It’s just a small perimeter of a couple of metres, hugged by trees, and really brown.
But with the glare of the torchlight building up, I look through the gaps between the thick, sturdy tree trunks, and I see another small clearing of the same kind, and to the right, another, and the longer I look, the better I see that it goes on like that for a few clearings.
