Fear slams through my chest so hard I can’t think. What if she was next to the wall when it was falling? What if she already got fucking crushed? I turn and start to run, heading back the way I came, but the ground is splitting, opening up—
“Osrik!”
I snap my head around, and there she is, racing toward me from the stables. Her yellow hair whips around her pale, terrified face as we run for each other.
She’s too close to danger.
I hear another crack of ground, and a man screams. Rissa leaps for me. My hands shoot out and I catch her, and then I turn and run as fast as I can, just as the stables beside us start crumbling.
Her body jostles with my pounding steps, but I try to outrun the rot that’s tearing through the earth. Because I’m not going to let it tear throughher.
No fucking way.
Around us, snow splinters, and crevices start to sink in with corroded soil and a stench so foul it turns my stomach. My pounding steps take us to the end of Cliffhelm’s outer fence, and I leap over the stacked bricks. When my feet land on the other side, I keep going, tearing ahead, my heart pounding and blood pumping so loudly I can’t hear anything else. I’ll keep running all the way back to Brackhill if I have to. I’ll keep her safe.
I have to keep her safe.
But her voice suddenly pierces through my panicked brain. “Osrik!” She pinches me on the side of the neck hard enough to yank my attention, to realize I’ve run a really fucking long way. “The shaking stopped!”
I skid to a halt in the snow, breath panting heavily. Turning, I look around to see the rest of our soldiers havealready stopped, everyone facing the way we came. Above us, timberwings circle.
We all wait, watching, but the splits don’t spread, and the ground stays still and quiet.
Rissa’s right. It stopped.
Thank. Fuck.
“You can put me down now,” she says after a few more minutes, her voice shaky. Her body shaky too.
“Absolutely fucking not.”
She doesn’t argue, and her hands still clutch the back of my neck. I’m pumped through with so much adrenaline, fucking reeling with the aftermath as I note who’s still here.
Who’s still alive.
As more minutes pass, timberwings start landing beside us, and we all stare at the crumbled remains of Cliffhelm and the split-apart landscape below that’s littered with bodies from the battleground.
“We’re alright,” Rissa murmurs to me, her body finally easing off from the shaking.
But all I can think of is how I couldn’t find her.
When she squirms again, I finally relent and set her down. Then I glare at her. “Stay in the barracks. That’s what I told you,” I snarl. “I told you ten times tostay in the fucking barracks!”
Her eyes narrow and she fists her hands on her hips and looks down her nose at me. I don’t know how she manages it with me towering over her, but she does. “Don’t you speak to me like that. I am not a child, nor am I one of your soldiers you can order around.”
“No,” I say, taking a step forward. “You are my woman, and if I’m going to keep you safe,during a fucking battle, then you have to listen to me!”
She’s got a scarf wrapped around her neck, and she’s bundled up in a thick leather and fur coat, but it looks like hertemper is keeping her plenty warm with the way her cheeks flare red. “Ididstay in the barracks,” she retorts. “Until the ground started shaking. Then what did you expect me to do?”
“Stay. In. The. Barracks!”
She scoffs.
Scoffs.
I’ve had men three times her size cower when I yelled like this, but not her. And deep in my gut, I know I’m crazed with anger right now because if she’d gotten hurt or killed, I would have lost my mind.
So I try to take a deep breath to calm my shit down. “I told you our plan, Rissa. I explained that you might feel some shaking.”
