“I want you to stop,” he allowed through gritted teeth.
“Then shut up.”
We kept running. The forest carved a path for us, thorny bushes parting and saplings leaning away like polite strangers on the street. It was Ezra, I knew. Ezra panting in the night, beckoning the brush to make way.
“Careful,” Ezra gasped, throwing his arm out to keep me from hurtling right over the riverbank.
I stopped short, grabbing him instinctively, a dizzy swoop of fear running through me as I saw how far the darkness stretched to the river below. There was no moon tonight, and the drop was a whispering abyss.
“There.” He gestured—rather, he let the branches gesture for him. “There’s a rope ladder here.”
“To where, precisely?”
“To the river. I have a raft down there.”
My voice thinned. “I can swim, but I’m not exactly good at it.”
He huffed a frustrated breath. “Then don’t fall off the raft.”
My arms shook with the effort of making my way down the swaying ladder. I imagined Ainsley waking and chasing after us. Mustering others to come and hunt us down. I imagined Ezra deciding to kill me after all.
I imagined falling.
“Stop looking down,” he said from below, strained. “It’s easier if you don’t look.”
I reminded myself that he was my enemy. But I needed his help to escape to safety. Then I could kill him for murdering Julian. “You’ve done this before. I haven’t. Don’t tell me what’s easy or not easy.”
“Well, we haven’t got all night for you to familiarize yourself with the ladder,” he snapped back.
I missed a rung and nearly kicked him in the face. After that, I descended slowly and steadily—and silently. His big hands found my waist and guided me to a narrow muddy bank. He seemed to have trouble catching his breath, and I could feel the ragged puffs of airagainst the back of my neck. For a heartbeat, I wanted to stop and stay like that, bolstered and safe. No longer running.
Then we were moving, both of us tugging at a log raft he quickly unleashed from a fallen tree jammed into the bank by a past flood. It was hard, sweaty work. Work that silenced my mind, let me focus only on my aching body—and not on the sharp memory of what I’d done to Ainsley’s men.
What I’d done.
His eyes.
I choked on a small miserable cry.
Ezra looked up, his grimace of exertion softening. “You’ll have plenty of time to think on it later, if you’re lucky,” he said quietly.
I nodded in acknowledgment, silenced by the confused tangle of emotions that gripped my throat.
The current tugged at the raft the moment we freed it from the sucking mud. “Hurry now,” he said, lifting me with a grunt. “Try to stay low and hang on to these ropes. Don’t jump around or move, and I’ll handle the rest, all right?”
The raft bobbed under me, and I swallowed a startled scream as Ezra shoved hard at the bank with a long pole and the river grabbed us and spun us. I’d never been on a boat, let alone a small raft that didn’t appear particularly seaworthy. Frigid water splashed up between the rough-hewn logs lashed together with hemp and leather. I couldn’t feel my fingers, but I held a knot of wet rope like a lifeline.
We tilted. The dark horizon of trees shifted. My stomach gave a cold lurch.
“Can I close my eyes?”
“I don’t see why not,” Ezra said, breathing hard.
I closed them for only a moment. It was worse not knowing if we were about to strike a rock or whether Ezra was still there.
“Can I help?” I shouted over the rushing water. That seemed like a better idea than pretending I wasn’t on a deadly raft.
“No.” He grunted, one hand on the pole and the other on a rope fastened to a knot at his feet. “The river is high today. Higher than it ought to be for rafting. Best we can hope for is to make it a few miles and start walking on the other side.” Each word was a struggle as he strained and shifted, seeming to see things in the water and responding to them with small shifts and quick pushes of the pole. “I can’t hold both—can you brace me?”
