He looked over his shoulder at her, his gaze softening. “We’re almost home. We’ll be out of these lands soon.”
Home.He said it like it was supposed to bring her comfort, but it only reminded her that she had lost hers.
She followed Damien in silence, each step feeling heavier than the last. They crossed from grass to dirt, following a path winding up a hill. The sky brightened as they crested it, but inside, that weight didn’t lift.
Behind them, the group’s celebration echoed faintly—like laughter in the aftermath of a funeral.
And Luna had a hollow sense that the worst wasn’t behind them.
It was waiting ahead.
Chapter 29
Kalt Ravine
The sun had begun its descent by the time they reached the main dusty road leading to the town of Kalt Ravine. It took longer than expected; images of the bodies in the ballroom and on the battleground tangled in Luna’s mind, making her stop to vomit until nothing was left, then she’d dry heave. Damien, true to his word, waited by the outskirts of town, near the river for the humans. Once they had their items, they all walked the rest of the way together.
In front of the town was a pair of large black iron gates, with two guards standing on either side. As they approached, Damien leaned over to Luna and whispered, “Just look like you belong and don’t catch their eye.”
Without a thought, she glanced up at the guards. Two figures loomed against the gate, disdain filling their eyes. The guard with a black curly moustache that dominated his face kicked a few empty beer bottles littering the ground out of sight, as best he could. “State yer . . . business . . .” The rest of his sentence was a drunken, incomprehensible slur of words. Then, as if that single statement had drained him of all his energy, he closed his eyes and passed out.
The other guard, with a protruding chin and small grey eyes, wasn’t much to look at. He scanned the group, his gaze lingering a little too long on each woman, seemingly uninterested in his partner’s state of consciousness. When his eyes landed on Luna, he smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes, wrapping her in a sense of unease. She looked down and shuffled closer to Damien, who slipped an arm around her and pulled her in, as if his hold alone could shield her from any danger they would face.
“Well, you heard him,” the guard said, finally addressing the group. “State the reason for your travel.”
Sael answered, “We only seek to rest our weary heads after a long, long trek.”
After what seemed like an eternity, the guard turned his attention from Luna to Sael, sizing him up and down before he made a clucking noise with his cheek. “We’ve been asked to keep a lookout for a lady . . . kind of like this one here. The reward for her is quite handsome.”
Luna’s feet suddenly became the most interesting things in the world. A rush of heat climbed up her neck and she forced herself not to look up, as if acknowledging his statement would be confirmation.
Gawen began to scream. Not just a little scream, either—an earth-shattering one. The high-pitched wail seemed to send shock waves through the air so powerful that Luna could’ve sworn he split the clouds above.
The guard’s face scrunched, his hands flying to cover his ears. “Shut that thing up!”
“He’s just a baby,” Taemin replied calmly but not meekly. “If I knew how to make him stop, don’t you think I would do so?”
The guard hissed, “I know one way—”
“I have never!” Taemin interrupted, rage flashing in his eyes as he narrowed them at the guard. “How dare you threaten a child—and an innocent baby at that.” His voice was controlled, lethal in a cold, calculating manner, like a crossbow drawn taut, locked onto its target. “Clearly, he is tired, and here you stand, in our way, all high and mighty with coin on your mind.” He kept one arm curled tightly around Gawen, the other slicing through the air like a furious mother goose flapping her wings, ready to poke out the guard’s eyeballs. “You should be ashamed of yourself. This woman has been travelling with us day and night. If she was wanted by King Hendrix, don’t you think we would’ve grabbed the reward for ourselves by now?”
The guard hadn’t mentioned anything about the king on the hunt for her. Trepidation hit Luna like a bucket of water being thrown over her head. How much did Taemin know?
Continuing with his scolding, Taemin said, “The audacity and ignorance you’vedispla—”
“Alright,” the guard said, attempting to interrupt Taemin, but there was no stopping the insults; they came one after another.
The guard could only nod and mutter the occasional, “yes, sir” and “my apologies.” After several long minutes of Taemin’s assault and Gawen’s continuous screams, the guard finally had enough and opened the gate, waving the group through.
The creak of iron put an end to Taemin’s barrage; he strolled forward, chin raised with an air of superiority as if the presence of the crying baby in his arms gave him an unassailable edge. The rest of the group trailed behind him.
Damien’s gaze stayed fixed on Taemin, shadowed with distrust. He hardly seemed to care that the guard had nearly recognized Luna. When they were a good distance away from the guard, Luna asked Damien about it, her voice low enough that only he could hear.
“If the guard had insisted you were, in fact, the king’s runaway,” Damien replied, “I would have had a fight on my hands, which wouldn’t have been ideal, but I expected to run into roadblocks like that. What I hadn’t expected is for a human to be”—he made a face, searching for the correct word—“helpful.”
Fair enough. He’d made it abundantly clear what he thought of the human species earlier.
Beyond the gates, the dirt road ended, replaced with stone. The buildings in town stood so close together it was impossible to tell where one started and another ended.
