Keeran gripped the reins with one hand and rubbed his brow with the other, suddenly looking as tired as she felt.
“It’s got worse, more quickly than I would have ever thought possible. I passed through Drias with the Peregrinians about eight months ago and it was nothing like that. The Astraea stopped us on our way to the forest about a week ago, but we had no humans with us so they just stole what they needed and knocked a few people about, under the pretence of suspecting them of selling to humans. Just flexing their muscles, really. From the number of empty buildings we saw, I imagine Drias has been hit hard. They probably once belonged to humans, or people who were unfortunate enough to be made an example of. The Astraea are scaring everyone into not employing the humans they haven’t rounded up yet.”
“Where are they taking them?” Aelia stared at him, eyes wide with horror as he spoke. How had it been allowed to escalate so quickly?
Keeran shrugged. “I don’t know, but a few people I spoke with suspected they’re being taken to the coast.”
“The coast?” Aelia repeated, thoughts stumbling over one another too fast for her to untangle them. “Why?”
“No one seems to know.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Aelia argued. “Why would they risk going so close to Llmera when that would take them right under the King’s nose?”
Keeran avoided her gaze, sighing through his nose, before finally answering.
“According to the people I spoke to in Drias, the Astraea have the King’s full support.”
Aelia looked at him from under her brows, jaw clenched to the point of pain. “What?”
“The red insignia on their uniform belongs to the King. No one seems to know why or how, but there’s no doubt that it’s true.”
“So what do we do?” she wondered out loud, staring off into the distance as she tried to make sense of it.
“We push on. We know they’re headed to the coast. If we can’t catch up with them on the way, we’ll head to Llmera.”
Aelia’s brows dropped with a sudden realisation.
“Why are you doing this?” She watched his face carefully, but his features gave nothing away.
“You saw the people back there, kicked onto the streets, just waiting for the Astraea to come back and pick them up,” Keeran said, staring at the horizon.
“Yeah, but why now? How long have you been with the Peregrinians? You must have seen that all before.” Aelia was surprised she hadn’t questioned it sooner. He’d left the Peregrinians to chase after Beserkir all on his own… why?
This time, he twisted in the saddle to face her, and she almost flinched at the depth of the black in his eyes. It was as though something other than Keeran was looking back out at her. Whatever it was, it was the very thing that had scared her so much when she’d first laid eyes on him.
“Because after I saw what happened in Callodosis, I decided that man needed to die.”
Aelia had to look away. Not because she disagreed, far from it, but because whatever it was that was looking out of Keeran’s eyes sent shivers scuttling over her skin.
“Who is he to you?” Keeran asked, surprising her enough to make her look back up. To her relief, his eyes were dark brown again. “The man you’re rescuing?”
Aelia wasn’t sure how to answer. He was more than a friend, he was as much family as Otis had been. In the end, she settled with the truth.
“He’s the only friend I have left.”
Keeran nodded before looking back out at the horizon.
“Then we'd better get him back, but right now, we need to find somewhere to shelter before that hits.” He gestured with the reins up ahead, drawing Aelia’s attention to the dark storm clouds rolling towards them.
Aelia glared at them with bitter exasperation. It looked like, on top of everything else, they were going to get soaked.
Soaked didn’t even come closeto describing the state they were in when they finally found a disused barn a little way off the road. Lightning forked through the sky, illuminating the abandoned building just long enough for Aelia to spot it, the clap of thunder reverberating in her chest. The horses skittered sideways across the road, moving in any direction but forward in their terror, and Aelia clung on for dear life as her exhausted legs threatened to give up on her.
Eventually, they reached the barn and Keeran leapt from his horse with more energy than Aelia thought he had any right to have. He encouraged his terrified beast to follow as he tried to open the barn doors.
“Wait there,” Keeran yelled to her over the torrential rain, before he disappeared inside to tie up his horse.
There was no way he was helping her out of the saddle, especially not after he’d had to heave her into it in Drias. Her horse panicked as Keeran’s disappeared from sight, and she tightened her reins. She tried to calm it, but all that came out was garbled nonsense as fear tied her tongue in knots. Deciding it was now or never, she freed her foot from the stirrup. The rain had her already tight trousers clinging to her, making movement infinitely harder than it needed to be, but she managed to swing her leg behind her. Her ribs screamed, pain lancing through her chest like she’d been branded, but she clenched her teeth, her momentum taking her past the point of no return. Lightning tore its way through the sky, followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder that broke her horse’s self-control. With her not fully in the saddle, she was powerless when it reared onto its back legs, sending her crashing to the ground beneath it.
