“Merc! A rope!”
I grab a length of his hair and yank back. He doesn’t shift his position, but he as glares over his shoulder, I shove the rope in his face.
“Start pulling!” I holler at our savior.
Taking the loose length, I wrap it around myself, well aware that I haven’t the strength required to hold on. Instantly, I’m rising out of the water, and the scum, green and brown and viscous as old treacle, clings to my hair and body as if the moat is possessive—or at the very least on the side of thebalas.
“Take the rope!” I yell at Merc as he turns back to our attackers. “Merc!”
Higher and higher up I go, but now I’m fighting the rescue, trying to backpedal against the slippery stones.
“Merc!”
Just as I reach the lip of the walling, the first of thebalasgoes for him.
Hard hands grab me and yank me up onto the embankment, and the instant I flop onto the dry ground, I crawl back, throwing myself over the lip.
Just as the biggest of thebalaslunges forward with a foul splash, jaws wide open and trained on my mercenary’s head.
“Merc!” I fight against whoever’s holding me in place. “Merc—”
“You must stop,” someone says crossly. “This is no good. At least you are safe—”
Thebalasstrikes with deadly accuracy, the teeth clapping together on the arm he raises to cover his face with—and then the feral beast goes under the surface and takes its prey with him.
Merc is gone.
The horror of it silences me, and in desperation, I search the churning water for anything, well aware that what I will see could certainly break me: A leg. A hand. Fates preserve us… a head, where I can finally meet those mismatched eyes because death has already taken the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met—
I fall into the moat, my body tumbling forward.
Instantly, I’m yanked back up again and shaken as a rag doll. “Stop it! He’s not worth your life!”
The golden aura imprints on me first, and then the handsome, virtuous face and the royal insignia come into focus. “Julion? What are you doing here?”
“You are all right,” he says in a gentle way.
I have a thought that I’d love to hear that tone from Merc. And this snaps me back to attention.
“Not without him, I’m not.” Freeing myself from the rope I wrapped around my body, I throw the length back over the lip and lean out once more. “Merc, the rope! Take… the rope…”
My voice trails off. So far below me—an impossible distance down from where I lie, coated with scum, soddened and saddened—the moat water is restless, but the water bubbles are ceasing. No matter how desperately I look for those black braids and that harsh face, the broadsword and broader shoulders, all I get is an occasionalbalastail that slices up and curls back into the murky depths.
And then everything begins to still.
A kind hand lands on my shoulder and I jump. “Fear not. I shall protect you.”
Except I don’t want the knight in shining armor. I want the mercenary.
“Merc…”
Putting my head in my hands, I fall backward and weep as though I’ve known him all my life. We were so close to getting away. If only he had—
“Fates!” Julion barks.
As I drop my slimed hands, I… can’t believe what I’m seeing. For reasons I cannot fathom, Merc appears to be riding on the back of a crestingbalas, the broadsword like a bit between those jaws, his powerful body straddling the back of the neck as he steers the forward motion by jerking on the hilt or the tip by turns. Meanwhile, thebalasis in an absolute fury at its passenger, and this anger is the propeller that sends them both on this hellfire ride—
He’s coming right for me. Right… at the wall.
