I draw two knives, leaving Panotii to steer himself. “My left now? Or my left when I turn around?”
“Your left now.”
“So my right.”
Griffin shoots me a sidelong glance. “This isn’t funny, Cat.”
“It never is.” We’re close enough to the Ice Plains now that magical creatures might wander down from the north, looking for food—or fun. Neither option is good for us.
I turn around, focusing on Kato first. He looks shaggy, disreputable, and incredibly handsome. His bright cobalt eyes stand out like jewels in his tanned face. “You’re looking rather uncivilized. Did you lose your razor somewhere?” I let my eyes slide to the right and search for movement amid the trees.
Kato scrubs his hand over the thick coating of whiskers on his jaw. Then his arm drops, and his long fingers curl around the handle of the mace lying in his lap. “The beard keeps my face warm. Interesting development with your hair, by the way,” he comments back, giving me a reason to stay turned around. “You can borrow my comb.”
“Thanks, but I’d probably break it.” There’s a springy, dark frame all around my face. The dry season is officially over. “It’s my Medusa look, minus the snakes.”
Quietly scoffing, Kato lifts his weapon to rest it against his shoulder. “I doubt you’ll be turning men to stone anytime soon.”
“Good to know,” I murmur distractedly, catching a flash of gray fur, a distended, barrel-like body, and four thick legs.
Carver rolls his shoulders, warming them up. Flynn draws his ax and the short sword he’s taken to carrying as the creature melts back into the woods.
“Thoughts?” Griffin asks.
A pair of blazing eyes materializes from the shadows. Then another. And another.
Bollocks!They know I’ve seen them. They aren’t trying to be discreet anymore.
They approach, and their new proximity brings a prickle of power to my searching senses. The sinister vibrations of magic weaving through the forest along with them sweep over me like a harsh, dry wind. I tense. The power emanating from the creatures is the kind of stuff I wouldn’t touch in a million years, a darkness so deep and hungry that no one who gets sucked into it ever crawls back out again.
Suppressing a shudder, I turn back around, but not before something instinctive within me pulses, probing deeper into the dark magic. A yawning pit of immorality overlaps the creatures’ own disturbing presence. The familiar essence haunted my childhood and makes my blood run cold now.
Mother’s here.
A hard knot forms beneath my ribs, and suddenly I can’t breathe. My eyes find Griffin’s. She’ll rip apart everyone I love—and laugh while she’s doing it.
Griffin’s eyes widen. I must look as terrified as I feel.
Pressure builds behind my forehead, and then a low, eerie ripple of a voice invades my mind.“Coming home, Talia?”
Gasping, I slam down my mental shields so hard and fast that my head goes numb, and I see spots. I hope Mother’s brain rings for an hour.
“Talk to me, Cat.” Griffin’s concerned voice seems to come to me from miles, and seasons, and lifetimes away. “What just happened?”
“Alpha Fisa.” I blink, trying to clear my head. “Andromeda is driving the creatures.” I tighten my grip around my knives because I don’t want Griffin to see my hands shake. How can Mother possibly drive three creatures at onceandhave enough power left over to get into my head?
Griffin eases Brown Horse even closer to Panotii, and the two horses move like they’re one.
Swallowing hard, I rub my thumbs over the handles of my knives, warming the metal. Mother thinks she’s above everyone. She confuses might with right. Strike that—all she cares about is might. And like the strongest, most vicious animal around, she plays with her prey, wanting to see it cower and sweat.
“I doubt they’ll attack unless we make a move. At least not yet. She’s just toying with us for now and gathering information, which some creature or other has probably been doing for days,” I add bitterly, clenching my knives until my hands hurt. “We didn’t hide my blood. What we did that morning Daphne stabbed me—none of it was enough.” I almost died trying to dilute the evidence of my heritage in the bathhouse pool. I poured lemon juice all over a gaping wound, and Andromedastillfound me. Talk about a failure of epic proportions. She knows I’m alive. She knows where I am. She knows where I came from, and there’s a very good chance she knows who I’m with. Everything I didn’t want.
Carver unsheathes his sword and lays it across his lap. “We were on an open road for days. Nothing followed us from home. We would have known.”
“Somethingfollowed, probably from the air. This is the second wave, and I’ll bet they came from the opposite direction.” From the Ice Plains above Fisa, where Mother latched on to them like a leech and then sent them to do her bidding.
“You’re a threat to her. To her throne. Why is she so Gods damned bent on getting you back?” Griffin asks in a low growl.
I shrug, the casual movement belying the sharp twisting in my gut. “I don’t know. It’s an obsession I can’t even begin to understand. All I know is that if she gets her hands on me, she’ll drag me back to Fisa for fifty years of fun and torture. She’s evil and insane.”
