To my surprise, they walked our horses off another car further back, and the massive beauty I’d been riding was waiting patiently for me.
“Let’s go,” Dorian snapped, heading for our mounts.
“He’s almost back to himself,” I grumbled.
“He’s not, but he’s faking pretty well,” Rilen said. “We’ll get down to the gate and make him stop for the night. None of us can go on like this.”
Roran purred in my ear teasingly as he walked by to get to his horse.
We rode most of the day at a calm pace. It wasn’t a long ride, but Aiko had told us the road became more treacherous as we got closer to the gate.
He wasn’t wrong.
The road started to wind up and up just after noon and kept getting steeper and steeper until the poor horses were having trouble with their footing.
Roran, Rilen, and I climbed off and led the horses through some of the most treacherous parts of the path.
None of us would let Dorian down from his saddle.
He could walk, but walking up the worst part of the trek would have set him back.
He kept Savion’s head tied to his horse.
It took us near three hours to get through just a few miles of the path. But finally, and very suddenly, it opened up, and we were on a wide, grassy plateau.
In the distance, the South Ocean gleamed, and the rock grotto that held the gate stood, stark against that white and blue.
By the time we reach the grotto, the sun was ready to slide down behind the water in the far west. We set up a small camp and with the weather so very different from the north—where the true cold was approaching for the year—no one wanted to sleep in a hot tent. We just unrolled our bedding under the sky.
As the sun went down, there was a massive lightning storm just to our east.
“Think that will reach us?” I asked.
“Maybe. We can hide in the grotto if we need to,” Rilen said, considering the stone cave. “It doesn’t seem the magic would mind.” He turned to Dorian. “How do you feel?”
“Angry.” His word was clipped.
“At whom?” I asked.
“Myself. That I fell for that bullshit line he fed me. That I allowed myself to be drugged.”
I moved to kneel next to Dorian. I put my hands on my knees and stared at the ground. “You have no idea how much it means to me that you would put a three thousand-year-old feud to the side to make sure I was safe.” He tried to wave me off, but I caught his hand. “No. Because I know if it was anyone aside from me or Roran or Rilen, you would have let them die. I know it.” I put the captured hand over my heart. “I know it here. You’ve been through too much, seen too much to let people affect you.”
He stared at me, his gaze tracing my features. “You’re too good for us.”
Tossing my head back, I laughed. Hard. “I decapitated my own father just a day ago, and you’re saying I’m too good for you?”
Dorian pulled me into his lap. “Yes. You’re too sweet.”
“Did you not see the blood I wiped off my sword?”
“I was too focused on that heaving bosom.” His hand slipped up and found my breast.
“Are you going to let us help you heal?” I asked, quieting.
“Will you try Roran’s blood?”
The idea of tasting Roran’s blood—or really any of their blood—pushed hot lust through my veins, landing between my legs and making me sigh with desire. “I can try.”
