I stalked toward her, steady in step but breathing far too fast. Heat licked through me, pain and anger married into one aching need. For a moment, I forgot my mission. I forgot myself. I knew only the frustration of these past days, and the cause stood right in front of me, ready to meet her punishment.
Clashing steel rang through the forest as we struck again and again. A sharp cry when I sliced through the supple flesh of Seren’s bicep. A grunt when her fist met my windpipe in a crushing blow.
Her eyes blew wide, wild as she rushed me a final time. I caught her around the waist, sending us both toppling to the ground.
I pressed her into the grass with the weight of my body, thigh to thigh and chest to chest. Sunlight glinted off the metal of her blade as she swung it for my ear. My fingers wrapped around her wrist, forcing it above her. I slammed it against the ground again and again until she released the dagger with a gasp.
“It is over, Seren. Your little act of rebellion is done. You have lost. Let us stop this foolishness.” I attempted to pull myself together, to calm my racing heart and remind myself that I needed her alive.
Her heavy exhales sent hot breath across my exposed neck. Her fury hardened into something else entirely as I kept my gaze trained on her face. Glaring at me through her mesmerizing eyes, deepest dark brown and coldest steel gray, she let out a roar.
Pain erupted, icy in my chest. I couldn’t catch my breath. A sputtering sound built low in my throat.
Seren tried to push out from under me, but my head lolled onto her shoulder.
The urge to yell, to scream, to do anything rose within me, but I could not react through the growing panic. Water spilled from my mouth, and I gagged around it. My vision dimmed at the edges. My limbs grew weary.
I was drowning.
My hands grasped for Seren clumsily, pleading with my touch. I wrenched my eyes open and caught the distress which painted her features.
She was not in control of herself. She didn’t mean to do this to me, but she could not stop it either.
Pushing at her hips, I lifted my body away from hers. I coughed and wretched as her mágik pounded through my lungs and throat and nose. I vomited stomachfuls of water into the grass, but still my body brimmed with it.
Seren scrambled away, breathing heavily. Her back hit a tree, the same one that I had pressed her against in my anger. She squeezed her eyes shut, muttering to herself as unbridled fear emanated from her.
It rocketed through me, driving my panic to dangerous heights.
“Stop. Stop. Stop!” I could barely hear her screeching over the blackness that threatened to wash me away. The pain was fading now.
The last thing I saw were her eyes, the soft curtain of her hair pulled free from her braids. I smiled—such a foolish thing to do, gazing at the woman who would be my end—and unconsciousness claimed me.
Chapter nineteen
Harkin
The ache of drowning overwhelmed my senses. I clutched at my burning chest, heaving painful, hacking breaths that seared and stabbed at my waterlogged lungs. My mouth watered with the urge to retch, and spittle dribbled over my lips, numb with cold.
It was a dark night, the air oppressive. The sun had long since settled below the low line of the mountains, and I didn’t know how long I had lain unconscious in the snow.
The fight came flooding back in images of glinting metal and dripping blood.
I wished I had not let her bait me. I had been a fool to falter under the weight of her provocation, but she was so infuriating.
Seren was gone. I knew that with chilling certainty.
“Goddesses damn that fucking woman.” I let out a string of muttered curses and pushed myself to my feet, remembering the dagger wound at my ribs a painful moment too late.
I peeled back my tunic, torn through and blood-sticky. It was a bitter, deep hurt, and a crusty mess, but I would survive.
A sharp, painful inhale, a quick beat, and I was pushing forward toward the stable.
Equinox was restless. Her hooves stamped into the ground, ears pinned back, but her keen nose led our path. A trail of broken branches and fallen blood cut through the forest.
We followed her path for hours. Exhaustion and blood loss weighed on me. My head felt both stone weighted and dizzyingly light as I focused on keeping my seat.
As the moon reached its apex, I rode upon the crumbling facade of an old church. I allowed Equinox to circle the building once, but did not see a point where Seren’s trail continued. She must have stopped here for the night.
