“Actually, you never left. Roane brought you back.” I frown. “He has the power to regenerate creatures… Bring them back from the dead. Has it happened before?”
“Not to my knowledge.” She pauses. “Are you sure this isn’t a prank?”
“A prank? We were in the middle of a battle with the centaurs!” I spread my hands. “Who would have time for that?”
“And Talton?”
I had completely forgotten about the raven, caught up in the fight and Ardruna’s death. “I don’t know.” I stroke her fur, the symbol on her upper leg. “Ardruna…”
“Let’s go get Talton and head back!” Roane calls out. He has mounted the horse and now trots toward us. “Druna, are you up for it?”
The lioness slowly gets to her feet. “Yeah. Get Talton first.”
“Don’t worry.” Roane reaches a hand down to me, beckoning. “Come. We ride together.”
My hesitation is infinitesimal. Getting up on shaky legs, I grab his hand and it engulfs mine. Then he’s hauling me easily up onto the horse, my shoulder screaming. In a swift move, he bends and wraps his other hand around my hip, somehow getting me into the saddle so that I’m seated sideways in front of him.
“It will be more comfortable if you face forward,” he says, the deep rumble of his voice, the heat of him seeping through me, making every part of my body tighten and ache. “Let me help you.”
He places his hands on my waist and lifts me—again, with seemingly infinite ease—until I can swing my leg over the horse’s back and settle astride before him.
Which makes things even worse. Now my entire back is flush with his broad chest, my ass ensconced between his muscular thighs. When he sweeps aside my long hair, a shiver wracks my entire body.
“Have you ridden before?” he asks.
“Only once on a neighbor’s mule,” I admit.
“Well, this will be nothing like it,” he promises and without another word, he nudges the horse forward into a canter.
We slow down as we move deeper into the gorge, the horse whinnying and shying away from the corpses of the centaurs we took down—now split into horses and riders, both dead.
I brush my hand down the horse’s strong neck, through the short mane. There’s a symbol there, stamped into the flesh, some sort of flower, and I’m fascinated by these brands on every creature of this world. It reminds me of the symbol on Ardruna’s leg.
It’s nagging at me, poking at my mind. Different symbols for different stories…
“There.” Roane’s voice vibrates against my back. “Do you see them?”
The rolled-up rugs I’d seen? Two are lying on the ground, shaking. Our horse stops a few feet away from one as it unrolls and a woman scrambles out of it, eyes wild. Her long hair is pale and tangled, her body skeletal and bluish. When she sees us, she stumbles backward, standing on cloven hooves instead of feet, and lifts her hands in a placating gesture.
“It’s the nymphs they took,” I whisper.
“We mean you no harm!” Roane shouts. “We’re looking for a raven.”
Now she looks stricken, even as she nods. She gestures ahead. “Please…” Her voice catches. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
“We won’t. Free your sister. We only want the raven.”
We slowly ride past her. I twist around to see her rush to the other rolled-up rug and frantically work to unroll it.
Then we’re stopping at a smaller bundle lying on the ground.
It’s still. Too still.
“No,” I whisper. “Talton? No, it has to be something else. They wanted to sell him, right? They wouldn’t let him suffocate.”
With a curse, Roane dismounts and crouches down to undo the knot at the top. The fabric falls open.
I hiss when I see the raven lying inside, legs up in the air.
