By the time he returned to the camp, the squad were standing in their oilskins, huddled against the trees, eating a rough breakfast, and trying to stay out of the rain. Everyone except Reece. Bloody Reece. He’d asked Tor to do his patrol for him and now he hadn’t bothered to come back from wherever he’d disappeared to.
Keely passed him a bread roll stuffed with bacon, which he took gratefully as the squad bantered light-heartedly, ignoring the cold and wet—it certainly wasn’t the first time they’d marched in the rain—until Tristan dusted off his hands and called them all to attention so he could outline their plans.
Garet and Jos had already flown over the first part of their route west, but the rain was ruining visibility, and it was impossible to see far enough to judge the safety of the road. They would stick to forest paths as they pushed forward for the last few miles until they reached the protection of the Nephilim. Keely would be riding with him. One last, torturous chance to have her near. To put his hands on her and dream of what might have been.
They took turns, sometimes riding, sometimes walking, but as the mud grew thicker and the path more treacherous, they decided to let Perseus carry them both for a while.
Gods. He hadn’t held Keely in his arms since the night they’d escaped from the palace. He’d been attracted to her then; now, he couldn’t think of anything else. Her muscular body settled against his with torturous pressure, made infinitely more overwhelming by her gentle movements as she rose and fell with Perseus’s ground-eating trot.
She sang as they rode, just loud enough for him to hear, and the low melody raised the hairs on the back of his neck as he lost himself in the feel of her. The rhythmic rise and fall of her voice, the surge of Perseus beneath them, the slide of her body against his. She surrounded him like a dream. The kind of dream he never wanted to wake up from.
The rain fell steadily while the low clouds and swathes of heavy mist turned the forest into a ghost world of grays and reaching branches. Icy drops ran down his face and under the collar of his oilskin, even inside his sleeves.
In front of him, Keely’s hair darkened to a deep, burnished copper, and her pale skin flushed from the stinging rain and cold wind. She must have been freezing, and she still favored her left arm, but she never complained. In fact, she hadn’t complained once. Not about her wound. Not about living in a tent. Not about hunting for their dinner with the other archers. No, she was a warrior all the way through.
She would be fine wherever she went after Eshcol. And yet… he didn’t want to let her go. He wanted her to stay where he could stand beside her and protect her. He wanted to know she was safe.
Tor snorted to himself. That wasn’t entirely honest. Yes, he wanted to know she was safe. But he also wanted the right to slip his hands under her cloak and run them up her sides. Wanted to pull her closer until she knew exactly what she was doing to him. He wanted her to behis.
Keely swiped a lock of wet hair out of her face and turned to look at him with twinkling eyes, distracting him from his increasingly uncomfortable saddle. “What are you snorting at?”
How could he possibly answer that? He shrugged instead, and she rolled her eyes in response before looking away again, sliding across his lap yet again.
“How’s your arm?” he asked, trying to distract them both.
“Fine.” She rotated her shoulder as if to prove it had healed, but he saw the tiny flinch she tried to cover.
“Mm-hmm. I’ll ask Rafe to have a look.”
“I told you that it’s fine,” she retorted firmly, but she looked over her shoulder as she said it and he saw the flicker of warmth in her eyes, the surprise that someone cared enough to want to help.
She spent so much time looking after Alanna, and now the Hawks. Who looked after Keely? “When we stop—”
He swallowed the rest of his sentence as Jos crashed onto the path in front of Mathos in a flurry of splashing mud and rain, and the line of Hawks skidded to a shocked halt. “They’re here, Captain, fuck!”
Gods. It couldn’t be. They were so close to Eshcol—to freedom. His arms tightened around Keely reflexively. He couldn’t let her get hurt. Wouldn’t.
The line crushed in as they all surrounded Jos, his face stark and haggard under his rain-slicked hair.
“Report!” Tristan demanded from the front of the line.
Jos spread his legs, clasped his hands behind his back, and quickly explained. “Visibility is almost nothing, but I thought I’d do an extra mile or two to check our access into the temple. And I saw… fuck… he’s here. Ballanor.”
“How many?” Val asked, wrapping his wing over Alanna and pressing a rough kiss to her shoulder.
Gods, Tor wished he could do the same with Keely.
Jos grimaced. “At least three companies of mounted palace guards. Blacks and Blues. Coming fast. Every few minutes, a quad of guards peels off into the woods to track from behind. There’s no way back.”
Garet landed heavily beside them as Jos finished, wings trembling as he panted out, “Right behind us.”
Mathos was almost entirely covered in shimmering burgundy scales as his beast responded to the threat. “Can we outrun them? Make it to the temple?”
Garet shrugged. “Maybe.”
Tor threw a glance at Keely. At her grim face and clenched fists. He couldn’t bear for her to be captured. Thank the gods there was still a chance they could reach the temple.
Tristan raised his voice, his face harsh and set. “Mabin in the air. Dead run. MOVE OUT!”
