A Sylvanwild arrow. By now I knew those better than I did the guard’s.
My eyes met Dorian’s. His were wide.
Run, he mouthed.
I lurched into motion, my hands scrabbling over the ground, my boots sliding without purchase. I finally found forward motion just as the second arrow hit the trunk below the first one.
If I hadn’t moved, I’d be dead. Twice now in ten seconds.
I sprinted. I ran like I never had, at a pace so fast and headlong I didn’t have time to choose a direction. It was all I could do to find a path through the trees, to dodge low branches and fallen ones and tugging vines and bushes.
Who had found us? How? Had we been tracked? For an hour we’d been watchful, patient, slow, so careful?—
Dorian was right. We couldn’t possibly contend with the other fae. We could only hope to evade them.
On my left, I sensed Dorian running in parallel. He appeared and disappeared and appeared again as we passed the huge trees.
He kept pace with me. His voice carried distantly through the thrumming blood in my ears and my boots hitting the ground.Keep going, Eury, he seemed to be saying, and every time I heard it I found I could run a little faster.
Then the forest thickened. Bushes rose taller than me, thorned and tighter spaced, forcing me to claw my way through. They obscured my view and slashed at my face, and I still kept running.
I ran and I ran until blood dripped from my cheeks, and when I finally emerged, I kept running. I ran until, gasping, I registeredDorian hadn’t ever reappeared on my left. His form wasn’t there, running alongside me. His voice hadn’t sounded amongst the trees. I ventured a glance to the left; no Dorian.
When I jerked around for a half second, I couldn’t see anyone or anything—just endless forest and that thicket I’d passed through.
I was running alone.
The exhaustion hit like a blow. My lungs were aflame, and I had begun to stagger. Blood dripped into one eye, stinging until I swiped it away. Ahead of me, the earth rose steeply, a ridge. I practically had to climb, slipping in the loam, to get to the top.
There, I pressed myself between two huge tree roots until I was mostly obscured against the trunk of an enormous tree. I collapsed there, breathing so hard and fast I saw white wisps. I couldn’t get enough air, and the blood kept dripping into my eyes.
Stop it, Eury. Don’t panic.
Panic would leave me dead. I had to focus.
I pressed my hands over my mouth to quiet my breathing until it slowed. Then I grabbed a handful of my cloak and wiped at my face. The blood kept dripping, mostly from a single cut on my forehead. I pressed my cloak against it.
My breathing quieted. My blood slowed enough for my ears to hear again.
I listened for footsteps, for birdcall, for any noise in the forest.
No footsteps. No birdcall. No Dorian.
I was alone.
I sat frozen there,in that small spot of safety between those tree roots, for twenty minutes before I understood that no one would come.
By his own admission, Dorian was no hunter. If anyone wasgoing to find me out here, it would be the other fae. I had left a trail of my blood, after all, once I’d come through the thicket.
The funny thing about being human, as I’d come to learn since that battle in the southern district, was how close we really were to our animal instincts. Because as soon as that truth—I was alone—settled over me, panic swelled again in my breast. It filled me like a draught of beer in a pub, rising so quickly to the lip of a mug it would foam over before you could stop pouring.
Panic wanted to take me. It wanted so badly to reduce me to the fetal position, to have me sobbing.
But it didn’t overtake me. Because Dorian had known this would happen. He had planned for it with his finger in the dirt, and as soon as I thought back to those minutes we’d spent in the tunnel I could have kissed his cheeks one by one.
I was still alive, which meant he was still alive somewhere out there. And if he was still alive, he would head to Virellan Falls as long as his legs still worked. Which meant I needed to head there, too.
No more waiting. I needed to go now, before anyone or anything found my blood on the ground. Or scented my fear.
