“You—” she said and didn’t finish.
Something clenched in my chest. “Go. Run.”
She stepped back. Her face was full of indecision.
Behind me, Obsidian voices, ugly now, looking for someone to blame.
I pushed past her, gentle as I could and not gentle enough. She made a small sound of choked fear, hooves skittering, and I was through.
Then I was in the passage.
Behind me, her cry, sharper now, and other angry voices overlappping.
“Did you see where she went?”
“What did she look like?”
“Why didn’t you?—”
Her scream cut through the questions before they could finish asking them.
The darkness. My feet slipped over onions as I drove forward. The ground slanted suddenly, so steep that I tripped and landed in roots and earth on my knees. The knife was hot against my ribs through the cloth. Fear’s hand was already reaching as I scrambled up.
Then I was free, and the castle was left behind me in chaos.
Fifteen
Fear
The ground beneath the building was hot through my boots by the time we cleared the outbuildings, the fire racing through the lower passages as Nez’s hoard caught fire.
Cara was three steps ahead of me, clutching the knife against her chest.
Something had happened in that building beyond the theft. “Horses. Now.”
Kiegan had them moving before we reached the treeline.
“What did you do, kitten?” he demanded. He seemed amused.
I did not love him calling my wife by that kind of nickname, but survive first, clarify later.
I caught Cara’s arm as she reached the horse and half-lifted her into the saddle. I came up behind her in the same motion, her weight settling back against me before I had fully landed. My arms came around her for the reins, and then we were riding.
Obsidian could be heard before they could be seen, their horses’ hooves beating the ground with the cadence of eightmounts being ridden hard by a clan made to look foolish. They were in formation already moving through the trees behind us, which told me clearly who was leading.
Colm. Third blade of Clan Obsidian, the most disciplined of the three, though not the brightest. I had watched him operate before, from a distance. He would send his fastest riders wide to flank, keep the rest in the center line, and use their numbers to funnel us. It was not an elegant strategy, but it worked reliably on lesser targets.
We had not met in direct engagement before. Hopefully today would not be that day either.
From the corner of my eye, I caught the rippling in the greenery of their movement.
Two widening,I noted. Trying to get ahead in the trees on the left, but they hadn’t succeeded yet.
I leaned right, applying pressure through my thigh against the horse’s side. Cara shifted her weight in the same direction, her lithe body fitting against mine as if she had been made for me, or me for her.
In reality I had been made to be the queen’s empty vessel, and she had been made to be Lightbringer’s.
Ahead of us, Kiegan moved through the thickening trees with the ease of someone for whom this was not terrain but memory. To Obsidian, at this distance and this speed, he would hopefully read as a hired orc. At any rate, they were focused on the mortal thief who had stolen from under their noses.
