Ronan scatters a handful of coins. Smoke streams into the air from the ones that land crown-up, just as light blazes from the center of the action.
Karis stands in a towering beam of magic. Gold swirls around the blade of his borrowed sword and illuminates his auburn hair. He’s glorious. He’s glory. An answered prayer, come to life in the most beautiful form Ronan’s ever seen. The vaidkos instinctively cowers, all four fearsome heads shrinking back at the touch of divine light.
“Thank fuck, a Varan,” a soldier yells.
No, not Radiance, Ronan remembers. Karis doesn’t have a contract. This is his own inherent magic—even though it’s just as brilliant as Ronan’s ever seen from any full-fledged paladin.
The image of Karis ablaze with light fixes in Ronan’s mind as he turns to his own task. He dodges the moving soldiers, heading for the horses twenty feet away. The mounted soldier shouts a question at him, but he doesn’t need to answer. He just needs to move.
The two horses are very big and very nervous. Ronan picks the closest, a hefty bay who shies away when Ronan approaches, but stills when he grabs the reins. Well-trained, even if that training is sorely tried by the demonic aura. Ronan swings into the saddle, and doesn’t have time to secure his feet in the irons before the mounted soldier canters up to him.
“What the fuck are you doing, paladin?” the soldier shouts through the noise. Smoke and Radiance intertwine with clashes of steel behind him. “Who are…”
His face undergoes a journey almost hilarious in its intensity—confusion to shock to grim determination—as he recognizes the man currently stealing his comrade’s horse.
Gathering the reins in one hand, Ronan grins. “Ronan Vizia,” he says. “Nice to meet you.”
The Dravan’s swears and shouts to his companions are too late. Ronan kicks the bay forward towards the ongoing fray—just in time to see the vaidkos burst into ashes.
Karis whirls out of a lunge, the vaidkos’s red-silver blood evaporating like shadows from his blade. Fragments of magic glitter around him, and when his golden gaze lands on Ronan, it feels like they’re the only two people in the world. Revelation hits him like a Radiant blade to his own gut.
Oh, fuck. I’m in love with him.
The shock doesn’t slow Ronan down. He barrels his new horse past the rest of the soldiers, who turn their weapons towards the intruders now that the vaidkos is gone and they’ve recognized wanted criminal Ronan Vizia. Reining the horse into a dramatic cloud of dust and ashes, Ronan reaches down.
Karis sheathes his sword and seizes Ronan’s arm. He swings up behind Ronan as smoothly as if they’d practiced it. Ronan barely waits for Karis to grab his waist before surging forward again, a furious gallop down the trail.
Karis’s chest presses to Ronan’s back, and his thighs fit right behind his. Every rocking movement brings them closer together in constant friction. Adrenaline and blood rush between them as if they share the same pulse. Ronan doesn’t know if the dazzling heat is the remnants of magic clinging to Karis’s skin, or an artifact of Ronan’s own desires. He just knows he wouldn’t mind riding like this forever, as long as Karis never lets go.
Unfortunately, their head start is meager, and they need to leave both the trail and the horse as soon as possible. Ronan knows the area—there’s a place up ahead.
“Grab my coin purse,” Ronan bites through the wind. “Not my dice.”
Karis releases one hand to fumble around Ronan’s belt, and all Ronan’s thoughts sink into the gutter. “More smoke bombs?”
“When we turn the corner. I’ll tell you when to throw a handful.”
“Got it.” The fumbling at his coin purse is briefly unbearable, then mercifully over.
They whip around a corner of the trail, and Ronan says, “Now!”
He concentrates, and sparks of magic scatter. More plumes of smoke billow behind them. The horse is used to the power of Ka Dravos, not the Trickster, and shies sideways. Ronan steadies him between his legs, even as his own heart thuds erratically with Karis’s heat behind him.
He reins the horse into a nervous trot, not even stopping all the way before ordering, “Dismount!”
Karis moves immediately, stumbling on the landing. Ronan doesn’t have time to steady him; he just leaps off the horse, grabs Karis by the arm, and drags him off the trail. Every move is pure instinct.
The spooked horse is already galloping away, thoroughly done with the strangers and smoke bombs. Ronan shoves Karis to the ground behind a tree just before the first of the soldiers rounds the corner in pursuit.
By the time the Dravans realize the fleeing horse doesn’t have a rider, their own passage will have cleared away the marks of the escapees dismounting.
As the pursuing hoofbeats quiet into the distance, Ronan’s heartbeat becomes far too quick, far too loud. He’s half on top of Karis, a hand in his hair, their legs overlapping. Cold earth grinds through the gaps in their clothes, and dry leaves tickle their wrists. Karis is warm and solid beneath him, his ribs heaving against Ronan with his rapid breath.
There’s something impossibly thrilling about the way Karis is able to keep up with him. Not only keeping up, but pushing, inspiring. They already work so well together—what will they be capable of in Melody? A month from now, a year from now?
Ronan’s thoughts race too far into the future, but he can’t rein them in until Karis turns, the soft curls of his hair brushing Ronan’s jaw. His lips are so close to Ronan’s ear when he murmurs, “I think they’re all gone.”
Reluctantly, Ronan slides his fingers from Karis’s hair. He can’t resist tracing down his back, drawing out a palpable shudder. “We’re just a few miles away from the farmhouse. Follow me quietly.”
