“Ula, tell Luca I love him. Tell him I tried. I was coming for him. I didn’t mean for him to do this without me. I’m sorry—”
With a belch, fire tore into the bottom of the cage, eating straight through the door and lock that had trapped her. Amarande screamed and lost hold of one of Ula’s hands, the leather strap protecting the grip on the remaining one beginning to fray.
“You will tell him yourself. Close your eyes!”
With a grunt, Ula unsheathed the dagger pressed against her skin and began driving the blade into the splintering wood next to the hole just small enough to make it impossible to pull Amarande through.
She only got in four whacks before there was another screeching lurch and the entire bottom of the cart peeled away. Flames licked at Amarande’s dangling boots as the cart listed, up and then flat back down, rocking like it was taking on water.
With an earsplitting shake, the whole thing began to slide.
Ula’s dagger skittered away and she grabbed Amarande’s single clinging hand with both of hers. The princess curled her useless arm into her body as tightly as she could… and with a splintering shake the prison cart fell away. Amarande and Ula slipped out of thewooden box as it plummeted, the momentum slapping them against the lip of the pit.
With one terrific heave, Luca and Koldo yanked them back and up until Ula’s belly hit solid ground. So many hands, too many hands, reaching and bracing as Amarande came up over the edge, hot ash in her face and hair, free hand scrambling for the earth.
Her arm was bleeding from her shoulder through the length of her forearm, the wood of the fractured cart taking a sliding bite on the way down. The soles of her boots were melting as she dug them into the dirt, crawling onto her hands and knees before flipping on her back.
Vaguely, she heard a crash—the cart tumbling into the flames.
Father, I almost saw you.
Her body wracked with a cough from the smoke, eyes squeezed shut and watering. And when she opened them, Luca loomed above her.
Dimples and shining golden eyes and sand grit sticking to sweat and blood.
“Luca! You came, you’re here, you’re mine. Luca, Luca, Luca.”
She pressed herself to her hands and knees and then in one great lunge tackled him.
In battle, even like this, every moment felt like an eternity. Action slowing to give every grain of sand in the hourglass its time to shine.
And in that sand grain of time, Amarande was back in the meadow with him. Moments before learning her father had died, she’d outfoxed Luca, trapping him with knees and elbows and practiced skill until his throat sat softly beneath the tip of her blade. She’d wondered then if he would say it. Now she knew not only that he would but also that he’d been saying it all along.
“Always, Princess.”
Luca held Amarande as they fell back to the sand in a rush. Her body, bloody and covered in ash and shaking with the shock of what had just happened, pressed into his. Her boots knocked his shins, her arms propped against his collarbones, her face cupped in his palm.
Luca was here. He was truly here and hers and alive.
Amarande kissed him then. Eyes closed, mouth hungry, her whole mess of a body folded into Luca’s warmth. His arms tightened around her, a hand snaking through her hair and to her neck.
It felt like an eternity but was simply the space of a few breaths, a forest of people around them instead of their junipers in the meadow—Koldo, Ula, others Amarande didn’t know. Beyond them, the battle was still raging, less of a writhing mass and more hot spots in a forest fire that had spread, taking over the entire encampment and not simply the area by the fire pit.
“Let’s move. We need to move.” Ula’s voice.
Then Koldo’s gloved hand wrapped around the princess’s uninjured arm and began to pull. “Ama, later. Not in the open. Let us regroup. To safety with you. Please, now.”
Amarande nodded and let Koldo pull her up, her own hand out to Luca. He took it but did not put his weight into it, her blood sliding down the injured length of it and onto his fingers. He stood on his own, but as they were ushered away she did not let go.
CHAPTER52
AMARANDEclung to Luca’s hand as the four of them—the princess, the Otsakumea, the general, and the pirate—ran away from the fire pit and the battle that raged around it. His palm was warm with both life and the thrill of battle and held hers carefully, her blood snaking between them.
They dashed up a row of abandoned tents, the ground clearing of the debris of battle with every step away from the fire. Ula charged ahead, dagger out, Koldo bringing up the rear. The others who’d seemed to surround them when they’d been on the ground fell away.
“Luca, when you revealed yourself I thought it was the end.” Amarande’s voice was too loud for her ears, her breathing heavy with the run and rush of survival. Of seeing him. She squeezed his hand, daring to glance down at it in the jumbling rush of their tandem run, just to confirm her touch hadn’t deceived her.
Luca was here. Koldo was here. Ula was here.
