Shadow soared out through the broken window and into the night.
Asha laughed—softly at first. And then deliriously.
She’d just escaped her own wedding on the back of a dragon.
They soared over rooftops, then over the wall. Asha turned and looked back, watching the city fall away, marveling at how different the streets and rooftops looked from so high up. Like a winding web. Shadow sailed higher, beyond the wall and out into the Rift.
The higher they rose, though, the colder it got. Soon Asha’s teeth chattered. Torwin pulled her closer, trying touse his heat to stave off her chill.
Asha curled into him. With the lower half of her face pressed into his shoulder, she watched her home shrink into the distance before turning her eyes to the sky.
The stars shone like crystals above them and the moon had bled out. It was waxing instead of waning now.
It would be pale and slivered and new.
Thirty-Three
Asha woke with her cheek against a bony shoulder. Torwin unlatched her hands from their grip on his arm and Shadow fidgeted beneath her, waiting patiently for his riders to dismount.
They’d landed on some kind of precipice. The Rift surrounded them, snakelike and silhouetted beneath the stars. Somewhere in the distance stood the city, but they were so high and far, Asha couldn’t even make out the wall. Below them sprawled thick, scrubby forest.
Torwin dismounted first, sliding effortlessly down Shadow’s side. Asha swung her leg over so she could follow and found Torwin already turned to catch her, his hands taking hold of her waist as he guided her down to the earth.
When her slippered feet touched the stony ground, she looked up to find his worried gaze tracing her scar. Remembering the sight of herself in the mirror, she turned her face, keeping the scar out of his sight.
“I’m fine.”
Torwin’s hands slid up her cheeks. Gently, he turned her to face him.
“Are you?”
The breath rushed out of Asha. She nodded.
With his hands still cradling her face, his gaze continued to search her.
Asha grabbed hold of his wrists, stopping his searching gaze. “No one hurt me,” she said, willing him to hear what she wasn’t saying:Jarek didn’t hurt me.“I promise.”
He lingered over her, trying to decipher if this was the truth or her attempt to protect him. Finally, he nodded.
Shadow whuffed. Torwin and Asha both looked up, over her shoulder, at the hulking dark form. Torwin’s hands fell away from her face. Whistling to the dragon, he reached out a palm and Shadow nuzzled it before turning and launching himself into the sky.
Torwin motioned Asha toward the thick woods. “This way.”
She stood for a moment, watching him. He seemed different here, so far from the city. Dressed in his strange jacket and gloves, with a bow slung over his shoulder and a knife tucked in his boot.
He seemed free.
The trees clustered so closely together, their boughs blocked out the starlight. The wind rustled the crisp leaves of eucalyptus trees. This part of the Rift was unfamiliar to Asha, and she had difficulty keeping up. She stumbled through the darkness, her dresscatching on branches, her feet snagging in root systems. Pine needles crunched beneath her footsteps, echoing loudly in her ears.
“Some hunter you are.” Torwin smiled in the darkness. His fingers brushed against Asha’s, making warmth bloom through her. “You’ll alert the entire camp to our arrival.”
“Camp?” she whispered, distracted by the back-and-forth movement of his knuckles across hers, soft and hesitant. “What camp?”
“It’s not much farther now,” he said.
But Asha didn’t want to leave this wood. She wanted to stay right here, alone in the darkness with him.
Torwin seemed to want that too, because his footsteps slowed. He laced his warm fingers through hers. “Asha?”
