Iva is next. I don’t dare look in her eyes as I set her in front of Lady Fliad, shove the stallion’s reins into her hands, and turn to Gragor.
“Ride hard and fast and deliver them to the king. We will cover you.”
He doesn’t need more orders. Neither do the women. And I’ve never wasted speech, so when I turn to them, I don’t plan to say anything, but her eyes are like the moon to my tides, and they drag from me a single pained word.
“Go,” I say, and the word rips my throat on the way out just like the goodbye in her eyes rips my heart from my chest. I may not live the hour out, but even if I do, it’s unlikely I’ll see her again.
I smack my stallion’s flank and he leaps.
“Rally to me!” I call, drawing the others inward. “To me!”
There’s no time for lingering gazes with Iva. I’m stealing short spears from the dead fae at my feet. She has a half dozen. We don’t usually carry them but that doesn’t mean I can’t use them.
I already have one balanced on my palm in an overhead carry when a shadow bursts from the trees, lunging for Gragor. I toss the spear with all my might and a huff of breath. I see it strike true but I’m already pivoting for another, hefting it shoulder high and flinging it when the second shadow leaps for the ladies. He goes down silently. That’s two.
There’s a roar behind me and I drop the rest, lifting my sword just in time to block the blow crashing down on me and that is the last I see of anything but battle for quite some time.
21
IVA FITZROY
Ididn’t even get to say goodbye, I think stupidly as Fliad clings to me so tightly that I don’t think I can breathe. We rode hard until the stallion began to stumble and then Gragor finally slowed us, letting us come down to a quick walk until we reached the road ahead.
“Not far now,” he said then, but he was breathing hard, and I didn’t think it was all from exertion. I’d looked him over but there were no wounds. I was still trying to puzzle out what was wrong with him when we met the first of the king’s patrols on the road and he reported to them.
“Attacked an hour’s ride south,” I heard him say. “I was ordered to bring the ladies to the king.”
“Your knight?” the soldier had inquired.
“Lost, I fear,” he said in a choked voice, and that was when I realized why he was breathing so hard. It wasn’t pain. It was grief.
It struck me like a hammer between the eyes, leaving me so stunned that I hardly noticed as we were handed from group of soldiers to group of soldiers and hurried toward the front. Gragor knew war. If he said that Sir Oakensen – that Haldur – was lost, then he must know.
I heard names but remembered none of them, heard Lady Fliad ask questions and did not register them, saw the army thicken until we were surrounded by men in arms with grimy faces and dull eyes and I just kept thinking the same foolish thing.
I didn’t even get to say goodbye.
I meet the king – my father – a man I have never laid eyes on before. I hardly care. He hardly cares either, I think. I see only relief in his face. He’s glad to have secured me in time to trade me away. He’s giving orders, and people are moving quickly around us and I’m shoved into a pavilion with a very frustrated Lady Fliad. She speaks and when she doesn’t get an intelligent answer from me, she strips us both, shoves a wet rag in my hands, and then grumbles when I do not clean myself well enough. She snatches the rag back, washes my face like I’m a child, and when she’s done her own hurried washing she dresses us both in gowns of gold thread on blue – a strange design that must have come from the fae. They tighten with lacings at the back – a good thing since it means they can fit our drastically different figures – and then she runs a comb through our hair, dresses it hurriedly, and looks me over.
“I never thought you could put me in a position of a ladies’ maid, Iva, and I’ll never forgive you for doing this now. You’ve lost your senses, I swear.”
She’s practically spitting. I can’t even focus on her words. I just keep seeing him there, bleeding out in the woods, his eyes blank with death and it’s like my mind can’t hold other thoughts.
“This had better grant me favor with your father,” she hisses in my ear, “or I will hunt you own, bride of the fae or not, and skin you alive.”
I’m lucky to have her. In this, she is utterly practical where I am utterly useless.
And then she gives me a shove and we’re out of the pavilion and being led to fresh horses, mounting them, and following my father the king, surrounded by grim men in his royal guard’s red tabards, and riding hard out into what looks like a battlefield.
I gasp, my mouth falling open as we plunge between knots of fighting men. I keep seeinghimwheeling his horse to save me. I bite back a scream when one of the royal guards stumbles and falls, an arrow meant for me stuck right through his neck. We don’t even stop to help him, just keep riding at a full gallop toward a group of fae galloping fromtheirfront towardus.
They’re led by a fae with pale hair that flows in the wind behind him, brushing his golden-winged helmet and gilt breastplate. He rides a white unicorn – really white, not a grey color like white horses often are, though it has muddy feet just like a mortal horse would – and he carries a sword with a hilt decorated with some kind of insect. Arrogance and pride are in his every movement.
And that’s when I realize what is happening.
I’m about to get married in this silly gold and blue dress.
On a battlefield.
