It’s the female lumped on the upper seat, barely clinging to the reins, her head flopping around so much it’s hard to see past the mess of her inky hair.
Perhaps she’s asleep?
They get halfway across the lawn before lightning mosaics the clouds. A second later, thunder crackles loud enough to rattle my bones, and the horse rears up, squeals to the sky, then crumbles—sending the cart tipping sideways.
The woman is tossed through the air, landing in a boneless heap on the manicured grass.
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t even scream.
I’m back inside, yanking my door open and bounding down Stony Stem in the very next instant.
There’s the sound of footfalls chasing me, Vanth and Kavan yelling for me to stop but doing nothing to penetrate my resolve.
I move like the wind, limbs churning, mind an axe. There are no hurdles for feet that defy the laws of gravity, and that’s what mine do.
Barely feeling as if they touch the ground.
I reach the bottom of my tower, hair slipping free of its band as I weave down a barrage of tunnels and stairwells until grass cushions my steps. The space between myself and the cart seems to evaporate in seconds, and I fall upon the female in a flutter of blue and unbridled hair.
With hands too steady to be mine, I roll the woman onto her back, and a sharp sound splits the air.
It takes me a moment to realize it came from me.
She’s petite, pretty, with big, brown eyes that are wide and wet and painfully familiar.
Mishka—the Medis from a neighboring village—but she doesn’t look the same as she did a few days ago at the Tribunal ...
Her skin is gray, all the color drained from her sunken cheeks. Her pupils are so dilated the black is almost consuming the brown, and they’re seeing but ... butnot.There’s an acrid stench wafting off her that sticks to the back of my throat, and I glance down her body to seek the source.
A sturdy hand grips my chin andyanks,forcing my gaze skyward.
Pewter eyes snatch my breath.
“No,” Rhordyn growls through clenched teeth, dropping to his knees on the other side of Mishka and unhooking his jacket buttons. “Don’t look.”
Holding my stare, he drapes the jacket over Mishka’s midsection while I study every speckle in his smoky stare. Eyes that offer a blanket of comfort while also plying me with a sense of dread.
More footsteps encroach, crunching through what sounds like broken glass, pausing.
He breaks our eye contact to look past me. “Any liquid bane?”
“Smashed.”
Rhordyn swears so sharp I flinch.
“The horse, Baze.”
“On it.”
I look over my shoulder to see Baze step around a spilled leather satchel and walk toward the felled animal. The horse is trying to arch his head off the ground, allowing me a glimpse of shallow slash marks along his neck. Grisly wounds seeping a rank-smelling liquid that’s inky and thick and—
Something tore into him.
“Go, Orlaith.”
Rhordyn’s voice snags me, and my head swivels, stare landing on Mishka’s unseeing eyes ...
On her bleeding lips and restless chest.
