I whip my head around, peering into the dark at two more snarling beasts charging toward us. “And you’re usually out here on your own?” I growl, pulling my sword free with a wet grind.
“Yes,” Zali pants, striding forward until we’re hip to hip. “Nobody else is willing. The mutts have somehow realized.”
We leap as one, colliding with the onslaught of feral, brute force, dodging whistling swipes of deadly talons like a collaborative symphony.
I slash my blade through a dense neck, crumbling the mighty Vruk to my left. Feeling the air shift behind me, I spin—slicing my sword around, blowing out a hiss as the honed edge kisses Zali’s throat. Her’s, too, is poised against my carotid, so sharp that if I leaned a little to the right, I’d slice myself. Bleed out in seconds.
Our eyes lock.
Despite the deep breaths heaving in and out of our lungs, there’s a moment of utter stillness between us—both splattered in the blood of our kills. I take in the black glaze of her eyes. The rise and fall of her breasts.
A striking vision of fierce, feral beauty that’s hard to look away from.
We pull our blades back, swiping them on our coats in the same brusk manner. She turns first, trudging away. “Quick, before the Irilak set in.”
I almost leap out of my skin, dashing after her to the tune of her chiming giggle, my heart hacking at my ribs even after I realize she’s joking.
“Not funny,” I mutter, biting down on a full-body shiver that rattles me to the core. Shakes up memories I don’t want to think about.
Her laughter tapers off.
Once we’re sitting beside each other, backs to the packed snow mound and breathing hard, I dig through my cloak for the emergency flask I’d tucked away.
Feels fitting, seeing as we barely escaped with our limbs intact.
I unstopper the cork and take a swig, then offer Zali the flask. She accepts it, drawing deep and releasing a sharp hiss before she whips her arm back and lobs it into the darkness.
My heart leaps into my throat as I watch it disappear. “What th—That was vanilla brandy!Cost me a fucking pocket diamond to a traveling merchant!”
“Then you got ripped off. Only someone truly desperate would trade apocket diamondfor a flask of brandy. Meaning it’s better off out there.”
I snarl, leaning against the snow again. “You’re just like your promised.”
“But far more attractive,” she purrs, rolling her sleeves, pulling her long tangle of wavy hair to the side, and parting it three ways.
“And with an ego twice the size,” I mutter, watching her weave her locks into a messy braid. “I see you’re not wearing your cupla.”
She glances at her bare wrist, then back into the night. “We’re lying to the people, not ourselves. Besides, I have little regard for the tradition.”
I grunt, trying to pretend her words don’t affect me like they do, arms perched on my bent knees.
“So,” Zali murmurs. “How is Orlaith?”
“Gone.”
Her head whips around, hands stilling. “What do you mean,gone?”
“Got on a ship to Bahari weeks ago.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the tiny, flattened scroll.
“Why didn’t youleadwith that?”
I spread my hands, look around at the corpses, down at the gore covering my clothes, then back at her with a raised brow.
She rolls her eyes and pinches the scroll from my grip, unraveling it. “I had it under control.”
“Didn’t look like it,” I state, tempted to hunt down my flask in the hope there’s something left. “You should have sent a sprite to inform us of your location before you entered The Stretch. You’re not indestructible.”
“More than most,” she says, reaching past. “Hand me that lantern.”
