He examines my leg and stills.
Leaning over, I take in the state of my injury and see he is right. Blood drips off my boot and falls to the ground below us.
The Horseman’s gaze ventures to the path we’ve walked. He stands and strides that way for a time before he comes back.
“Fucking Hell, you’ve left a trail directly to us.” Without asking, he unclips the top of my saddlebag and begins to rummage through the contents.
“Hey!”
“We need to wrap your leg and head in a different direction right now.”
“Surely, it’s not that bad.”
“It is. Unless you want to battle a creature in your current state, the likes of which you’ve never seen. They’re virtually unkillable. You should not only take me seriously but listen to every godforsaken word I say. Am I clear?”
His mood shifted so suddenly, and the look in his eerie eyes held true fear.
“Okay.”
He pulls out the blanket I use to cover myself with at night, and as his brother did to my cloak, he rips it to shreds. But instead of tying me up, he uses those strips to cover my wound until the blood no longer bleeds through. He saves the rest of the blanket and places it back in my horse’s pack before strapping it down.
“That’ll do for now. Let’s get out of here and move a safe distance from this place before I bind it with better care.”
He takes just a second to consider which way to go and turns his mount south.
“Your brothers are that way, if it helps.”
I don’t realize what I’ve revealed until it’s too late, and he spins around. The scowl he delivers has me wanting to shrink inside my own skin.
“Tell you what? I’m going to give you a bird’s-eye view of these creatures so you can see what we’re up against, and you’re going to fill me in on how in Heaven’s Gate you know not only who my brothers are, but where they are.”
I open my mouth, but choose to think long and hard about how to answer that before I do.
“Honesty would go a long way in establishing trust, Priestess. I can be your enemy or your ally. I know which I would choose if given the choice, and though you might think my purpose here is only to harm, I assure you, I am doing the bidding of God, and he would not punish those undeserving of his judgment.”
I sat with that statement for a long time.
The problem—the one I keep coming back to every time I attempt to validate that his argument has merit—is that the Good Book outlines an entirely different scenario. That they are Harbingers of Death. They will bring about the utter ruin and end of this world. They will kill every human in existence, and it is up to me to kill them before the end in order to see our world truly rebuilt.
Which truth to believe—his, or the book I spent my whole life studying down to the letter, enough to have every word on every page of scripture imprinted in the forefront of my mind?
Chapter Nineteen
Sacrifices Made
The Chosen
After pushing our horses well into the night, we stop at the bottom of a cliff face. I’m much slower to dismount than he is. My knees shake upon landing, and I use my horse to steady myself for a moment and get my bearings.
Every bone within my frame shakes as if from a bitter cold, only it’s not the weather plaguing me. I’ve miscalculated and have gone too long without the elixir. The worst has set in, and for the past few hours, my vision has been fading, the view before me going blurry. Staying conscious has been a struggle.
My leg has healed some, and there’s a little less pain, but whatever elixir remained in my system has worked to mend the injury, and in doing so, it’s left the rest of my body bereft and yearning for the drug it knows is within reach.
Only, I can’t. The change will be instant and revealing. It’s my only weakness, and giving him insight into this might just be a fatal mistake.
Orán is quick to dismiss our mounts. He speaks to his horse in the same language he used earlier and then lifts his chin northward as if he can understand him and follow his directions, which seems to be the case as he heads off with my own horse at his flank.
I’m just standing, but it feels as if I’ll collapse if I don’t remain where I am.
