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He shoved back at her even harder, blasting her with the full force of his power. Corinne cried out and gripped the splitting sides of her head. Her eardrums were screaming, feeling as though they were shredding. She went down on her knees, driven to the floor by the intensity of the pain.
At the same moment, she heard Hunter's roar. Saw his face twist in fury as she dropped. Glimpsed a flash of movement as Hunter drew his fist back, then sent it flying in Nathan's direction.
No, her heart cried. No!
"No!" she shouted, and realized the agonizing racket had abruptly ceased. Hunter was at her side. "Are you hurt? Corinne, please, speak to me."
"Where's Nathan?" she murmured. She blinked up at Hunter, terrified of what she might see in his face. But there was only warmth there, concern focused wholly on her.
"He will be all right." Hunter moved aside so she could peer around him to where her son lay on the floor as though sleeping. "I struck him, but he's unconscious, that's all. Come with me now. I will take him out of here."
"Mira, don't wander too far with the dogs. Stay where Niko and I can see you."
"Okay, Rennie!" Mira called back through the darkness of the courtyard gardens behind the Order's mansion. Her boots crunching in the snow as she walked, she glanced over at Kellan Archer and rolled her eyes. "They think I'm still a kid."
His olive-colored parka swished as he shrugged his shoulders. "You are a kid."
She stopped walking and put her mittened hands on her hips, frowning up at him. "In case you didn't know, Kellan Archer, I'm eight and a half years old."
His mouth lifted up at the corner, as if she'd said something funny. It was about the closest thing she'd seen to a smile from him, so even though she didn't get the joke, she fell in alongside him as he kept walking. They followed the trail the dogs had left in the snowy yard when they'd run off after the stick Kellan had thrown to them. Mira hurried to keep up with him, feeling a bit like the little terrier, Harvard, trailing after the larger wolf dog, Luna. It was hard for Mira's short legs to keep up with Kellan's long strides, but she took two steps to every one of his, refusing to let herself fall behind.
Chapter Thirty-one
"How old are you, anyway?" she asked him, her breath puffing out in little clouds. He gave her another one of his shrugs. "Fourteen."
"Oh." Mira counted off the difference in her head. "You're pretty old, then, huh?"
"Not old enough," he said, and from where she walked alongside him, his face seemed very serious. "Today I asked Lucan if I could join the Order. He told me I had to wait until I was at least twenty before I even thought about asking him again."
Mira gaped at him. "You want to be a warrior?"
His mouth took on a hard look, his eyes narrowing on some unseen point in the distance.
"I want to avenge my family. I need to win back my honor after Dragos stole it from me." He blew out a sharp laugh that didn't sound like laughter at all. "Lucan and my grandfather say those aren't the right reasons to join a war. If they're not, then I don't know what is."
Mira studied Kellan's face, her heart hurting for the sadness she saw in him. In the few days she'd spent with him since he'd arrived at the compound, Kellan hadn't said much about his family or his feelings about missing them. She had seen him crying a couple of times alone in his quarters, but he didn't know that.
He also didn't know that she'd taken it upon herself to be his friend whether he liked it or not. Every night she said a little prayer for him, a ritual she'd started the moment she first heard the boy had been kidnapped from his Darkhaven. She'd kept on praying for him, even after his rescue, because it seemed to her that he'd needed the extra help in getting better. Now it had become a habit for her, one she figured she would stop once she was able to look at Kellan and not see so much private sorrow in his eyes.
"Hey," she said, trudging alongside him deeper into the gardens as they continued on after the dogs. "Maybe I'll ask Lucan if I can join the Order someday too."
Kellan laughed - actually turned a surprised look on her and laughed out loud. He had a nice laugh, she realized, the first she'd ever heard it. He had dimples too, one in each lean cheek. They appeared as he chuckled and shook his head at her. "You can't join the Order."
"Why not?" she asked, more than a little stung.
"Because you're a girl, for one thing."
"Renata's a girl," she pointed out.
"Renata's ... different," he replied. "I've seen what she can do with those blades of hers. She's fast, and she's got killer aim. She's wicked tough."
"I'm tough too," Mira said, wishing her voice didn't sound so wounded. "Watch, I'll show you."
She veered off their path to hunt for something to throw. Searching for a good stick or a rock - anything she could use to impress Kellan with her abilities - Mira weaved through the covered flower beds, around the burlap-wrapped shrubs, and into the maze of statuary and evergreens that spread out across the long backyard of the estate.
"Just a second," she called to him from within the cover of the gardens. "I'll be right ... back ..."
At first, she wasn't sure what she was looking at. Up ahead of her on the moonlit ground, shadowed by the surrounding pines and shrubbery, was a large, dark form. Luna and Harvard stood near it, alternately pacing and pausing to sniff at the motionless shape. The little terrier whined as Mira drifted closer.
