Page 14 of White Raven

Crunch. Thump. Crunch-crunch. Thump-thump.

“Keep to the trees, they can easily spot us.” An accented voice drew me further out of murkiness, my stomach knotting, telling me there was something wrong. My peace from sleep was an illusion. A thin sheet of ice about to crack.

Crunch. Thump. Crunch-crunch.

I heard feet moving through deep snow. My skin stung from the chilly temperatures, yet some of my body was so deliciously warm, I wanted to curl into the heat and drift back to sleep, turn away from the warning in my belly.

“Fuck this place and the sun,” another man snarled out. “We have to make it. I won’t become a prisoner again.”

“We won’t.”

“Knowing Brynn, she probably has the group camping at the border since we left, waiting for our return.”

Thump. Thump.

My head tapped against something hard in an abrasive rhythm, spiking the ache through my head down to my toes.

Crunch. Thump. Crunch-crunch. Thump-thump.

Faraway shouts broke through my hazy dream, tunneling the shard deeper into my subconscious. There was a need to disregard it, if I opened my eyes again, awareness lay on the other side, waiting to be let in.

“Fy faen. They must have found the dead maid . . . realized she is gone!” the man not holding me exclaimed.

“Fuck! Go!” The rough tone resonated against me.

Thump-crunch-thump-thump-crunch-thump. My face struck fabric and I could feel the hard rippling muscles under the cloth. My frame jostled painfully, the warmth of a hand sinking through my dress, gripping my ass to keep me in place as I hung upside down over a man’s shoulder, my arms uncomfortably pinned behind my back.

The haziness cracked like ice across my memory, flooding my senses with fear. Everything that had happened up until now popped my lids open with a gasp. The sharp agony of Sarina’s demise came flashing into my head, her lifeless stare branded across my mind.

A blurry view of snow and a man’s backside came into view as I bounced against his spine, carrying me like he did the dead swine. Light hovered just above the horizon, the lowest it ever got, glinting across the snow in pre-dawn glow. I tried screaming but my tongue jabbed into a piece of cloth wrapped around my mouth.

I was being kidnapped.

It was the exact fear the king drilled into me daily, why he had taken such militant precautions.

Lifting my head, I could see we were close to the horse barn. The stalls where I had lost my virginity, where the other night Henrik, Sarina, Thomas, and I had been drinking mead and fooling around.

Acknowledging she was dead was unfathomable. Maybe she was still alive, maybe someone found her and was tending to her now? Maybe by some miracle she had been saved?

I knew the truth: There was no miracle, no magic anymore that could save her.

I pictured her laugh, her arm looping in mine while we strolled around the market, flirting and buying produce from every young man. She was so full of life and mischievousness. Every good memory I had was attached to her.

And they took it away.

Lying limply against my abductor, a sob cinched my chest, ripping away my oxygen. The panic was instant, the embedded need to survive, my lungs grasping for air. I had struggled most of my life with anxiety attacks. The pressure of my position, the weight put on my shoulders. Yanric had instructed me how to relax, to visualize flying through the sky, feeling the air against my face.

“A calm mind is strength in battle,” Yanric’s soothing voice had said to me many times. “But forbearance is how you win.”

Biting down on my gag, I stayed quiet.

My father’s white hounds bayed from the castle, their excited yips echoing down to us. My kidnapper jerked, his muscles tightening under his tunic. Dogs could track their scent, find me before I left the grounds.

“I thought you drugged them?” the one holding me snapped at his friend, his deep raspy voice hitting each time like lightning.

“I did! I swear.”

Not bothering with a response, my captor darted into the horse barn, the familiar scent of hay and muck filling my nose. Normally Emil, the crown’s equerry, a big sturdy man who had been serving my father all my life, would be here. My betrothal celebration took everyone up to the castle, leaving the stalls quiet, except for his apprentice, Hans.