Page 115 of Destiny of a King

She knew what it was now and that realization alone delighted her. She had felt wind against her face all her life. She had watched it toss leaves, bend branches, and send snow swirling around her. Now she knew it had a voice of its own.

She smiled.

Then the sound stopped.

Adira’s smile faded. She listened and heard nothing. Not complete silence like before she could hear. She could still hear the horses. The creak of leather. A man’s cough somewhere behind them. The occasional clink of something metal against metal.

But the wind had stopped. So had something else.

Adira looked around. She wasn’t immediately certain what troubled her.

Then she realized… it was the forest.

She had spent the last several hours discovering sounds she had never known existed. Birds called from branches. Small creatures rustled through brush. Snow occasionally dropped from heavily burdened limbs.

Now she heard none of them.

Her old instincts immediately took over. Adira stopped listening and began looking. The trees. The shadows between them. The exposed rocks farther up the slope.

Nothing moved, yet something felt wrong.

She straightened slightly.

Dravic felt it.

His arm tugged at her waist. “What is it?”

Adira glanced up at him. How could she tell him? Worse, she couldn’t even explain what had alerted her without revealing that she could hear.

Her gaze returned to the forest.

Dravic followed it. He had learned long ago not to dismiss Adira when something caught her attention.

His hand moved toward his sword. “Seger.”

The Hunter immediately rode closer.

Adira continued searching the trees. Then she saw it, a flash between two trunks. Gone almost before she was certain it had been there.

Her hand closed hard around Dravic’s forearm.

He looked where she was staring.

“Hold!” The king’s command rang through the forest.

Adira heard it clearly, strong with power.

So did whoever waited among the trees.

A horse cried out somewhere behind them.

Then the forest erupted.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Blood in the Snow

Death Denied