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“Am I to run behind?”she asked with heavy sarcasm.
He slid her a warily amused look, black eyes glittering.“You don’t have to pick a fight with me.You already have one.We’re just not having it with an audience.”
“I notice you didn’t ask for Salve to be saddled is all.”
“I don’t trust you not to do something drastic like taking off.We can double up on Vale.He’s rested, and we don’t need to go far.”
The groom brought out Vale, who sidestepped with frisky excitement, tossing his head at the sight of them.Despite her burning rage, fury, and despair, Nic couldn’t help smiling at the horse’s happiness.Oh, to be that simple and enjoy the moment.Gabriel grasped her by the hips and lifted her onto Vale’s back with easy strength, and with such speed that she gasped in surprise.Before she’d come to terms with the rapidly evolving situation, Gabriel had swung up behind her, caging her in the stalwart protection of his big body, and urged Vale into a lunging leap of a gallop that had bits of mud and grass flying up behind them.
The precipitous departure and increasing speed gave her no time to catch her breath or equilibrate.Gabriel leaned low over her, cutting the drag and forcing her to lie low also or be crushed.Vale stretched out, reaching a velocity she’d never experienced with him, which made sense, as both Vale and Gabriel had been injured in the battle with the hunters just before she met up with them.Now, thanks to healing and rest, both man and horse were back in top form, and they hurtled down a road Nic hadn’t yet seen, going flat out so that tears streamed from Nic’s eyes from the wind of their passage, Vale’s mane stinging her cheeks.
To her surprise, the blistering speed, the feel of the horse’s muscles bunching and stretching beneath her, the furious cadence of his all-out gallop, even Gabriel’s body against hers as the misty world streamed past them, helped release something in her.That leaden ball of dizzying despair that had congealed in her at the sight of Alise’s ill-advised, criminal companions melted ever so slightly.
By the time Gabriel reined up on a hillock, indeed only a short time later, she felt a little bit less like she might shatter.He swung down, then offered hands up to her, expression composed but eyes dark with a challenge.No doubt if she was huffy and refused, he’d just pull her down.She braced herself on his forearms and let him lift her by the waist and set her on her feet.
He stepped back a careful distance, as if she were an improperly balanced fire incantation that could erupt if jostled.“You were saying?”he inquired.When she stared blankly at him, thoroughly disoriented by his unusual behavior, he raised one dark brow.“You are so angry at me…”
He’d employed a dramatically unfair tactic.Somewhere in that headlong race to nowhere, she’d lost the fiery impetus to rake him over the coals for his idealistic nonsense and shortsightedness.Raking her fingers through her hair, she found it damp with condensed mist, the low-lying area below filled with fog, like a shifting grey sea.“Why here?”she asked.
“You’ll see when the sun burns through,” he replied.“And this is far enough away from everyone that you can yell at me and vent whatever has you wrapped around your own axel without anyone overhearing you.”
She gaped at him with no idea where to start with that.“Wrapped around my own axel?What does that even mean?”
Folding his arms, he frowned at her.“The metaphor is obvious.”
She set her teeth.“It is thewrongmetaphor, Gabriel.What I am is trapped in the back of a runaway wagon, careening off a cliff, and you’re urging the elemental on and laughing as you do it.”
His lips twitched in a quickly suppressed smirk—which was a good thing, as she couldn’t have vouched for her behavior if he’d displayed actual amusement at that.“Why is letting those three stay so terrible?”
“Nowyou ask?After you countermanded me?”She grasped for words, sputtered, then turned her back on him, clenched her fists by her sides, and let out a bloodcurdling shriek at the unoffending fog.Vale snorted, lifting his head from grazing, long grass draping from his muzzle as he eyed her.
“Feel better?”Gabriel asked.
“No!”she shouted, whirling on him and advancing.
He stood his ground, imperturbable.“Are you angry because I countermanded you or because I did it because I decided you were wrong?”
“Both!And I amnotwrong about this.Letting Han and Iliana stay was the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.Worse than abducting Narlis by several orders of magnitude.”
“I don’t regret liberating Narlis.”
“Just because the results weren’t an utter disaster—and we don’t know that it still won’t come home to roost like a Ratsiel courier with bad news and a wait-for-reply command—doesn’t mean it was a good idea.”
“Your sister brought Han and Iliana to us.Alise knows what she’s doing.”
“Alise is achild.”
“She’s only a few years younger than you are.”
“She’s been spoilt and protected and she has no idea what kinds of consequences she’s facing.”
“Funny,” he retorted, “that’s almost word for word what the Convocation proctor said aboutyou.”
“And she was right!”Nic hurled back at him.“Ididn’tknow.I was stupid and naïve and selfish and foolish and—”
“No, you weren’t.Stop saying those things,” he bit out.
He didn’t understand, and Nic didn’t know how to get it through his stubborn head.Changing tone and tack, she tried to explain rationally.Alise wasn’t the point here.“Han and Iliana are valuable familiars who have gone rogue.House Phel is now harboring valuable stolen property, and I can promise you that House Sammael will not be as easy to deal with as Iblis.You just made a powerful, perhaps devastating, enemy.”
