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Pirates.
A thousand feet down the road, I heard screams, panthers snarling, and a few high-pitched whines, as if they’d been injured. My pulse jolted to every beat of Poseidon’s hooves.
He complained again, suddenly halting, stomping, and dragging his feet along the ground.
Then I noticed the reason for his alarm. At least fifty more pirates marched chained shifters into wagons, beating them if they didn’t comply. The panthers didn’t stand a chance against such numbers.
Each scream from the captured shifters made my heart ache. The overbearing golden glow illuminated all their faces—dirty, streaked with tears, and full of terror.
I had to help them. But charging down there was suicide. What could one woman on a horse do to an army of pirates?
Someone dressed in a dark dress strolled down the line of shifters clapping, delighting in her new prisoners. Feathers, part of the fan along her collar, bounced with each step. She stopped, her head twisting sideways, and she spun to face me
My heart felt as if it literally stopped.
That witch! She’d always gone for the fanciful outfits, but her style, drenched in jewels, had scaled up since I’d last seen her. Who did she think she was? A fucking queen? What was she doing with the pirates?
Intent on charging her, knocking her to the ground, then setting her alight, I urged Poseidon into a run, but he refused again.Damn it.Guess he was being the smart one of the two of us. Realistically, my odds of getting that close without being struck down by a pirate were slim. Gut clenching, I thought frantically, seeking another solution.
Then I saw him, and I froze. His face was twisted by darkness and anger.
Shadow!
At the sight of him and his family bound and kneeling, my heart sank to the bottom of my ribcage. I couldn’t leave him. But I didn’t have a choice because in the next moment, Poseidon tossed his head, whinnied, and took off in the opposite direction.
“No,” I said, yanking as hard as I could at the reins. “Stop, boy. Go back.”
The poor beast couldn’t be reasoned with. Perhaps my stepmother terrified him as much as she did me. At the sight of her, my blood had turned to ice.
The farther I rode away from Shadow and the shifters, the more my heart felt like a lead weight at the bottom of my chest. They’d all be rounded up and imprisoned. Sea God knew what nefarious plans that witch had in store. At the thought of the pain that awaited Shadow, his workers, and those of the neighboring property, my stomach turned, flushing me with a violent nausea. Heaving, I vomited over the side of my horse.
I hated myself for not being able to do more to stop that witch. The burden of my father’s death—and now all the captured shifters—weighed on my mind, too heavy to bear. Tears came thick and fast, stinging, burning my cheeks. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw them, sobbing, whimpering, cowering, snarling. Most of all, I couldn’t forget her smug and triumphant face. I wanted to break every bone in her body the way the torturer had broken me.
Defeated and destroyed again, I was helpless as Poseidon carried me away into the night. He may as well have tossed me off and left me there. I was useless. To myself, to my father’s memory, and especially to the shifters. Because of me, they’d all die.
***
Half a day’s ride later,we reached the foothills of the mountains. Here, we ventured through pined forests littered with cones and needles. Leaves from other trees coated the forest floor, and they rustled as Poseidon’s hooves brushed them. An eagle soaring the currents of air above us shrieked as if it had spotted its next meal. Other strange animal calls echoed around us. They differed greatly from the melodic and colorful wildlife in the tropics of Tritonia.
The stallion stopped for short rest to drink from streams and nibble at grass. My stomach churned at the idea of food or water. More than ever, I wanted to get to the resistance alive. To tell them what my stepmother was doing, bandy their support, and launch an attack to save the shifters.
What my stepmother was doing went against the dragon king’s laws. Panther shifters were the king’s subjects and dwelled with his permission in these lower mountain regions. They used the lands for agricultural pursuits, namely growing fruits and tea leaves and tending to livestock. My father used to buy tea from them. A distributor from my father’s village sold the teabags across all of Tritonia.
Dragons resided deeper in the mountain ranges, some hundred leagues to the north. In Haven, several types existed, each with a different affinity for an element: fire, water, earth, and air. My father went to the same boarding school as the dragon king and had remained friends with him beyond his coronation. Friendly relations aside, dragons, particularly the fire species, came with a fierce reputation and had historically torn the heads off invaders. I preferred dealing with the levelheaded and more reasonable water and earth dragons, but I might not get a chance to speak with any of them, considering I’d entered the dragons’ territory without permission.
All this made me wonder how my stepmother’s intrusion would look to the dragons. From what I knew of the king, he would never approve of my stepmother claiming the panthers as slaves and burning their lands…unless they were working together. If that was the case, it made my presence here even more risky.
All these thoughts of the dragons made me think of the mysterious resistance group, to whom I traveled, in search of protection. Why had they chosen Wildfire for their headquarters? What was the group’s objective? Who were they fighting against? Why did they need me?
Part of me wished I’d gone the opposite way, to the ocean, to seek the aid of my closest ally, the blessed sea king. But I didn’t want to risk being apprehended and imprisoned again.
The terrain steepened as Poseidon climbed another pass. Trees older than my father would have been loomed over us. The stallion whinnied, letting me know something wasn’t right. On alert, I scanned our surroundings. A nearby shrub rustled as a squirrel scampered out and up a tree trunk. Leaves crunched a little ways off in the distance. Something was on the move. Several birds in the canopy took flight.
When I was small, my father had taught me to hunt. He always said to listen with my heart and gut, not just follow my ears and eyes. To trust my instincts and know when to pursue and when to flee. A shame I hadn’t listened to the hot, bitter flare in my belly the instant I’d met my stepmother. But I’d been so blinded by my desperation for my father to be happy—and yes, I’d always longed to have a mother.
After participating in many a hunt, I’d become well accustomed to discerning the difference between the sounds of little animals versus larger ones. This, whatever it was, was big. In the ranks of a hog or a large deer. My gut told me to remain alert. Unfortunately, I’d learned the hard way never to ignore my instincts.
Suddenly, my skin crawled, as if someone were watching me.
