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“What are you talking about?” Taj snaps, riding to my side.
“I feel the south.” I point. “That way. We’re going wrong.”
“Damn. Just like Finnen said.”
“We’re going the wrong way?” Ariadne pulls up her horse on my other side. She fans herself with her hand and her cheeks are flushed under the hood. “Goddess, I’m burning. It’s too warm.”
I blink at her. “Warm?” I’m frozen solid, can’t feel my nose or hands, and the wind blowing from the west has blades in it.
“The more time we spend with our omega,” Taj says, “the hotter she will become. Quite literally.”
I snort.
“Not funny,” Ariadne mutters.
“And the more Fae traits will appear,” Taj goes on. “In all of us. Those traits we have will become more apparent.”
“You mean, we’ll turn into full Fae?” Ariadne sounds slightly appalled. “Big pointy ears and sharp teeth?”
I don’t know how the hell I feel about that. Besides, my teeth are already sharp. “Sensing the south is a Fae trait?
“Finnen talked about it. Said I should be able to feel it too if I tried,” Taj says. “He implied I wasn’t making enough of an effort.”
I chuckle, dig my heels in and turn my resisting horse toward the south. “That sounds like Finnen.”
“Wait,” Taj calls out as I take the lead. “I should be at the front.”
“Should you, now.” I smirk. He thinks a dress will make me hang back? As if a dress ever stopped Ariadne from doing whatever the hell she wanted.
As if a dress makes a woman. As if a woman can’t do the things a man can.
As if social norms mean anything at all. They’re the reason we were all cast away in the first place.
And I’m a berserk Drakoryas Wildman. Does Taj really think I’ll sit and fetch like a good dog? I’m insane by definition.
It’s my strength.
And as I canter down one street, then another, I come upon a military patrol.
“Back!” Taj shouts. “Turn back!”
“Kia!” Ariadne is wheeling her horse around already. “Come on.”
“We were going to ask them a question.” I press forward and hear them both cursing behind me.
“Kia, not now!”
“Then when?” I growl and don’t stop. My stallion leaps forward and we reach the end of the street in the blink of an eye. “No better time than now.”
The patrol stops, the soldiers staring at me. I must present quite the picture—a muscular, broad-shouldered lady in a frilly dress astride a black crazed-eyed stallion who can’t keep still.
“Who goes there?” one of them asks, then more cautiously, “My lady?”
Controlling my horse is taking up a lot of my attention, but I manage to stay in front of them as Ariadne and Taj return behind me. “The soldiers passing through the town this morning, where did they head to?”
A ripple goes through the patrol.
“Good day, brave men at arms.” Ariadne nudges her horse beside mine. “We are looking for my brother, a soldier in the army, to give him news of our mother’s passing. We were told he’d be heading to the Summer Capital, crossing through here, but his brigade may have left town already.”
