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But Doshir turns away with a sigh, his gaze back on the harbor, and reality crashes in all around us. We have horses to acquire, a journey to make, and then we have to sneak into the of the dragons. And talk to Doshir’s ex-girlfriend.
“One more thing,” Doshir says, turning back to me.
I suddenly feel cold. His father said he’d been mooning over this Wendolyn for years; was it too much of a stretch to think he still had some sort of connection with her? Was he about to warn me that, sorry, we might have been through a lot in the past couple of weeks, but in the end I was more of a fling than a thing?
“You don’t have to do this,” Doshir says.
It’s so far from what I expected him to say that it takes a moment for the meaning behind his words to register.
“Sneaking into the Iron Mountains is—” Doshir pauses, then shakes his head. “It’s insanity. I don’t even know if it can be done.”
A sound slips out of his lips, something halfway between a laugh and the sort of cry he’d made as we’d rounded the corner in his garden and found his entire house ablaze and his mother murdered.
“Chances are, I’m about to end up in chains in another dungeon,” he finishes, turning away from me to follow the bronze gleam of his father’s wings as they rise above the Knife’s Edge Mountains.
I clear my throat. “Well, then I’d better come with you,” I say.
Doshir turns back to me, his dark eyes wide. There’s still a smear of ash across his forehead; I stifle the urge to brush it away and shrug, as if this were an easy decision. As if I wasn’t turning my back on the entire of Valgros, and on its king.
“Because you might need me to rescue you again,” I say.
Doshir’s lips twist into a smile. For a heartbeat, the darkness in his gaze lifts. And this is an easy decision after all, I suddenly realize.
Of course, I would give up an entire for this dragon.
Chapter21
Doshir
Every muscle in my body screams in protest as I follow Rayne up the interminable path through the Knife’s Edge Mountains. The sun set hours ago, but of course, that’s not going to stop this woman. I doubt all the fires of the nine hells combined would stop this woman.
Beside me, the horse I’m leading snorts as if he agrees. I turn to give him a sympathetic scratch behind the ears, even though my backside might never be the same after spending most of the day in his accursed elven saddle.
I’d naively assumed we would be riding the horses all the way to the Iron Mountains, just like I’d naively assumed riding horses wasn’t that big of a deal. I’d done it before, after all, and it mostly seemed to be a matter of not falling off. Or at least, it had seemed that simple when it had been for a short ride along the beach to a picnic spot, not when I was hanging on for dear life as a massive beast beat its hooves into the gravel beneath us.
No, it turns out that riding horses is work. It requires muscles I didn’t even know I had until we stopped to dismount and they all started screaming at once. Rayne explained that horses, for all their strength and speed, can only run over short distances. To make the best time, she’d said, we’d have to run, then walk, then let the horses rest before we run again. And I hadn’t argued, mostly because I trust that Rayne knows what she’s talking about, and partly because I was too winded to speak.
We’d done that twice now, gallop, walk, and rest, and the sun had set behind us as the horses thundered up the pass through the Knife’s Edge Mountains. Now we were walking them down the far side of the pass as the lodgepole pines whispered above us and the stars danced across the black velvet curtain of night. We’ve been following a stream down the mountainside, its cheerful little song keeping us company in the darkness.
The memory of our last trip through these mountains keeps teasing at the edges of my numbed and exhausted mind. The surprise on Rayne’s face when I’d landed in the trees, transformed, pulled on clothes, and then walked into the flickering golden light of her campfire. Sleeping in my traveling cloak, fool that I am, because it hadn’t occurred to me to bring a bed roll.
I glance back at the horse, as if reassuring myself once again that, yes, Elyon had provided a bed roll with each horse, along with a fresh set of clothes for each of us. Presumably he’d also packed some food, but we hadn’t stopped to check. We’d barely stopped to speak.
Ahead of me, Rayne gasps. Her horse stops, and the sudden silence is so surprising that it takes me a moment to process what the lack of hoofbeats means. I reach up to pat my horse’s neck, then turn to Rayne. She’s staring at a small gap in the stand of lodgepole pines beside us. A slow crescent moon is rising over the jagged teeth of the Knife’s Edge Mountains and turning the tips of the pines silver.
“This is—” she begins, then stops. “The horses need to rest,” she declares.
With that, she tugs her mount through the gap in the pines. I follow, and what she was about to say becomes obvious as she pulls the saddle and pack off her horse and sets them beside the ruins of an old campfire.
“This is where I found you,” I say. “After you left Cairncliff. When I asked if I could come with you to Valgros.”
Her eyes meet mine, and something sparks in the air between us. Then she turns away, dropping her gaze to the pack at her feet.
“It is,” she replies, her voice soft.
Rayne pulls something from the pack, then walks over to me. My heart trips over itself deep beneath my ribs, and for some ridiculous reason I’m imagining a kiss. That’s probably what I should have done the first time I met her here; walked out of those trees, pulled her into an embrace, and plundered those delicious lips. It’s certainly what my father would have done. And with that thought, my latent spark of arousal winks out of existence just as Rayne hands me a small, curved brush with stiff bristles.
“Rub the horses down,” she says. “I’ll start a fire.”
