AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I swallow hard, even though it tears at the inside of my throat. The Silver City. How hard could it be to fade away in the largest city in the world? To find a place, somewhere, to build a life for myself, for this little spark within me that may yet turn into a child. I watch Phaedron’s exhausted features in the golden light, and something in my chest tightens with a strange sort of pain. I’m sorry, I whisper inside my mind. I’m sorry for stealing your magic.
And I’m sorry that I’ll leave you behind once we reach the Silver City.
Chapter9
Alindra
SO MUCH FOR SUPPLIES
“I’m not buying a horse,” Phaedron mutters under his breath.
I snort. “I wouldn’t buy a horse here.”
Phaedron raises an eyebrow like he doesn’t understand. His preternaturally pale skin almost glows in the thin light that heralds the rising sun.
“That’s a human settlement,” I continue in a whisper, only then realizing that my words probably mean nothing to Phaedron. I don’t think there are any humans in the Lands Below.
“You’d have to be desperate to buy a horse from a human,” I explain as we look out across the dusty collection of lilting wooden buildings clustered around the road that cuts through the Dragon Pass. “Humans don’t know the first thing about breeding. They’ll have a bunch of half-wild desert ponies and try to pass them off as purebreds.”
I turn back to Phaedron. He’s watching me like he only understood about half of the words that came out of my mouth. I roll my eyes. My feet ache inside my stupid boots, and my legs are still screaming about spending the night stumbling through the forest and tripping over rocks, stopping only to gulp water from the river like animals. Whenever I twist to adjust my bag, a new part of my back clenches up in protest.
Phaedron had offered to carry my bag. Several times, in fact, until I almost yelled at him that I was just fine, thank you very much. Then my foot snagged a root and I pitched forward face-first, hitting the road on my hands and knees and scratching thin, bloody lines across both my palms.
I accepted Phaedron’s hand to help me stand, but I kept my bag slung over my shoulder. I may have spent most of my life locked inside Grathgore’s castle, but I’m still the daughter of a rancher. I can still handle myself.
Besides, I’m in no rush to reveal that I’m carrying almost nothing except stolen gold, especially after Phaedron asked if I perhaps had any water. I scowled at his reasonable assumption that I would bring something as necessary as water, and then I spent the rest of the long, painful night cursing my own stupidity.
A hinge squeals somewhere in the little town as the eastern horizon glows like molten iron, adding another note to the discordant symphony of roosters announcing the new day. A dog begins to bark, and I shift on the dirt behind the fallen log we chose as our cover. My stomach makes a low, wistful rumble. This town had better wake up soon, or I’m about ready to start banging on doors and asking what’s for breakfast.
The dog barks again, louder and sharper, and finally a door opens on the largest of the wooden buildings, the one I’d taken to be some sort of inn or waystation. A figure shuffles out, short enough to be a human or maybe even a dwarf, with their hat pulled low, obscuring facial features. He or she moves around the dusty courtyard with a slow, deliberate pace that makes me think of well-worn chores. Water is pumped. Chickens are fed. And then, as the rising sun spills its gold over the mountainside, the figure opens a gate and a stream of snorting horses pours out of a dusty corral and into the valley beyond.
They’re exactly what I expected, those horses; small, sturdy animals fit for mining or hauling carts, not at all like the racers and warhorses my family raised. Still, the sight of the herd moving through the gate and onto their grazing grounds tugs at something buried deep inside my chest. How many mornings had I watched my father do the same thing? I know how those horses must sound, the sound of their hooves against the packed ground, their snorting and muttering. I know how they smell, warmth and salt, the pungent, grassy aroma of fresh manure.
The last of the horses, a dun mare with a bit of a limp, moves through the gate, and it swings shut with a low squeal. The figure stretches, spits, and turns back toward the largest building. The scent of woodsmoke and frying meat drifts through the air, and my gut pinches in response. I shift, then come to my feet.
Phaedron’s hand closes over my arm. His touch is warm, surprisingly so, and for a heartbeat my entire body freezes, then flashes with heat. Phaedron hasn’t touched me, not since he exploded through the portal in my bedroom, not since he said he’d take me to another world—
“Get down,” Phaedron whispers.
His pale eyes are hard and narrow. My breath catches somewhere in the back of my throat. I do as he says without thinking, my heartbeat like thunder inside my skull.
And outside my skull. There’s a sound moving up the canyon, a sound that drums through the earth below us and makes the golden dawn tremble. Hoofbeats. Riders.
I push myself lower to the ground, trying to flatten my body against this fallen log that suddenly seems like very little protection. Beside me, Phaedron spreads his dark cloak out behind him, then tilts his head to the side. I follow his lead, pressing my body against him just like I had when we huddled together against the cliff, and he lifts his cloak to cover us both.
His cloak is warm, just like his touch, but still a shiver slides across my skin. There’s a crack in the log before us, just enough to let us watch the road and the large building. The sound of hoofbeats swells in the air. Whoever’s riding toward us, they’re moving fast. And they’re not trying to hide.
I swallow hard as the first of the horses comes into view. He’s a gorgeous blood bay stallion with a proud gait and the arching neck of a desert-bred fighter. He is, unmistakably, one of the horses of the Kingdom of the Summer. And the man who dismounts into the dusty courtyard of the little inn is similarly unmistakable.
Malron. He walks toward the human as a dozen other riders come up behind him, all soldiers, all heavily armed. The human freezes, and for one horrible moment, I expect Malron to simply strike him down, to murder the human with no questions asked. But instead, Malron lifts his head into the air, and my curiosity turns to sickening horror.
He’s trying to smell me. He’s trying to scent us, to sense our magic. I feel cold despite the warmth of Phaedron’s body. All magic has a scent, of course, and nothing else in this ramshackle human settlement would smell like elven magic. A tremble runs through my body, long and low. Thank the stars Phaedron hasn’t recreated his illusion arm.
One of the soldiers dismounts and walks to Malron. Something flashes in the air between them, some little spark of illusion magic, and then Malron raises his hands, weaving something. I can’t see the magic he’s creating, but I can feel it, like eyes on the back of my neck in the dark. Malron raises his palms in the air, and the spell moves through the air like a whisper, feeling for magic. Any magic.
The spell rustles the leaves of the trees above us. Magic dances across my skin, even through the cloak, pulling me like magic always does. It would be so simple to reach out and take that magic in, to turn it into something else. To create, to play.
I clench my jaw, ignoring the call, and the magic whispers away. Time slows to nothing but the agonized beat of my heart, the rasp of breath I’m trying to silence, as Malron tilts his head to the sky and listens to his spell. Then, finally, his head drops, the spell bursts like a soap bubble, and Malron growls something at the terrified human.
