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It crashed between the banks, spilling across either side. The water shifted, rocking back and forth before the river resumed down its normal path.
The rain turned cold again and the ancient being with her seemed to make a contented sound before crawling back to wherever it hid inside her body.
Arianna collapsed onto the bank and nausea rolled through her stomach.
Talon slid down beside her, breathing hard, then his hands were on her shoulder. She hissed and jerked away and he mumbled an apology. Talon followed her gaze to her foot.
“Are you okay?” he asked. Yes. No. Arianna just nodded. Her body was trembling too much to speak just yet.
“Gods, Arianna, I said hot, not boil the whole damn river.”
A choked laugh. “It worked, didn’t it?” She sat in the grass and tilted her head, allowing the rain to cool her face. “And you didn’t exactly specify.”
Talon sat back with her, their chests heaving. “Whatever is happening with your magic, I like it. A lot.”
She huffed out another laugh. “Me, too.” Because it was answering her now, and the power that radiated through her body when it did made Arianna feel like she could conquer the world. No, not conquer it: change it for the better.
After a few more breaths, Talon stood and pulled Arianna to her feet. “Come on, let’s get out of here and find some shelter before anything else decides we’d make a good meal.”
Chapter Seventy-four
Rion
It was night when they emerged. The moon glowed in the sky like a silver disc and illuminated the barren landscape surrounding the pair of wooden double doors they’d just exited. The trees were burnt, their lower trunks covered in black soot just as Kaylee had mentioned. No prints. No path.
Niall covered his tracks well.
Rion tilted his head back, basking in the slight breeze that shifted the ash at their feet. For two months, he’d smelled nothing but the dank cell Niall had crammed him into. Some days it seemed as though he could taste the other prisoners’ filth. Now he breathed in the fresh air, not caring that it smelled of embers.
Freedom.
He glanced at his mother. Her green eyes were locked on the moon and her pale skin almost glowed in the faint light. Her chest expanded as she scented the air, taking in everything around them.
Eighty years beneath the ground with no hope of ever seeing the sky again. Eighty years of the same four walls and chains and only a few souls to keep her company.
His throat bobbed and Rion turned away, allowing his mother some privacy.
On their way to the surface, Rion had inquired about clothes and Kaylee had led them to a side room where he’d found a tunic and a pair of boots that were slightly too small. He’d thrown them on, thankful they didn’t smell of Niall. Rion imagined they belonged to one of the prisoners, though whether the individual was still alive was a question he didn’t have time to answer.
His mother had also dressed without bothering to remove the tattered clothes already covering her slight frame. She’d found a pair of boots, then had draped a different tunic over Kaylee’s head and tied the loose fabric with a rope to hold it closed.
There weren’t any shoes to fit Kaylee, but his mother had layered several pairs of moth-eaten socks over her small feet. It would do for now.
“This way,” his mother said. She’d kept three full arm lengths between them since leaving her cell and Kaylee clung to her side.
“How do you know?” Rion eyed the iron on her wrists. Her abilities as a seer wouldn’t work with them on.
“I can smell him.” Rion scented the air and she caught the movement. “You don’t spend decades locked in a cage with someone and forget the foul stench they carry.”
Rion nodded, a lump forming in his throat that his mother seemed to note. She eyed him, that piercing emerald gaze surveying his form for any weaknesses she might be able to exploit. She likely saw a lot of weaknesses right now.
Every fiber in his body burned with a combination of pain and exhaustion. He wasn’t certain how far he could push before it finally gave out. His mother’s shoulders had slumped, too. Even in the moonlight, he could see her collarbones beneath the fabric of her thin shirt and the way they protruded from her shoulders at sharp angles. Despite the way she’d attacked him, Rion knew she was just as exhausted as he was.
Great. Here they were, two adults barely on their feet and a child who looked more petrified to leave than to stay and face her lunatic of a captor.
Rion knelt to Kaylee’s level and gently took her hand. She startled and his mother spun around, eyeing him with a look that promised death should he try to hurt the child.
“It’ll be all right,” Rion promised. “We’re going to get out of here and I’ll show you that forest, just like I promised.”
