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“Fuck,” I snarled, grabbing my now-tender nose. My eyes had involuntarily clamped shut, and when I opened them all I saw was her thin frame frantically darting around the trees. “Are you kidding me?” I yelled. I prayed the horse would stay put as I sprinted after her, stepping over the remnants of her meal scattered over the road's edge.
I didn’t think Red was this stupid. She would never be fast enough. It wasn’t even a question of if or when I would catch her, but how on earth she really believed that there was a chance I wouldn’t. Even with that pathetic excuse of a blow. My arms wrapped around her waist as I snatched her up in my arms before she could make it any further. She exhaled loudly.
Keeping her tight against me, I slid my chest up her back until I was upright again. With one hand I grabbed her chin and forced her to look up at me. Then my heart stuttered. Red was grinning. Ear to ear, her lips parted in a brazen, unashamed, giddy smile.
“You had to expect me to at least try,” she said.
I didn’t know what I expected. Not that. Not her tiny, fragile little hand bopping me in the nose before she tried to outrun someone with five times her max speed on his worst day.
“Please, don’t do that again,” I breathed, lowering my head to rest my mouth against her ear. “I need to be more careful around you.”
Like she was merely a small piece of luggage I needed to take with me, I lifted her, and carried her back to the wagon. As I passed the driver’s seat, I snatched her bindings. She had brought this on herself. Without trying to be gentle, I set her down in the back.
“Welp, looks like you’ve won yourself some more time in these oh-so-glamorous shackles.” I held them up, rattled them.
Red winced, and the smile she wore just moments before had completely vanished. “These things hurt, you know.”
“I know,” I whispered, but I couldn’t hide my grin.
Red folded her arms over her chest, watching as I finished with her ankles. I pointed at her wrists. Her black strands bounced as she shook her head.
“I’m not doing this willingly,” she spat.
“Oh, I don’t need you to.”
I tried to slip my hand between her arms and she pulled away. Every time I got near her she pulled away until I had to climb into the back of the wagon and stand over her. The wood protested my weight with every step. I lowered my face to hers.
“Give me your arms,” I said, before prying them away from her body and binding them in metal again.
“You seem to be enjoying this, Keeper.”
“I would say that I wasn’t, but since you think I’m a bad liar, I’ll just admit that perhaps I am.” Slipping my arms under her armpits, I pulled her upright and led her out of the back of the cart and into her seat.
Making a show of it, I plucked the reins from where they rested, straightened my shirt, and sat down. “Shall we continue on then?”
Red sighed but didn’t bother to turn and give me her attention. If this was what every stop was going to be like, this might be the longest trip of my life. Without a thought, my hand rose and rubbed the tip of my sore nose.
Blistering rays beat down on my skin. The excessive amount of sun that shone within the Heathern Court borders took perspiration to a new level. Sweat dripped off my chin, landing on Shavarra’s top and darkening the material.
I took relief in the fact that she was still breathing. Even if I would have to stop walking and press my ear against her chest to make sure. It was the subtlest movement of her breast bone and the faintest rhythm of her heart that pushed me forward at such a pace.
My feet ached. Tension riddled my shoulders and lower back. A headache throbbed behind my temples. I couldn’t give in to the pain or the exhaustion. I wouldn’t let myself think about the blood that ran down my arms. Some of it was mine, most of it hers.
For Shavarra, I continued. Nymphs who had chosen to follow me, chosen to shape our future, or free a peaceful people, marched on behind me. Bodies were strung up in their arms like wilting plants. Though the crying had long since quieted from both the wounded and the grieving. Some carried the dead. Friends or family they couldn’t leave behind. Once we reached our destination I would make sure we gave them all a proper burial.
I wished sometimes that my dreams would give me something useful. That they would have shown me some sign of this attack during our travels. But no, somehow I still only sawher.My punishment for wishing away my crown was clear. It was loving someone so unattainable, for so long.
Crown or not, here I was fighting. These people were no longer alone, and neither was I. It gave me pride, the same pride I supposed the other noble Fae got from their courts when this group looked at me the way they did.
These people trust you to show them the way. Don’t fail them, Dace.
They trusted me to keep them safe.
I had already failed. The grim cries of sorrow throughout the night were enough to tell me that. But they still looked at me the same when the morning came, when we continued on as if the attack couldn’t hold us down.No matter how terrifying it had been, or how many it had left with injuries, we had only lost a small number. Numbers mattered in times like these. I was thankful to the gods, to the Nymphs’ Mother Nature even, or whoever else was responsible for allowing us to make it here.
We moved as quietly and unnoticed as we could when we skirted around the edges of small towns on the way to the Heathern Court Capital, Meridat. Moving through the Heathern Court, it was easy to see that the fighting within this court was not yet done. Several villages and townships were nothing but ash. Others still burned or were overturned by Mother Nature’s angry vines and earth. Even from our hidden path we could hear the clash of powers and raised voices.
The fighting had faded, much of it so long ago that it was easier to pretend like I hadn’t heard it at all. Still, the more I pretended, the worse the remorse got.
