those words.
She glanced up and saw that he was walking back, leaving Feyn seemingly to her own thoughts on the ridge. She straightened, aware of the butterflies in her belly. She was ready for the days ahead, whatever challenges they brought. For the move to the Citadel-shored up already against the pervasive smell of Corpse in the city.
Jordin gave him a small smile as he approached the horses, but his mind was either lost on his discussion with Feyn, or distracted by whatever task lay ahead of him.
He flipped open one of the saddlebags on his horse. “Never underestimate the cost of sovereignty, Jordin,” he said quietly.
He said it as one who had taken a great weight on his shoulders. The look she saw so often on Rom’s face. Roland’s. And they were coleaders of only twelve hundred. What would become of Jonathan the day the world descended upon his shoulders?
“Jonathan…” She came round her horse and saw that he’d withdrawn a length of old bridle leather. “However I can serve you, I will. I will be there. I will never leave you.”
When he looked up, sorrow was pulling at his face.
“You said that you would follow me always,” he said.
“Yes. Always. What’s wrong?”
“Even if where I go is difficult to understand?”
“Yes!”
He studied her for a moment, then turned the leather length in his hand. “Then bind yourself to your word. Join with me.”
Her heart stuttered. It was the way the Nomads bound themselves to one another on the day they made pledges and took their mates.
“Bind myself to you? Now?”
“Put your hands out,” he said gently.
She lifted her hands in front of her, wrists together. Jonathan wasn’t given to convention-he was the son of the unexpected. It was one of the things she loved about him, trusting that he had a purpose even in his most erratic actions.
She watched as crossed the tether and looped one end twice more, and then the other, twice more. But he was binding her arms together, not him to her. With a soft, confused laugh she looked up at him.
But this time, his face was twisted with emotion, lips pressed together in an effort to control them. She’d seen Jonathan cry many times, unbeknownst to so many, and knew the expression well.
“Jonathan?”
A tear coursed down his cheek as he finished with the leather, tying it in a hard knot.
“What are you doing?”
Tears wet on his face, he took her neck in his hands, leaned in, and kissed her.
“I love you, Jordin,” he whispered. And then his arms went around her and he lifted her off her feet.
Was it possible that he had changed his mind? Was this what he and Feyn had spoken about? Was it possible he had gone back to Feyn to discuss terms, to say that he loved her and could not marry another?
“Jonathan?”
He carried her to one of the closest trees, a bent and gnarled olive. Eased her down by the trunk, which hadn’t grown but a couple feet around. Pressing her arms up over her head and against the tree, he produced another length of cord and began to bind them to the trunk itself.
Her first impulse was to jerk away, but she could not defy Jonathan. He had his purpose and she would simply trust him. Hadn’t she just sworn to follow him regardless of where it took her? Then this was a test…
From the corner of her vision she saw Feyn returning from the ridge, eyes on them. A bell of alarm attempted to shatter her resolve. What was happening?
“Jonathan… Please.”
He seemed not to hear her. She began to twist, to try to pull her hands free, but they were bound too tightly by the first rope.
“Stop, Jonathan. Please!”
But he was fixated, working quickly with the rope until her bound hands were coiled to the tree trunk above her.
He stepped back, eyes pleading with her to understand. “I love you, Jordin. You will soon understand, I promise you. Follow me always.”
Feyn stopped beside him. “It’s time,” she said, laying her hand on his arm. Then Jordin knew…
They were leaving her!
Panicked, she jerked against the rope, but it was bound too tightly.
“Jonathan!”
He took one last look at her, eyes filled with longing and sorrow, and then turned.
“Jonathan!” she screamed, feeling the veins in her temple throb with the effort. She watched helplessly as Feyn untied the black stallion and swung into the saddle. As Jonathan returned to his horse and did the same.
They left her bound to the tree, with only Jonathan’s own tears as consolation.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MICHAEL, knife!”
Roland approached Michael at a full gallop, sweeping by her left side as she snatched a knife from her belt and flipped it over her back-all without turning from the two Dark Bloods bearing down on her with slashing blades. Their Mortal senses might prove challenged in such a crowded battlefield, but their acute hearing could easily identify directions and distances on all sides.
A Dark Blood on horse-one of the few left-angled in at a dead gallop, eyes on Michael. Her knife flew lazily through the air within easy grasp as Roland thundered past. He snatched it by the hilt and hurled it at the approaching horseman in a single, unbroken movement.
His aim flew true. The knife slammed into the mounted Dark Blood’s neck with enough force to slice clean through to the spine. The rider went limp; his horse galloped by, aimless as the Dark Blood slowly toppled to one side and fell heavily to the earth.
All but a handful of Saric’s cavalry were now dead.
Michael took advantage of the momentary distraction, plunged her sword up under one of the Dark Blood’s chins, then spun in a crouch with a wide slash that cut deep into the other’s hip. Another thrust put the warrior out of his misery.
Roland swept around and slowed so that Michael could swing up behind him.
“Thank you,” she panted.
“Don’t thank me yet.”
It was all he needed to say; the battle was far from over.
The events of the last hour and a half ran through Roland’s mind.
His archers had delivered five thousand arrows before setting their trench on fire and retreating behind a wall of flames and smoke. They’d cut the Dark Blood cavalry by two-thirds in that opening strike.
Saric had quickly mounted a counterattack using the brute strength of his full army, killing nearly a hundred Mortals in his first unrelenting sweep across the plateau, leaving only three hundred Nomads to defend the high ground while the reserve force of three hundred waited south for the signal that would begin the third phase of engagement.
For the next half hour they’d battled on horse against an infantry that was fast and strong but no match for Nomads on horseback. Saric had stood his ground on the southern end of the plateau, surrounded by a thousand warriors.
And then the Mortals began to fall. One by one, and only after taking down more than their share of Dark Bloods each, the vast imbalance of numbers began to take its inevitable toll. By the end of the first hour, the ground
