“Because I’m fairly certain something drove that creature off, and it wasn’t your grymhounds. Nor was it us.”
There’s something about the way she stares into the darkness of the cave that sends a shiver down my spine. I take the chance to Sift to the side, hiding the horn in a rocky crevice before I reappear at her side.
Soraya looks at me sharply, as if she sensed the movement, but she’s still distracted by the current threat.
The questing beast could be lurking outside.
And she’s right. It was injured by the grymhounds, but the second a wound is cut into its hide it starts repairing itself.
Something about the cave unnerved it.
“Guess we’re going to find out,” I mutter as I turn toward her. “Are we taking bets on what sort of vicious beast lurks in—”
A hiss of air whips past my face, a sting alighting on my cheek. I clap a hand there in surprise, but it’s the brief scream Soraya gives that stalls my own shocked cry.
An arrow embeds itself in her chest, and she staggers back, her feet scrambling to keep her upright.
The last thing I see before she hits the ground is the ebony shaft of the arrow.
24
One glimpse of those short, clipped raven’s feathers on the shaft and I know who hunts us.
I know.
Ruhle. And his seven.
I spring forward, slamming Soraya back to the floor as she struggles to rise, just as another arrow screams past.
And then they’re singing toward us like a flight of ravens. Rolling her, I manage to find cover under an overhang of rock for both of us.
“Get out of here!” Soraya screams, coughing blood.
Leaving her here is leaving her to our bastard brother’s mercy. “Not without you!”
Grabbing the arrow, she grits her teeth together as she snaps the shaft. “You stupid fool, you’ll only slow me down. The way you always do. The way you did the night of our final test. You’re not ruthless enough, Zemira. And you’re going to get us both killed.”
It’s an arrow to the chest.
Suddenly I’m back there, staring into her eyes as I see recognition slowly dawn there. She was reaching for my hand to haul me up the cliff until a sheet of glacial indifference came over her.
“You’re only slowing me down,” she’d whispered, her voice cutting through my chest like a rusty hacksaw. “You’re going to get us both killed.”
“Don’t leave me! We’ll do this together—”
But Soraya only shook her head, her eyes locking down tight and hard as if she was nailing the coffin shut on the love we’d once shared. “He was right. Father was right. You’re weak. And I have to be strong enough for both of us. Goodbye, Z.”
And then she turned and walked out of my life.
Forever.
“Maybe I am weaker than you are,” I snarl. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to just walk away right now. I’m better than that.”
“Curse you, let me go—”
Grabbing two fistfuls of Soraya’s coat, I steel myself. I’ve done this before.
I can do it again.
“No! Don’t you dare!” she yells.
An arrow ricochets off the ledge.
“Come out, come out, little rats,” Ruhle whispers, his voice dipping into a laugh that echoes through the cavern.
One day soon, I am going to drown that skulking rodent, and I’m going to enjoy it.
But right now….
“Don’t move!” I hiss at Soraya, and then I plunge us both into the shadows.
We punch into darkness, but this time it feels like a weight keeps dragging me down. Flickering in and out of being, I move as fast as I can. Alighting on a ledge. Slamming into the tree outside the cavern. Toward the lake….
Every time we slam back into the world, Soraya’s scream rings out until I’m forced to clamp a hand over her mouth to stop her from giving away our position. Speckles of shadow stream off me until the hem of my cloak is ragged and torn. Somehow I’m losing particles of myself. Maybe I’m not strong enough to hold us both incorporeal for this long, but I knot my fists in Soraya’s shirt as though I can somehow hold her together physically. It’s like falling through an endless chasm of darkness, screaming, screaming, until you finally hit rock bottom.
We slam into the waters of the lake.
I’m inside out. Blind. Breathless.
And it’s so cold here.
The darkness closes over me, and the last thing I think is how heavy my bones feel….
Slap.
Pain ricochets through me.
Water rushes past.
I cough out a lungful of water and try to get my bearings as someone drags me from the lake. The world is spinning, or maybe that’s just my eyes rolling back in my head.
Slap.
“You stupid bitch.” Someone’s rubbing heat into my hands. “Z, wake up.” A hand slaps my face, gripping my chin. “Wake up! Or I swear I’ll leave you here. I swear I will. Wake up!”
She breathes into my mouth, and heated air fills my lungs. It’s like swallowing light. Heat. My eyes pop wide, and then it feels like every ragged edge of my body suddenly melts into liquid.
Coughing again, I roll onto my side and spew out a cloud of darkness. It’s like I’m vomiting pure shadow, and Soraya thumps me between the shoulder blades even as that merciless heat eats its way through me.
What the fuck…?
“What’d… you do?” I rasp, finding myself on the banks of the lake.
Soraya wilts over me, barely holding herself up.
Her skin’s the color of ash, her lips blue and her skin shivering. Somehow she’s aged a year in a single moment.
“What did you do?” I whisper, because I feel like I could leap
