equal measure.
Shock turned to anger as she pictured her savior's face again. He'd known. The Ereubinian had not spared her life out of goodness or mercy. This had been a game for him.
What good are his spoils with no one to suffer for them?
'Was this what you were waiting for?' She wailed. 'To see me fall apart?' Her resolve weakened and the ground rushed to meet her knees. Tears rolled down her cheeks and sobs choked her words of clarity. 'Why didn't you come back sooner? Finish us off before we had a chance to recover?' She rested her cheek against the soil as she wept.
At first she thought she felt his breath, the Ereubinian's — that he had returned to revel in his win — but she realized the very idea that he would have knelt down to lie on the ground beside her was lunacy.
'Koen,' she moaned. Grabbing the dog by his nape, she pulled him to her and buried her face in his matted fur. 'You left me, you useless coward.'
Her brief joy was sobered as she fought another round of tears, this one stronger than the first. Keeping one hand on Koen, she lowered her head into the other hand and tried to slow her breathing as her father had once taught her.
I can't do this now. I can't let this paralyze me. She didn't trust the Ereubinian to keep his unspoken promise of respite. She waited another minute before trying her legs. Once she was secure on her feet, she limped back to the edge of the woods, where she stood for a moment, peering into the darkness of the Netherwoods. A wind whipped through the boughs of the trees above her, bringing a chill to her skin. She moved to pull her cloak tighter to her when she realized whose cloak she wore.
Ripping it off, she held back a string of curses that would have made a seaman blanch, but couldn't bring herself to drop it to the ground.
It doesn't matter whose it is, it will still keep me warm.
She swallowed a healthy measure of disgust before grudgingly wrapping it around her shoulders again. Koen seemed to look at her with approval.
'I don't want to hear it from you,' she sounded ill, but was more than pleased he'd run from the fight. She'd seen nothing but what appeared to be charred carcasses of both man and beast. No doubt Koen wouldn't have made it.
He looked up at her and sneezed, as was his tradition when she spoke to him as if he had the ability to answer.
'Not that you would have been able to do much anyhow,' she murmured. Though she played a one-sided conversation, her mind was already elsewhere. Father, where are you?
She'd heard for three years counting that Palingard was the last stronghold and it had been at least nine years or more since they'd stopped trading with the city of Ruiari. Could we really be the last? Her intuition told her that somewhere there had to be smaller camps of those, like herself, who'd managed to evade capture.
Surely Father is somewhere among them, maybe without sense or memory of where he is from. As much as she avoided others and feigned little interest in what Palingard called society, she now found herself wishing for the world of Sara's parents to be real, for Ruiari to be intact, for anyone to be out there in the darkness other than those who'd taken her life from her.
She imagined as she trod along that she would find the University still stood, and that maybe the village leaders in Palingard had been misinformed. They were hard-headed, ill-read and it wouldn't have been entirely out of the question for them to take the words of one mistaken messenger to heart. Had they even bothered to see for themselves? Given the extent of their preparations, they couldn't have. Then she recalled hearing something herself from Sara. It had fallen. She was being ridiculous. Even Jonathan, whose family was as lofty as Sara's in what had once been Ruiari's royal court, had spoken of its fall.
She traveled for several hours, until the depth of foliage hid the light from the moon. Only when she could no longer see did she stop and take refuge beneath the overhang of what appeared to be a large rock formation. Finally, she was left with no choice but to contend with thoughts of Sara and Bella that she'd previously held back; she surrendered to another bout of tears.
When she woke the next morning, she found she'd slept so deeply that it took her a minute to gain her bearings.
'Koen?' What she'd thought to be stone was in the light of day a huge root. Standing, she found that she could observe nothing but the walls of dirt that blocked her view. 'Koen!'
As she climbed to the top of the embankment, she was overcome with awe. Ravines wove their way deep into the ground, dipping from trees whose bases were larger than the home she'd been born in. Moss clung to the winding roots and made their way in strings to the forest floor. The varying hues of green and specks of pale violet flowers left her speechless. The effect was stunning. She had grown so accustomed to the simplicity of her village, the rugged cliffs and barren stretches of land, that a new definition of the word 'forest' was beginning to form.
'Koen!' Still hearing nothing, she shook herself from her stupor and began to tread through the maze around her with staggered progress. Her ankle, still swollen, throbbed.
She spied her companion a few paces ahead, hopping from one root to the next. 'Koen!' He howled in recognition of his name.
After walking a bit, her stomach overturned her will and forced her to admit she was hungry. She'd argued with herself for some time, insisting she was too shaken to eat and digest anything properly, but in the end, the growling in her gut won.
Untying the satchel, she pulled from it bread, dried meat and a small bit of cheese. Koen refused when she broke off a piece of the bread for him.
'Suit yourself, but don't whine later that you're famished. We could have a long journey ahead of us.' She took her time eating. Her ankle needed the rest and her mind began to wander.
Surely the waterfront villages had been stronger than Palingard. She was aware that she was reneging on every point she'd ever made in her arguments with the men in the village when they'd tried to convince her that Palingard was not alone and that there had to be other strongholds farther from Eidolon. That had sounded ridiculous to her at the time. Why would Eidolon have wasted its efforts on a little tract of land like that? Palingard had nothing of value and what they did have they accredited to their damned Adorians.
She tore off a piece of the dried meat, feeling her hunger more as the spice of it warmed her mouth. Ah, the faithful. Their eyes had been trained on looking for imaginary friends when they should have been wielding weapons. How many times had her father told them to take pride in fighting for themselves and not to believe in such fables? He'd been right, of course. He always was.
But her parents and a few of her father's closest friends had been a minority in the voice of Palingard. Even Bella and Sara believed in the Adorians. Sara's parents had been students of the University and knew better than to keep their faith in the ways of the past, especially when it had done so little to preserve their world.
When she finished eating, she and Koen found a stream and filled the small flask with enough water to sustain them for the rest of the day. For the first few hours of their trek, she vented her frustrations to Koen. As it grew later in the day, however, she fell deeper into silence, lost in remembrances of her past.
Following her mother's death, she'd traveled with her father. They'd gone as far as the sea, to a small province north of Ruiari. She could still remember the smell of the salt in the air and the strength that seemed to radiate from the sailors. Her father had told her they were mostly from the kingdoms in the northern realm of Lycus, his homeland.
So far from Eidolon — is that where you have gone?
Exhausted, she slowed her pace and finally stopped to rest against a tree. This would have been much easier with her horse. She'd heard stories of loyal steeds that searched out their masters long after they had been separated by warfare. Not Shadow. He was only good for spooking and stepping on her feet.
She looked down to see if Koen seemed as worn out as she felt. Just as she turned her head, she saw something entangled in the weeds and ivy that wound around the tree. She lifted her hand to brush aside the foliage, but as she turned, it vanished. Startled, she stepped back, nearly tripping over Koen.
'Did you see that?' She regained her balance and leaned forward, then, ever so lightly, she touched her fingertips to the leaves. Shimmering like sunlight on the surface of water, bright silver came again into view. Shocked, she pulled a sword free of its prison and held it up, examining the intricate designs etched into the gleaming gold blade. The hilt was what she had first seen, an ornate cast silver with two dragons whose tails curled
