Page 108 of King of Storms and Feathers

At some point soon, I hoped the environment would begin to look familiar.

“That’s right. I have no idea.”

“And no memory of who you are?”

“I don’t remember anything before I woke up in a slave cage roughly six weeks ago.”

He grunted. “That’s probably for the best,” he said, his words sending a cold shiver down my spine.

Lost in our own thoughts, we fell into an uneasy silence, traveling all day and barely speaking until sunset when our small party made camp in a cool forest.

The fresh scent of damp earth and pine needles made my chest ache. Finally, something I recognized. It smelled like home, and I knew that at last, we were getting closer.

After Sonail watched me pee, as promised, he fed me a portion of the juicy rabbit his men had roasted on a spit, and then tied me to a tree trunk in sight of their campfire.

For an hour or two, the soldiers drank, their revelry culminating in a tedious song that listed their heroic deeds and all the lands they planned to conquer before their deaths. Then, finally, they fell asleep, leaving me to stare into the darkness, every muscle aching as I listened to them snore, sounding like a family of wild boars.

In the dead of night, something sharp poked my chest, and with a gasp, I jerked out of a light doze, expecting to find one of Sonail’s men leering at me. Instead, I found one of Loligos’s human sailors crouched over my legs.

His hand slapped over my mouth as he ducked behind me and whispered in my ear. “Don’t scream. I’m here to help.”

I nodded, and his hand fell away. “Who sent you? And why?”

“We’ll talk about that later… when we’re three hundred miles away from here,” he said, cutting through the rope that bound me to the tree.

“I’m handcuffed, too.”

“Not a priority now. I just need to get you out of here. I’m Aallon.”

“Leaf.”

My blood rushed in my ears. Hurry up, hurry up, I chanted under my breath, my teeth chattering.

I kept my eyes fixed on the sleeping bodies of the soldiers visible on this side of the dying campfire—only three—and prayed the other two were fast asleep.

Aallon sheathed his knife, threw me over his shoulder, and pulled an ax from his belt, running deeper into the forest. He was fast, his body strong, and all I could do as I bounced against his back was hope he was a good man and, also, very skilled with that ax.

Could Arrow have sent Aallon to retrieve me?

My skin crawled. Fear and something else, something deeply worrying, slithered through my belly. With shock, I realized it was excitement. I was excited at the prospect of seeing the Storm King again, if only briefly, before he fried me with his lightning magic as punishment for escaping.

It pained me that even now, my thoughts were twisted in my head and I very likely fancied myself in love with my ex-captor.

What a spectacularly bad time to realize it.

We hadn’t gotten far when a voice boomed behind us. “Put her down.”

Fuck. Sonail.

As Aallon turned, throwing his ax, a shot rang out, and he grunted, dropping to the ground with a thud. I rolled off him, stumbled up, and ran like the desert wind, the crunch of footfalls chasing me through the trees.

Blinded by terror, I smashed into a tree trunk, recoiled, and took off again. Two breaths later, Sonail threw himself on me, taking me down to the ground. We rolled, and when we came to a stop, his knife was at my throat, his nose dripping blood on my face as we panted at each other.

“Good try,” he said, leaping to his feet and pulling me up. “But not good enough. The men are breaking camp. Take a piss. We’ll be on the road until early afternoon.”

As he tugged me toward the campsite, I looked over my shoulder at the body on the ground. “Do you know who that human is? Are you just going to leave him there?”

“The wolves will deal with him. Relax. Soon you will be home sweet home.”

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