Page 16 of The Queen's Shadow

“Watch her, Karim,” the angular man snapped, before turning and stomping into the darkness ahead.

Cassandra seethed. She knew the smart thing to do was to shut up, to keep her head down, to find an opportunity to escape. But she was just too furious. Furious at this entire situation. Furious at the Inetians and their ridiculous plans. Furious that they’d shot Arphaxad. Furious that she had allowed him to distract her enough for all this to happen in the first place.

Heat flooded her body at the memory of his fingers skimming along her jaw, of his breath on her face, of the promise that had lingered in his gaze. Fury flared through her again. Damn it all. Her sister had been right. She had lost her head when it came to Arphaxad Ilin Serra.

The Inetians had made quick work of their weapons, removing most of her knives—they had missed one in her boot, but right now she had no way to reach it— and Arphaxad’s as well. She had almost slugged the man beside her when one of the Inetians picked up her bow, pulled at the string, and then smugly slung it across his back. The queen had given her that.

When one of the men found the letters Cassandra had removed from the cave, she knew they were done for.

Arphaxad hadn’t even cried out when his arms were tied in front of him, but Cassandra had seen the way his entire body jerked with pain. The Inetian who had first told them to drop their weapons—Paarsav, she’d learned—had ordered the arrow removed from Arphaxad’s shoulder and the wound bound as the rest of the injured Inetians patched themselves up. No one had died.

“We don’t want him dying on us,” Paarsav had said. Arphaxad had given a coarse yell when the arrow was removed. Cassandra had followed his shout with a cascade of obscenities.

Now they moved in a quick line, heading back toward the ridge and the enclave in the valley below. It was dark now, too dark to see more than the dim outline of Arphaxad stumbling along ahead of her, his breath coming in ragged gasps with each step he took. Anger surged again, hot and sharp.

“Why don’t you dimwits just open one of your magic doors to wherever you want to take us?” she snarled to the younger man, Karim, who walked closely behind her like a good guard dog. He had been one of the lucky few to escape injury. “Or are you too afraid after what happened to your friend earlier?”

His hand tightened around her arm, and he gave her a shake that made her teeth rattle. “Do you want to die?” he hissed under his breath. “If you keep on like that, they’ll kill you, no questions asked.”

“Don’t let her get to you, Karim,” Paarsav called from up ahead. “They’ll be taken care of soon enough.”

Taken care of. She ground her teeth together. She would not let them get to her either.

The blackness of the trees parted, revealing the soft orange glow of enchanted orb fire from the enclave below. Cassandra wanted to be anywhere but near that cave again, near the chanters and the wrongness of the rift.

They made their way slowly down the ridge and into the enclave. She could see silhouettes moving behind the oiled parchment in some of the huts. Doors opened quietly as the party limped through the enclave. People peered out for a moment before shutting their doors again tightly.

“So, why are you here, Karim?” she sneered. “You couldn’t make it in Ineti? You had to resort to treachery to make a man of yourself?”

She could feel his hackles rising behind her. “Careful. You’re treading on shaky ground,” he said.

“Am I?” she said sweetly. “You don’t have to tell me if it’s truly too shameful.”

Karim’s hand closed around her arm. “Look,” he said shortly, drawing her up beside him. “I have as many questions about this whole debacle as you. And as for why I’m here—my uncle was removed from his position in Talah for something he didn’t do. And as a result, our entire family was cast out of the capital. The Inetian emperor is not a just man. He made it easy to turn against him. So don’t go assuming things you know nothing about.”

He released her and pushed her back along the trail in front of him. Cassandra stumbled again in the darkness, and for a moment, she felt sorry for him. He was young. He likely hadn’t done anything to deserve that kind of treatment. But it didn’t make what they were doing any more justifiable. “I’m sorry you felt you were forced into this,” she said quietly.

Karim gave a gruff laugh, laced with surprise. “Thanks. But you have nothing to be sorry about.”

Her heart ached. People always had reasons to justify their choices—that was something she had learned after years in this business—but it didn’t make those choices right. She let her eyes wander to Arphaxad as he moved ahead of her, the angular man close on his heels. She could tell it took all his concentration to keep moving, to not let the pain overwhelm him. All over again, she wanted to rip every last one of them to shreds.

They stopped before the mouth of the cave, and Cassandra’s stomach dropped. The entrance hadn’t changed physically since she and Arphaxad had fled only a few hours before, but the sense of wrongness, of darkness, of power gone horribly wrong, had increased tenfold.

The angular Inetian shoved Arphaxad to his knees by the entrance. Arphaxad said something she couldn’t catch, which earned him a cuff in the head.

“Hey!” Cassandra called out as Karim gestured for her to kneel beside Arphaxad. “You must feel like such a man when you hurt the injured and defenseless, huh? Does it make you feel powerful?”

“We should have killed you in the forest when we had the chance,” the angular man spat.

“We don’t know who they are yet and what they know,” Karim said a bit uncertainly. “Paarsav seems to think they’re higher ranking than they look. That bow is too nice to belong to a peasant. And they had information on them. Information that could give us away.”

“Are you scared?” Cassandra taunted. They should never have been captured in the first place, not by these brutes, traitors to their emperor and country. How could she have been so stupid?

She glanced over at Arphaxad. He swayed beside her, his usually sharp gaze glazed and unfocused. Blood was seeping through the bandage around his shoulder. She swallowed, forcing back the fear that rose in her chest. He should never have been here, with her, in this stupid situation. If she hadn’t let him get the best of her in Medira . . . But that wouldn’t change anything about what the Inetians were doing.

“We’ll get out of this,” she said as much to herself as to him.

He turned his head and then winced. “I’m sorry, Cass,” he whispered.

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