Page 33 of Court of Bone and Amethyst

“I did,” he says, his lips set in a grim line. “Perhaps they aren’t tracking her. Maybe Avonia just sent them to search aerially.”

“There’s only one way to know for sure,” I say, grabbing Sarielle by the hand and tugging her toward the horses. “We need to find a place to hide and pray to the dark goddess it works. Now!”

“Where are we going to hide out here?” Merla says, waving her arm at the vast, empty stretch of land around us.

She’s right. There’s nothing but flat land horizon to horizon. No mountains, no valleys, no caves. No more than a tiny boulder here and there. We have maybe ten minutes at the speed a winged nightmare can fly. And there’s absolutely nowhere we can run. Nowhere except…

“The forest,” Sarielle says, as if reading my mind. “We can make it to the forest.”

Owyn and Merla turn their heads to look at the trees looming in the distance. They look more like a vast sea of white spears cutting the sky than anything that lives and grows. The sun glints off them, making them shine a pale blue-silver.

“We all know whatcouldhappen if we hide in the forest,” I say. “Just as we know what willdefinitelyhappen if we stay here and the nightmares find us.”

Owyn nods, a terse jerk of the head, and we kick the horses into a gallop. I glance over my shoulder as my horse launches forward. Already, the black cloud on the horizon has grown substantially in size. Apparently Avonia realized the error of her ways when she sent the ancient nightmare—that one can’t fly. If we survive this, we’re going to have to figure out how she brokethe spell that Sarielle and I cast, a spell that has worked without fail for two millennia.

Snow sprays up around us as we make for the ice forest at full speed. The air is filled with the sound of the horses’ breathing, the puffs of their breath from the exertion, and the crunch of the icy ground beneath their hooves. My cloak flies out behind me and the wind is blades along my skin, blades that drive down my throat and into my lungs. Next to me, Sarielle is hunched low over her horse’s neck, her black hair flung back.

Have the nightmares already spotted us? Did Owyn’s spell fail somehow, which means they’ll just track us into the forest? If it comes to a fight, I’d rather be out in the open than in between trees that are sharp as swords. I know the nightmares aren’t here merely as scouts. Avonia wants us dead, and she’s using every resource to ensure her victory.

The forest looms before us now, a half mile at most. The trees are taller than I’d realized. I’ve never seen them this close before. I don’t typically put much weight in superstitions, but this one seems universally accepted. It’s not just some tale that villagers tell their neighbors around the campfire. Now, as we make our final approach, I realize this is one of the few corners of this world I have never set foot in. In all my centuries, I can count such places on one hand.

I see Sarielle glance over her shoulder again, and I take one last look as well. The nightmares can be seen clearly now, maybe two miles off. There must be a hundred of them. I can’t quite tell, but it doesn’t seem they’re angling right at us. Maybe Owyn was right—maybe they can’t track us. Maybe we’re just having absolutely terrible luck. Either way, they’re close enough so that they will see us, if they haven’t already, in a matter of moments.

Sarielle’s horse hits the forest first, plunging between the huge ice-covered pillars that are tree trunks. Mine follows a moment later. Owyn and Merla enter slightly to the right of us. Thetrunks are spaced several feet apart from one another, but the canopy overhead nearly touches. The trees all seem to be the same, straight, narrow trunks with needle-laden branches rising in layer upon layer toward the sky. They glisten like the teeth of giants.

When we’ve gone about fifty feet, I whistle and circle my horse, pulling it to a halt. The others do the same, and we face the horses toward each other, huddling in the ice and snow beneath the canopy of the trees. No sooner have we gone still than a greatwhooshof wind and sound moves by, close enough that I can feel the shadow the nightmares cast. They screech and snarl as they fly overhead, and the trees shiver from their passing, the frost and ice that covers everything vibrating as if it will explode.

And then, the nightmares are gone, and the sky pale sterling gray once again.

Silence falls, as if none of us dares be the first one to breathe. “Are they gone?” I finally ask, looking over at Sarielle.

She pauses a moment, then nods. “Yes. I can still feel them, but they’re moving away from us.”

“Good,” Owyn says. “Let’s get out of here.”

I turn my horse back the way we’d come, but snow has started falling, making visibility low. My head tips back as I gaze skyward, frowning. It hadn’t been snowing a moment ago. My blood quickens in my veins, and I urge Sarielle to move ahead of me. “Quickly,” I say in a hushed tone, but my voice echoes and bounces along the trees, sending a shiver up my spine.

Sarielle urges her horse into a canter, and I follow on her heels, Owyn and Merla right behind us. We race back through the trees. The edge of the forest is up ahead. We’d stayed right on the outskirts, and we’d been here only a few moments. If we can just get back out again unscathed…

All I see before us are more trees. We should have reached the plains again by now, we were so close I could have looked over my shoulder and seen it through the branches. The snow is driving down hard enough now to be a blizzard, snow piling up in large banks between the trunks. Sarielle looks over at me, stricken, as we careen through the trees.

My chest tightens and I signal her to rein in her horse. She pulls up beside me, her head whipping back and forth as she looks for a way out.

“What’s happening?” she whispers.

“Magic,” I growl. “Not the good kind.”

“Wait, where are Owyn and Merla?”

A string of curses rises from my throat. They’re not behind us anymore. They had been when we started moving, but somehow they’ve vanished.

My gut twists, a feeling of dread worming through my stomach.

“Show yourself!” I yell into the trees, my voice echoing through the forest.

Overhead, dozens of dagger-sharp icicles plunge down from the branches above us. Sarielle screams and wrenches her horse away from mine to dodge them. Snow swirls, pricking and burning as it hits my eyes. One moment I see her ebony hair against the snow, and the next there is only white and blue and silver.

“Sarielle?” I call, which brings more ice spears down around me. My horse snorts in terror and rears, spinning in a circle.“Sarielle!”

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