Page 64 of Flight of Fate

Thirty-Nine

Herinor

My legs are madeof lead, my head throbbing like someone is trying to forge a nasty blade between hammer and anvil inside my skull, and my clothes are sodden with blood and mud. At least the freezing cold clears the haze in my mind quickly as I open my eyes to the mess of broken branches and twigs surrounding me—and Silas’s weight on my chest like a gargantuan unconscious bird.

With a groan, I shove him off, careful of potential broken bones, and roll over to check on his breathing.

Slow, shallow puffs of air fog before his half-open mouth, proof I didn’t just crack my ribs in vain.

Scrambling to my knees, I bend over him, searching for signs of open wounds.

Nothing. Not even the whiff of blood laces the air.

“Fucking gods.” I can’t even think from the relief spreading through my limbs, all the way to my toes and fingertips, at the sound of Silas’s rasped curse. “What happened?”

Sitting back on my heels, I wipe the mud off his forehead, watching his pitch-black eyes blink into the hazy forest.

“Not exactly sure,” I grumble, suppressing a whimper at an attempt to straighten and glimpse beyond the first row of treesenclosing us. “Something hit you, and you plunged like a rock. I caught you just in time to prevent you from bashing in your head on a tree. I don’t know when we both shifted, before or after we hit the ground.”

With a groan equaling the one I just bit back, Silas sits up, taking in the mess of broken evergreens. “I guess it happened a while before we landed.” With a shaking hand, he gestures at the tip of a fir at his feet. “Left quite a trail of destruction there, didn’t we?” The dark humor in his tone is barely there—but there anyway.

“At least, your skull is harder than the trees.” I force a chuckle, which ends in a cough, making me wince. Hand clutching my broken side, I stagger to my feet and hold out a hand. “Come on. We need to get back to the others.”

He pulls himself up, the weight almost bringing me back to my knees, but I hold steady. There is no way to know who or what brought us from the sky, and if they’re still lingering nearby, staying out in the open like this is too risky.

“Any idea who shot at us?” Silas leans on me just long enough to catch his breath. It’s a miracle we’re both alive and standing. The fall could have easily killed us. At least, my waste of an existence would be ended for a good cause, saving one of the few people in the world who don’t look at me with disdain.

Silas shakes his head. “All I remember is a flash of bright light. Then … nothing.”

“Because you fucking fell from the clouds like the sack of bones and muscle you are,” I quip, but Silas isn’t laughing. His gaze is on the broken trees ahead, head tilted as if he’s trying to figure out a riddle.

“Do you think it was Crows?”

I try not to think of what encountering Ephegos’s traitor Crows on their own in the middle of the forest would mean. “I wouldn’t rule out the possibility. The power that struck you wasa bright light. I couldn’t tell the exact color because of the angle of the sun, but it could as well have been silver.”

My pulse is hammering, headache forgotten and the pain in my ribs shut behind the wall I’m so used to pulling up to compartmentalize pain. It’s served well enough making it through Ephegos’sexperimentswith the magic-nullifying drug, so I’m keeping that mechanism. “If Ephegos is nearby, he’s probably already on his way to Myron.”And Ayna, I add in my head, not admitting aloud how much the thought of the insane male laying a finger on the Queen of Crows fills me with terror. The deal with him would destroy me. And I truly don’t want to see both my king and queen caught again nor the infuriating Flame who’s crept into my heart and settled there, a tantalizing and painfully tempting presence I don’t know how to rid myself of. Or whether I even want to rid myself of her.

The glance Silas gives me in answer suggests I’m not the only one close to panic. Wide black eyes scanning the trees, he holds his breath, listening to the sounds of the forest—to the unnatural silence that always comes with the presence of our kind, like the animals instinctively know not to draw our attention. The question remains whether it’s Silas and me who they sense or if there’s something more waiting in the gaps between the haze.

“I bet you my next dessert that this was Ephegos’s doing.” Silas gestures at the bruise blooming beneath his collar, spreading along his neck and the side of his jaw.

Measuring him how he stands more steadily, hand on his hatchet and teeth gritted against the pain as he’s slowly healing the worst of his injuries, I try not to quake with fear at the thought of Ephegos actually waiting around the next tree. “It sure wasn’t an arrow.” My laugh is half-hearted. “But I’d happily watch you eatmynext dessert if that means Ephegos hasn’t set foot into this forest.”

My side tingles as I send a burst of healing energy into my ribcage, sensing the bone mending in increments. The effort it takes drains a good chunk of my power, but it’s even riskier to remain injured should we cross our enemy’s path.

“It’s not like we can hide here,” I continue because it’s the truth. Whoever shot us from the sky knows we’re here. They probably watched us fall and are most likely on their way to collect us.

Silas gets the notion. “It’s time to get out of here. Better we sneak up on them before they sneak up on us.”

I hate the sound of it, and I hate even more that it makes me feel like a coward. But we both know he’s right, and I’d have suggested the same thing had he not beaten me to it. “We need to at least figure out what we’re dealing with. Then we can warn the others.” Or, if the army waiting for us is too big to fight, lure them away from the others and get reinforcements.

Stomach tightening, I point ahead. “Let’s start south.” I don’t need to explain to Silas that’s probably the direction they were attacking from and that we’d better hurry. He’s been roaming this world as long as I have, has fought enough battles and tracked down enough enemies to know the game.

We both draw our weapons, setting out toward the thicket ahead, ears on the absence of noise other than the hammering of our own hearts. If we don’t find them before they find us, we’re all fucked.

Forty

Ayna

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