Page 20 of A Reign of Roses
“Now,” he growled. “Get off myfuckingdock.”
I sized up the captain. Likely in his midforties. Strong from years of flying and handling hefty luftalvors. If I’d eaten anything in thelast three days, or slept at all, or had a weapon, or fewer injuries…even then I’d give my mortal self a fifty-fifty chance.
Without another word I shuffled out of his way.
Sleigh bells rang through the busy town as I rounded a tavern. Rosemary and bay leaves scented the air and my stomach turned on itself. The vivid alpenglow cast the surrounding mountaintops in shades of clementine and carnation pink.
It would be night soon. I’d have to spend another night away from Shadowhold, wasting time, withering—
“You get kicked off the docks, too?”
I jerked my chin toward the voice and found a kid, scuffed and tattered and far too pale, sitting on the ground. He reclined against the brick wall of the tavern, feet folded beneath him.
“Yes, actually,” I replied, wary.
“They think we’ll toss ourselves off the edge. Wouldn’t be good for business, I guess.” He shrugged, picking something off his filthy pants. “I just like the view.”
But the peasant child had given me an idea.
“Any interest in helping me with something?”
Screams split the happy, wintrytown. They bleated out from the sky docks—begging for someone, anyone, to save the little peasant boy from his own impending death.
“Come any closer,”the kid vowed, somewhere past the thickening crowd,“and I’ll jump!”
He was a marvelous actor. Perhaps using true pain and fear—the injustice of living on the streets—to power his performance. Too bad, then. With the amount of coin I’d given the kid, he’d spend the rest of his life fat and warm and perhaps thus untalented.
My assumption that the stationmaster wouldn’t let a boy off himself on his dock was correct—not for any noble reason, but simply for the optics. I watched from behind the tavern as the bearded, panicked man pushed through throngs of onlookers craning their necks in both fear and fascination.
On brutally aching legs I curved through the crowd until I reached the luftalvor pen, hopped the wooden gate, and climbed atop the first one I could find that was awake.
“Come on, buddy.” I grunted. “Let’s go.”
The winged ox didn’t even stir.
“Let go of me!”
They’d caught the kid.
I’d only have minutes—seconds—until the stationmaster returned.
“Up.” I kicked at the creature once. “Off!”
He only snorted.
But he had wings.
And I’d had wings once, too. And nothing sent me flying like—
I wrapped my hand around a plume of the luftalvor’s feathers and gripped, yanking them back toward me.
The ox shot into the sky so fast I nearly rolled clean off and plunged to my mortal death. But my hands—as if still imbued with some Fae instincts—wrapped around the reins with a stronger grip than I’d ever exerted, and I held myself to the creature.
Inhaling the first real breath I’d taken since I left that Fae God in his enchanted hovel, I watched as the cheery, elevated capital of Carrus became a speck among towering white mountaintops, and then watercolor clouds swallowed the kingdom whole.
6
Arwen
