Page 187 of Wolf Caged
The lich in my court were powerful, but even they were limited to reanimating corpses whose deaths had been less than a lunar cycle ago. I stared at the bone piles. Their forms were not that of someone who had died and then their flesh had rotted or had been picked off the bones. These things had been nothing more than bones when they had been released from the lich’s hold, falling into a crumpled heap until the lich summoned them again.
“Kael.” Saphira tugged at my arm, her grip firm. “What’s that?”
My head whipped towards her, adrenaline shooting through my veins as I instantly readied for battle, but it was not an enemy she stared at across the sea of sand.
It was a storm.
The great whirling wall of sand was travelling at speed, heading straight for us.
I gripped her hand and pulled her to her feet as I quickly scanned our surroundings, my pulse kicking up a notch and the urge to get her somewhere safe before the storm hit us at the helm, driving me to move with her, to protect her.
“There.” I pointed to a cavemouth barely visible beyond a crag of black rock at the base of one of the mountains that surrounded the western flank of the Forgotten Wastes and began running in that direction with her.
I could not risk a teleport, not with Saphira in tow.
Already the magic in the air was thickening, a cloying blanket that dampened my power, whipped up by the wind that tore at the sand and unleashed the magic buried deep within it.
It would be a while before I could use magic again.
Not good.
I pulled her along with me as I ran, heart thundering at the thought of Saphira being caught out in the storm. She stumbledon the sand, losing her footing, and I tugged my arm upwards, stopping her from falling. Rather than running with her, I swept her up into my arms, carrying her tucked against me like the precious load she was as I set off again.
She wrapped her arms around my neck and breathed urgently against my ear.
“Faster! It’s closing in on us.”
Chapter 51
KAELERON
We made it to the cave before the sandstorm reached us and I set Saphira down and pushed her ahead of me into the darkness, my senses scanning the tunnel that curved just ahead of us, banking right. Nothing moved. Nothing breathed except us. My heightened vision allowed me to make out the sandy floor and the few bones scattered around it, old enough that I breathed a little easier. Whatever had called this place home once had long since moved on, and there were not enough bones to create anything that could be used against us by a lich. We were safe for now.
Wind howled across the cave mouth, a blur of sand and magic that had me urging Saphira deeper into the shelter of the cave, around the corner where we would be out of sight and safe from the storm.
I guided her to the back of the cave and set the pack down.
“I can’t see a thing,” she muttered and groped along the wall, moving into a crouch as she followed it downwards, and then patted the sand and slumped onto it.
I opened my pack and rooted around in it until I found the single candle I had bought with me. I placed the base of it into the sand, pressing it deep so it stood upright, and then lit the wick. Warm light blazed outwards, chasing back the darkness, revealing Saphira where she sat huddled in the corner, her knees tucked to her chest.
“You’re like a scout. What else do you have in there, Mr Prepared-For-Anything?” She leaned over and tugged the pack towards her, her eyebrows rising as she plucked out packages of dried meat, a bottle of water, the rolls of gauze and the ointments. She put it all back in. Except the meat. She kept hold of that and when I arched a brow at her, she tucked it close to her chest. “This is mine now. Don’t even think about taking it. You should have packed some for yourself.”
I held my hand out to her. “And you need to learn how to share.”
She opened the packet and pulled a strip of meat out. “I’ve spent enough of my life sharing. For once, I’m being selfish. I’m doing all the things I want to do.”
“Is that what you think you are doing in my court—being selfish?” My eyebrows dipped low as I plucked one of the pieces of meat from the packet as she offered it to me and searched her eyes. “You have not been selfish once in the time I have known you.”
“I am selfish. If I wasn’t… I don’t know. I just feel selfish for… for enjoying my time here.” She picked at the meat she held, tearing small pieces from it as she looked at it, her brows lowering to shadow her blue eyes.
“It is not selfish to enjoy something, especially when it comes at no cost to anyone. I was right about your pack being a cage,one I am surprised you want to return to with that wolf.” I broke a piece of meat off and popped it into my mouth.
She glowered at me. “That wolf has a name, and… if I want to return, it’s because I need to know my family are safe, Kael.”
She kept calling me that, and each time my heart constricted and I had foolish thoughts, like keeping her with me.
Like making her stay.
