Page 74 of Kissed By the Gods
I widen my eyes, feigning shock. “Gods, you’re practically ancient. Should we be worried about your back giving out mid-flight?”
His hands still on my thigh for half a heartbeat. Then he presses into a particularly sore knot hard enough to make me yelp.
“Mind your tongue,” he says dryly, but there’s a glint of amusement in his midnight-blue eyes now. “This old man’s the one keeping you from falling into the sea, remember?”
I huff a laugh, the sound slipping out before I can catch it. The ache in my legs is still there, but it’s manageable. The ache in my chest ... That's something else entirely.
He withdraws his hand from my leg but stays there, squatting in front of me, the sea wind pulling the strands of his hair loose from his half-up ponytail. The far-off crash from the waves, Einarr, the biting wind—it all falls away to leave only the thrum of something fragile rising between us.
I panic, my mind scrambling for a distraction for us both.
“So,” I blurt, my voice too loud, too sharp. “What do you know about Aish?”
Ryot blinks once, as if reeling himself back from wherever his thoughts had gone. Not to Aish, clearly. The corner of his mouth twitches—whether in amusement or irritation, I can’t tell—but he lets me have the escape without comment. He stands, his movements smooth. His legs aren’t sore at all, the bastard.
“As much as anyone,” he says. “Which isn’t much.”
“Why is that? Why do we know so little about them?”
Ryot’s gaze turns southward, where—somewhere past the Valespire Peaks that cut through the land like a scar the gods made—lies Aish.
“They don’t trade. They won’t accept ambassadors or envoys. They won’t even communicate about the Kher’zenn. It’s always been that way.”
“But why?” I press. “There has to be a reason.”
He pauses, turning back to me. “Why do you want to know?”
I scowl at him. “I’m a serf who is just now learning about the entire world. I want to know it all.” It’s the truth, but it’s also not … and given the way his face shutters, and he turns back to Einarr, I think he knows.
“We’ll make camp here for the night,” he says. He starts to pull a meal for Einarr from his bag. He’s halfway to unfastening it when Einarr’s ears flick forward, his whole body tensing.
The great beast lets out a low, vibrating sound—a warning that Ryot heeds immediately.
He slides his sword from his back and scans the horizon. I follow his lead, hand cradling my scythe as I rise from the rock.
Einarr steps once to the side, angling his body between us and the open cliffs, wings half-spread, shielding us.
Ryot’s eyes narrow.
“There,” he murmurs, voice barely a breath.
I follow his gaze south. Two pale shapes skimming the air above the waves, winged and wrong, their movements too sharp, too unnatural to belong to anything born of this world.
Draegoths.
My heart kicks hard against my ribs, and my deadened fingers tingle.
Even at this distance, I can see the glint of their clawed feet, the savage curve of their tails slicing the air behind them, and the way the air seems to tremble in their wake.
Ryot shifts his weight, calculating.
“They haven’t seen us yet,” he says.
Einarr lets out another low sound, a growl trapped in his chest.
“What do we do?” I whisper, my fingers tight around the snath of my scythe.
Ryot’s jaw clenches, and he looks at me and then Einarr. I can see the calculations he’s making—two Altor, but one of them untrained. And we have one faravar against two draegoths.
