Page 128 of Fate's Sweetest Curse
Had my fall knocked me out? Was the terror making me hallucinate?
“There you are,” Mariana said to me, like I was an unruly dog who’d run off. “I’d suggest you get the fuck out of here—now.”
“Wha—what—are you—?” I stammered.
Mariana gripped my upper arm in her non-sword-wielding hand and yanked me to my feet, shoving me eastward. “GO,” she ordered.
Then she was stomping toward the Morta.
“Out of my way,” she said to the others, swinging her blade in an elegant blue flourish.
Corla and Breen didn’t question her—they backed away from the Morta, faces pale. Henren was just coming to, clutching the side of his head with a disoriented frown, taking in the bloody mounds of Jord and Sid before slumping sideways to vomit.
“Go now!” Mariana yelled at me.
My legs shook, but I forced myself to lift one foot, then the other, stumbling away from the gruesome scene. The others were quick to catch up to me. Corla supported a dazed Henren on her shoulder; Breen reached out to grip my non-broken wrist and pull me along.
Behind us, the Morta’s furious cry echoed through the clearing. I couldn’t help but glance back at Mariana, fearing for her while also fearingheras she hacked into one of the creature’s long arms. It had beenwinningagainst five Maronan Oath-takers and yet Mariana facedit on her own—and while logic told me she’d lose, no part of me doubted her ability to kill.
After all, this was her duty. This abomination was not the first she’d faced.
I hurried south with my captors, back in the direction of their camp. Though we were on opposite sides ofwhateverwas going on, we all had the same present goal: to escape with our lives. Knowing Mariana was in the area was—Fates help me—comforting enough.
The Morta’s cries and Mariana’s shouts grew distant as we fled. When we made our way out of the forest, the camp appeared wholly the same. The fire smoldered, a tendril of smoke curling into the sky. Gear was heaped around the perimeter. The horses were still tied up, but they eyed the trees uneasily, testing the extent of their tethers, flaring their nostrils with low, trumpeting breaths.
Henren, Corla, and Breen swiftly gathered their things and tacked up. I found my dagger in the grass and slipped it back into my satchel. Then Corla was beside me, handing me the reins of a horse—Sid’s horse.
“Get on,” she said.
“My arm…”
She jutted her chin at the saddle. “Get. On.”
Perhaps I should’ve escaped in the opposite direction when I had the chance. But they’d rescued me from the abomination—even when they didn’t have to—and paired with the fact that they were knights and were thereforesomehowaffiliated with the crown, going with them seemed better than wandering off into a monster-infested wood on my own again.
“I’m more likely to kill you if youdon’t,” Corla added.
That was enough to convince me.
Shoving my foot in the stirrup, I gripped the horn of the saddle and one-handedly hoisted myself up. The horse danced sideways, antsy and eager to move. I gritted my teeth as I gathered the reins in my good handand tugged back, urging the horse to quiet. My broken arm hung at my side, bumping against my leg. The pain was a throbbing, constant agony, but the jostling was what dizzied me—sharp, searing streaks of lightning that traveled from my wrist to my elbow and up into my shoulder and jaw.
I was barely settled in the saddle when Breen whistled sharply, urging her horse into a gallop. My head whipped back as my mount launched forward, keeping pace with the others. I gripped the pommel of the saddle, leaning forward to better absorb the jolting pace while I held my injured arm away from my body. My eyes watered from the wind and pain.
It’d been a long time since I’d ridden with such speed. The thundering hooves and undulating gait inexplicably took me back fifteen years in time: atop Sweetpea, my sorrel mare, racing Raina in the flat basin of the Marona’s central plains. The memory wasn’t enough to transport me from the nightmare that was this night, but it reminded me of the way I used to brace my legs in the stirrups.
I shifted my weight, focusing on my balance. Then I was simply…flyingacross the fields. My horse gathered the ground beneath its feet, propelling us eastward. And for a while, that was all I experienced: the wind, the strain in my thighs and core, the rhythmic galloping. Pale moonlight splashed across the fields. Miles passed in a blur of exertion. My captors rode on either side of me, keeping their mounts close.
Then—sometime later—we slowed to a trot, a walk. My skin buzzed. My lungs dragged air in and out, rocking me in my seat. My dazed mind began to clear, like sunlight burning off fog to reveal all the anxieties of before.
We were winding our way between two hillsides toward the crest of a third. Henren led the way, with Breen to my right and Corla close behind. As my breathing slowed, I inhaled more deeply, focusing my taste magic on the particles that caught on my tongue. My horse steamedwith sweat, humid and musky. Pollen clouded the surrounding wind, hazing up from the stalks of grass. Someone smelled of urine, and I was pretty sure it was Henren, who quite possibly had wet himself when he passed out;thatmade me wrinkle my nose.
But the higher we climbed the small hillock, the more the taste of the wind changed. Maple and mountain fog. Pine resin and leather.
Smoke and charred meat.
I tasted the salt, the gristle, the blackened edges of fat. I tasted ash and charcoal and—
Henren crested the rise, and horns blared from up ahead, echoing through the surrounding hills. A metallic flicker on the rocky outcrop to my left signaled that there were archers at the ready. I stiffened—had we entered a trap?—but Henren merely raised a hand in greeting and continued on.
