Page 23 of If The Crown Fits
I watched the mist reach only a few feet away from us. “How do we escape it?”
“You can’t escape it, you fool. Only those with royal blood can find their way through the mist.”
I dug my heels into my horse’s ribs and it huffed, pushing its legs to go faster.
“We’re not going to make it.”
I could see it in the distance, a broad clearing, and safety. “We’re going to make it.”
“No, we’re not.” She was clinging on to me so tightly, I was sure there would be bruises on my body the following day.
“Yes, we are!”
And then it was there, crawling up my steed’s flanks and covering the ground in front of us. It continued advancing, until I couldn’t see the field in the distance anymore, until I couldn’t see in front of me.
But no sooner did it close in than we broke through it and into the safety of the clearing. The horses heaved and we all looked at each other in pure shock at what had just happened.
“Are you people insane?” Lara jumped off the horse and toppled over into the long grass. “That could have killed us.”
“I told you we were going to make it.”
“Yes, thank goodness for your arrogance, or how else would we have survived? It almost caught us.”
“But it didn’t.” Jack smiled.
“Whatever.” She stood up, still in her shift and my jacket, and dusted off her hands. “I’m not going anywhere with you any longer.”
“Then where exactly are you going?” I asked and she proceeded to look left and right before realising that she had no idea where she was.
“You can’t walk from here and you know it.” I held out my hand towards her. “Just get on and we can take you to the nearest town.”
She hesitated, but knew without a doubt that I was right. As she accepted my hand, she made sure we all knew that she was very unhappy about it, then settled into a sullen silence behind me.
She held her tongue until we set up camp for the evening and Jack and Brutus lit a fire.
“You’d better put it out before you go to sleep,” she said, her eyes dead serious.
“And why would that be?” Jack asked, twirling the dagger she had tried to steal between his fingers, clearly taunting her.
“Because we’re back in bandit territory and they wouldn’t think twice about killing you,” she responded without hesitation.
“We know there are bandits.” I placed my satchel under my head as a makeshift pillow.
“But clearly you don’t know how dangerous they are.”
“And you do?” Jack asked her, eyebrows raised.
“Yes,” she said. “They’re the reason I stumbled upon the lot of you.”
“You were attacked by bandits?” I asked, and she nodded.
“And instead of asking for help, you decided to steal a weapon?”
“You’re all fools if you don’t listen to me,” she warned.
“We’ll be fine,” Jack reassured her, taking a bowl of food from Brutus.
“Suit yourself.” She lay down next to the fire. “But if they come and murder all of us, you’re going to wish you had given me that dagger to protect you.” With that, she earned herself a scowl from Jack and chuckles from the rest of us.
