Suren’s hesitation was all she needed. He would suffer if she didn’t comply. That would hardly endear her to him. Right now, he was her only source of information, and she couldn’t afford to alienate him. Teeth gritted, she sat up. “If I catch you looking at me, I swear I’ll shoot every ounce of magic I have at you.”
The blood rushed so fast from Suren’s dark face, it left his cheeks ashen. He spun away from her. Could she really be that dangerous? “Not necessary. You have my word.”
She mulled his reaction as she bathed. Whatever power lurked in her had to be impressive to warrant his fear and a schorl restraint. Pity she didn’t know what it was. Before she escaped, she’d bleed Suren dry of everything he knew.
But first she had to survive the night wearing a cumbersome dress and a schorl manacle.
“It’s day. Get up.” Radomir’s sickly sweet strawberry-and-honey smell assailed Stasha as she lay curled upon her bed. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
She kept her eyes closed, pretending to be asleep for no other reason than to irritate him. Not that it would have fooled him. Who could possibly sleep with a schorl manacle around their ankle?
At least if you were fae.
Given the fiery ache in her bones and the nausea bubbling in her stomach, she had to wonder at what she’d become.
Radomir slammed his fist onto her pillow. It puffed up to muffle her nose and mouth.
Her eyes shot open wide.
His mouth twisted with that faintly amused smile he wore like a weapon. How could anyone take such pleasure in torturing another?
Only a monster could.
No way would she let him know how much pain his schorl manacle had caused her in the hours she’d lain awake in this bed. “How am I supposed to move chained up like a dog?”
Radomir tossed back her bedcovers and grabbed her ankle before she could wrench away. In a blur, a key appeared in his gloved hand. It flashed, and her manacle rattled open.
By all that lived and breathed, he moved fast.
Still, everyone had weaknesses. She’d just have to watch Radomir closely to find his. And then think carefully about how to exploit them.
“Happy?” Radomir sneered as he yanked the manacle and chain off her bed. “Keep me waiting and you’ll wear schorl all day. Cooperate, and it’ll be iron.”
Iron she could cope with.
She rolled out of bed. Her sore, swollen ankle collapsed under her. She landed on the carpet in a heap of skirt and too-long limbs.
Radomir snorted a laugh. “I look at you and wonder.…” His face hardened. “Now move.”
Expecting him to watch her the way Suren had, she was surprised when he left her alone—until Suren strode into the tent. He carried a basin of hot water and a cloth, which he put on the table. From a bulging pocket in his leggings, he pulled out two apples. “I figured fruit would be the most palatable after a night of schorl.” He put them on the table. “Get moving, Stasha. The captain is not joking about the schorl.”
She didn’t doubt it. She stumbled to the basin. Suren chuckled as she crashed into the table. Did all fae lose their grace and poise after exposure to schorl, or was that just her? Longing to deck him, she sloshed water onto her face and dried it on her skirt.
“Don’t think I can eat,” she said mournfully. Apples stolen from the Kňazer’s pantry were a rare treat she’d always relished.
“You need to keep your energy up.” The way Suren eyed her scrawny frame suggested he knew she was no stranger to an empty belly.
What he said about eating made sense. If she got the chance to escape, she didn’t want to blow it because she didn’t have the strength to run.
But could an apple be poisoned? Possibly. Then again, would Suren bring her poisoned food? That seemed more Radomir’s style. Unless Radomir had commanded Suren to give it to her. But Radomir said that his king wanted her. So why would he.…
You’re being paranoid.
Possibly, but who knew what these creatures would or wouldn’t do. Better paranoid than drugged—or worse.
She fixed Suren with a sharp eye. “How about we share? You eat one half, and I take the other.”
Suren’s nose scrunched in a frown. “You think I’d poison you? What would I gain from that? King Darien wants you alive. A dead weapon is of no use to anyone.”
She sat back on the bed and shoved her feet into her boots. “Let’s assess.… You and your captain attacked my village. You burned some of my friends to death, including the one woman who could have told me who I really am. You threatened to burn my best friend. You kidnapped me. You made me sleep in schorl. Seeing a pattern here?”
Suren pulled a knife out of his baldric and lopped one of the apples in half. “Pick.”
She studied both halves. They seemed like very ordinary apples. She touched the one closest to him. “Mine.”
Suren took the other, tossed it in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “As good an apple as I’ve ever eaten.”
Stomach roaring with sudden hunger, she lunged for hers. He grabbed her wrist. “You’re out of time. Your ten minutes is up. Come. Let’s go.”
She snarled as he dragged her away from the fruit and just managed to grab the second apple before she was through the tent flap. She rammed it into her dress pocket. Paranoia had done nothing for her. Better to just wing it, the way she always operated.
Radomir waited for her outside her tent flap. The iron chain and manacle he promised dangled from his fist. He grabbed her hand, and his fingers brushed against the thick scar on her palm.
How dare he touch the scar she’d gotten trying to free Tarik’s body? She yanked her hand away from him. Pity she couldn’t crush him the way he had Tarik.
The chain flew at her head.
Before she could duck, it crashed into her face with such force that blood splattered. She whimpered before she could stop herself. Fury roared like wild-fire through her.
“You hit me?” Her hand flew to her cheek. It was hot with blood against the chilly breeze ruffling the ribbon in her braid.
Radomir leaned in close and smiled. “It’ll heal. Fight me, and I’ll do more than hit you.”
She locked eyes with him. “Fae monster.”
A shrug, like her view didn’t count.
It didn’t.
Radomir slapped the manacle around her wrist and jerked the chain. When her arm pulled sharply in the socket, his dark eyes twinkled.
Spitting in them would be so easy.…
Radomir handed the chain to Suren and picked a path through the tents. Suren followed. Led like a dog, she had no choice but to trot after them.
The camp was quieter than it had been the previous night. Instead of campfire chatter and laughter, the brutally beautiful fae who joined her guard detail were tight-lipped. Black steel glinted from the blades strapped across their chests, their thighs, their bulging biceps. They all carried swords shoved in sheaths attached to their backs, and axes in baldrics at the bases of their spines. Crossbows and quivers provided the final layer of armor. Wasn’t fire enough of a weapon?
Radomir led them to a trampled clearing lit by torches. Golden flickers and black shadows danced across a dozen horses tied to posts. They whinnied and nipped at each other.
She gulped. They didn’t expect her to ride, did they? With Radomir at the helm, this would be nothing like the joke she’d shared with Klaus about dangling carrots before horses’ noses.
Tears pricked for Klaus. She lowered her watery eyes—they betrayed weakness she couldn’t defend. She wiped the tears away with a flick of her sleeve. Better to pretend she had this all under control.
A heavy hand thumped her shoulder. She jumped. Radomir. “Do you ride?” He pointed to a fat brown horse with a white stripe that ran between its eyes down to its dangling bottom lip.
She tossed her head back. “That’s what I did all day at the mill. Rode horses. While wearing dresses. And commanding my servants.”
A few of the fae snigg
ered. She fought the grin twitching her lips.
Radomir threw up his hands. “Sort her out, Suren.”
Suren offered her his hand. “Allow me to help you mount.”
“Like you shared the apple with me?” She made a show of patting her butt. “Just as well I’m padded for when you dump me on the ground.”
Suren grimaced. “Stasha—”
“Don’t bother. I’ve got it.” She grabbed the saddle, rattling her chains, and pulled herself up onto the horse. The stupid creature circled, and she almost slipped off. She gripped the saddle with bone-white fingers. It would be mortifying to tumble into the dirt in front of these fae. Especially Radomir.
Suren grabbed her boot and tugged it into the stirrup. “Bravery is one thing, Stasha,” he murmured, “but blind stupidity another altogether. Take help when it’s offered.”
She crushed his fingers with her heel. He yelped and jumped back to glare at her. She raised her eyebrows innocently. “Sorry. Was your hand in the way? How careless of me.”
“Don’t push it.” Suren snatched at her chain, attached a length of it to her saddle, and strode to his own horse. He clipped the other end of it to his tack and mounted in one fluid movement.
“Move out,” Radomir called. His horse trotted toward a narrow path into the forest of ragged trees. They were even paler and more skeletal in the dawn light than that they’d been the night before.
Suren followed Radomir. The chain pulled taut, and her horse broke into a trot after him. She clutched her saddle with both hands and wrapped her legs around the horse’s fat belly. Her skirt rode up her thighs.
A skirt but no sidesaddle? They obviously weren’t used to having women around.
Not that a sidesaddle would have made any difference to her lack of riding skill. She still bounced on the horse’s back like a tick on a dog. But over her dead body would she fall off the damn thing. She doubted the ten other horses with their fae riders coming behind her would stop if she did.
A canopy of ghostly-white branches closed above her. Their cruelly twisted boughs blocked the glowing light. Bracken, brambles, and snakeweed curled at her horse’s hooves.
Her ribbon fluttered into her face. Instead of dying off as she would have expected, the chill morning breeze picked up. But not even its mournful whistle could drown out the skittering and chewing of insects and critters she couldn’t see in the undergrowth. Like a cat hunting a mouse, getting closer and closer until—
A bird fluttered past her. A raven, black as night and sleek as silk, swooped low over her head and then soared off to caw in a tree.
Her skin crawled with an unpleasant mix of presentiment and fear. Hadn’t she had her fair share of ravens? She couldn’t suppress the sickening feeling that Radomir had been true to his word. He and her other captors, born and bred to kill, were not the worst creatures in these woods. There was something here the heavily armed fae didn’t like. Something that wiped away Radomir’s smile as he searched the trees. Something that screamed at her human soul to run and never look back.
She reeled her chain in to get her horse level with Suren’s. He stopped his vigilant scanning to eye her warily. She didn’t want to break the silence, but she needed answers. “Why are we going through these woods?” she whispered. “Why don’t we just spirit to Logral?”
Suren shook his head.
Perhaps stomping on his hand hadn’t been such a bright idea.
She tried again. “I’m not stupid, Suren. I can feel that things aren’t right here. Why is the captain doing this?”
More silence. But he did glance at Radomir. Focused on the track and the trees, Radomir didn’t seem to notice her talking. But if his ears were anywhere near as sensitive as hers, he would have heard her.
Suren wasn’t in a talkative mood. She sighed and let the chain go.
“Not all fae can spirit,” Suren whispered before her horse dropped back. “This way, we all travel together.”
That made no sense when they had spirited almost all the way to Ealvera War Camp from Askavol. “Why lie to me?” she hissed. “How does it help you? Other than make me want to stomp on your other hand.”
Suren’s lean body rocked with a small snort. “I’m not lying. You don’t understand magic.”
“Then educate me.” Her chain rattled as she pulled it in to keep her horse at Suren’s side.
Suren’s big, brown eyes opened to their widest extent. “So you can stomp on my other hand? I’m not your enemy, Stasha, despite what you may believe.”
“I’ll take that under advisement. But if you really want to be my friend”—she made air quotes around the word friend— “then tell me the truth.”
Suren was silent for so long that she snarled at him and let her horse drop back. He yanked on the chain, and her horse nickered but kept pace with him.
“The border of each kingdom is guarded by magic,” Suren said softly. “No one can cross a border by spiriting if they don’t belong to that kingdom. That’s why we have to leave Atria and enter Ocea by foot.”
Her eyebrows knitted together. “But Pyreack has taken over Ocea. Why do you—” Her eyes widened. Someone in Ocea who wasn’t a Pyreack fae had to control spiriting magic. That meant Ocea wasn’t quite as vanquished as Radomir and Suren claimed.
She shifted in her saddle, trying to get some blood flowing into her numbing backside as she considered the implications of Suren’s admission—and how she could use it for her benefit. But without understanding the politics, and the fae who drove that politics, she made little headway. It was a pity that fighting for food had taxed all her strength while Klaus had become the scholar in their partnership.
Still, the Pyreack king wanted her. Did he hope that her unknown power would finally bring Ocea to its knees? If so, how would he tap into her power when she didn’t even know what she could do? She flexed her fingers, hoping to make them spark.
Nothing happened.
She’d been angry or frightened every time fire had burst from her. Was that King Darien Pyreaxos’s plan? To keep her in a constant state of fear so he could use her magic?
Yet another reason to escape so she could get back to Klaus. And when they were reunited, she wouldn’t flee with him to Ruepa. They would leave this benighted continent far behind them. How they’d travel and where they’d go, she didn’t—
Suren’s hand curled around her chain. Her horse stopped.
The strange birdsong stilled, and the scuttling of life between the trees silenced. Nothing moved. Not even the wind. No one in the convoy made a sound. As if they were waiting for—
A child cried out.
Its weeping was more pitiful than anything she had ever heard. Radomir and two of his soldiers wheeled their horses around and tore off through the trees in the direction of the wailing. She rocked back, stunned that Radomir would care enough to help a child.
The tone and frequency of the child’s wailing intensified until the thunder of hooves drowned it out. The hair on her neck bristled. If Radomir had harmed the little one….
She craned her neck to see through the trees.
The horses reappeared. Sword bared, Radomir rode behind the two fae. Between them, hanging from their hands, bumped a little boy no older than seven. He was dressed in a tattered tunic and ragged leggings. Her eyes shot to his ears. Rounded and ordinary, he was as human as she had been before Averin—
A hoof clipped the lad’s leg. Her cry of dismay was lost in his screams. But he turned to look at her out of the strangest silver eyes.
So, not quite human. But definitely a child who did not need to be treated so brutally just because he wasn’t fae. Worse, Suren’s face relaxed at the sight of the suffering mite. He even loosened his grip on his sword.
The two fae tossed the child onto the brambles. He cried harder, pressing dirty palms into his eyes as he struggled to escape the barbs. His matted black hair fell into his grimy, tear-streaked face.
“You picked the wrong convoy, Tiyanak,
” Radomir snarled. He swung his sword at the child’s arm. The wicked blade slashed the boy’s bicep. He howled, and his little fingers clamped down on the blood pouring from the wound. Radomir and the other fae—Suren included—laughed. The boy scrambled out of the brambles and stumbled to his feet. His silver eyes blazed with familiar fury.
“Bullies! Stop hurting him.” Stasha slid off her horse and stumbled to the child, only to skid to a halt when her chain nearly ripped her arm from its socket. She glowered at Suren. “Let me go. He needs help.”
“Suren! Control her!” Radomir barked.
Her chain jerked again—Suren reeling her in. She kicked and snarled but wasn’t strong enough to stop him dragging her to his horse. He grabbed her under her armpits and hoisted her onto his saddle.
“Let me go, you piece of filth!” She rammed her elbow into his nose. Suren’s head snapped back with a painful-sounding crack. He dropped her, and she landed on her backside. Needles of pain shot through her pelvis.
The little boy stopped weeping. Eyes fixed on her, his nostrils flared as if he were drinking in her scent.
Like a wolf would.
He took a deliberate step closer to her.
Her breath caught in her throat.
“It’s not a child,” Suren growled. He reached down with both arms and yanked her back onto his saddle. “It’s a Tiyanak.”
Radomir ran his sword straight through the little boy’s stomach.
The lad’s unsettling silver eyes bulged. Hatred and loathing poured like tears down his contorted face to his—
She blinked.
The tears glistened on thick, blackening lips, nothing like the mouth she’d seen before. Radomir withdrew the blade. Blood as bright and blue as a summer sky spurted from the gash. The air reeked of rotten meat, burning flesh, dead things, and pain.
She gagged, vomiting up nothing but bile.
The human-like flesh on the creature’s face and arms melted. It oozed down its body, black and waxy, then across the frosty earth until all that remained of its body was tough, leathery hide, and matted hair. The hair hardened into two dark bones, which curled above his head into two half-moon-shaped horns.
The Fire Thief Page 10