“Yeah, yeah. Rub it in, why don’t you?” My tone was bitter and tired.
“Don’t tempt me, princess,” he chuckled.
We walked until my feet couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped and leaned against a tree, picking my right foot up and rubbing it through the boot. Kieran looked back and rolled his eyes, like we hadn't covered nearly enough distance to suit him.
“I suppose you want to make camp now?”
“That’d be really helpful.” I tried for a sweet, innocent smile, but it probably came out more like a grimace because Kieran laughed aloud.
“Wow. What a face! I was going to say we should keep going for at least another half hour, but after witnessing that expression I think stopping right here is just fine.”
My mouth fell open, and I repressed flashbacks to being made fun of throughout school, mostly by Michelle. “Oh my God. My face cannot possibly be that bad.”
He shook his head. “If you had a mirror, you would retract that statement. That face was horrendous.”
“Why don’t you just shut up and work on putting together a shelter, since we’re stopping?”
Kieran laughed again and pulled a spare tin of Wynne's miracle medicine out of his pack, tossing it to me. “Why don’t you take care of your feet? You’re getting a little grumpy.”
I felt myself turn an angry shade of red. “I’m grumpy because you’re making fun of my face, not because my feet hurt.”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. I’m just teasing about your face. Have a sense of humor, why don’t you?”
“I want you to remember your little spiel about having a sense of humor the next time you get frustrated with me,” I snapped.
I arched my eyebrows at him and sat down with my back propped against the tree trunk and pulled off my still-soggy boots. The wet leather and blister pus stench that wafted out of them made me gag a little and Kieran shook his head. Gabriel started to sniff them, but whimpered and scrubbed his nose in the grass, as if trying to rub out the terrible stench.
“I’ll get a fire going so you can dry those out. Go ahead and take the bandages off your feet, too. They’ll need to be cleaned and dried as well.”
I nodded and started unwrapping my feet, shaking my head at what a mangled mess they still were. Kieran winced when he saw them, too. Once he got the fire going, he drove two sticks into the ground close by it and set my boots upside down on them to dry. I slathered the smelly medicine on my feet and crawled closer to the fire to get them warm while Kieran put together a shelter. It was interesting, how he strategically piled leafy branches at the base of a tree, and it made a semi-waterproof igloo-shaped shelter. He paused long enough to pass me the canteen and a shallow wooden bowl.
“Clean those bandages up as well as you can with what we’ve got. “
“Okay.” I finished wringing out the last of the bandages just as Kieran finished setting up our shelter, which I'd started calling a leaf burrow in my head. To my surprise, he took the bandages without a word and held them close to the fire, drying them out as well as he could before he wrapped my feet again.
“Better?” His eyes were gentler than I’d seen them since we’d met. Although he tended to cancel out the fact that he was my type with his temper and abrasiveness, I found it all too easy to get lost in their dark warmth. They reminded me of Noah on a deep desperate level. Those eyes were safe and familiar.
“Yeah. Thank you.” I couldn't get over how much he looked like the sketch I'd done of what Noah might look like now.
He caught me staring at him, and I saw a slight flush stain his already tanned cheeks. “Let’s get some real shut-eye, yeah?”
I blushed in embarrassment and nodded. “Good idea.”
He helped me up and made a sweeping gesture at our leafy burrow. “Ladies first.”
I narrowed my eyes for a second but didn’t argue as I crawled in and curled up on the soft fur pelt that served as a floor and bed. Gabriel darted into the shelter and curled up by my feet. Kieran shot the dog a disgruntled look, but then shrugged, crawled into the shelter's opening, and got comfortable. For a moment, I considered asking what kind of fur the pelt was, but sleep intervened before I could find the words.
When I woke, it was raining, and I was alone with Gabriel. For all the effort I’d made to get away from Kieran, I couldn’t help panicking when I woke, and he was gone. The rain was coming down in sheets, and I was momentarily confused as to why the fire was still going. I peeked out of the shelter and saw that Kieran’s cloak was stretched out between some branches and seemed to be doing an okay job of shielding the small fire from the downpour. He must have waterproofed his cloak with beeswax at some point, I thought.
I shrank back into the shelter and hugged my knees to my chest, trying to control the urge to call out for him, just in case there were enemies nearby. I was hyperventilating before I could get my thoughts in any rational order. I rested my head on my knees and worked hard to get my breathing under control. Gabriel sensed my panic and woke, pressing his nose against my clasped hands.
The sound of feet slogging through puddles snapped me out of my panic over Kieran being gone but instilled a whole new set of fears. What if the Q.E.G. somehow followed us, and simply waited for Kieran to leave before capturing me? Good grief. I’m a sitting duck. I’m easy prey. I froze. I went completely still, almost not breathing, and squinted as I tried to see past the fire while still shrinking farther back in the shelter, instinctively tugging the dog further back with me.
All I could do was stare in silence as a silhouette appeared on the other side of the fire. My heart pounded, but I stayed still as the figure approached. I let out a massive sigh of relief as Kieran stepped into the light. He was soaked from head to toe, brown curls plastered to his head, and he looked downright miserable.
All of a sudden, I was babbling and couldn’t stop. “Jesus, Kieran, you gave me a freaking heart attack! I woke up, and you were nowhere to be found. Gone! You were just gone without a trace!”
His smirk cut my rant short. “Ironic. Doesn’t taste very good, does it?”
“What?” I could hear the patent outrage raising my voice an octave.
“Your own medicine, princess.” His smirk broadened into a mischievous grin.
I felt myself turn scarlet. “I swear to God, if the only reason you left was to give me a taste of my own medicine, I’ll strangle you.”
Kieran laughed aloud. “You’d have to be able to overpower me, first. I’m not too worried, and as a matter of fact that wasn’t the only reason. I went to get food.”
I had to clap my hand over my mouth to muffle a wail when he held up two rabbits. “Bunnies,” I hissed. “You murdered innocent bunnies? I can’t eat them! They’re just too cute!” I felt tears stinging my eyes and turned away so I couldn’t see the rabbits anymore. “And if you still plan on eating those poor, adorable things, you can do it somewhere else.”
The rabbits landed hard on the dry ground near the fire, and I could hear Kieran swearing and muttering about how ridiculous I was as he retreated into the brush. “Lovely,” he shouted over his shoulder as he went. “Fate sent me a stubborn, idiotic harpy to deal with! What did I do to deserve this? By the way, the rabbits are for the dog, since you seem determined to keep him.”
I refused to respond. I had nothing to do with the bunny-killer until it became necessary again. I couldn’t stop myself from crying over the bunnies, and whispered a short prayer for them. “Dear God, please let the bunnies be in heaven. Amen.”
“I heard that!” He had the gall to sound amused, and I felt myself getting mad all over.
“Good!” The word was full enough of rage and indignation even to shock me, and I chewed on my bottom lip for a minute. I did not apologize, though, not even when Kieran returned and rinsed his hands with water from the canteen. He ignored me and prepared the rabbits for Gabriel, which I tried hard not to think about. I knew that dogs were carnivores by nature and needed prote
in to survive.
I also knew I was a bit of a childish hypocrite for being upset after seeing the rabbits when I'd been eating jerky for days with no twinges of conscience. I guess grocery stores have spoiled me, I thought. I don't feel guilty about eating meat when it comes neatly pre-packaged and I haven't seen what it looks like when it's still alive. It's something to think about, anyway.
"Still mad?" Kieran smirked. All he got from me were a death glare and the silent treatment until I fell asleep.
When I woke again only a few hours later, it was because my teeth had started chattering in my sleep, and I was shivering uncontrollably. The temperature must have dropped by at least twenty degrees. As I listened in the darkness, I could hear sleet pinging off the trees and piling up on top of our shelter.
“Kieran?”
All I got in response was a soft snore, and I shuddered, sitting up and hugging my knees to my chest. There was just enough light from the dwindling fire for me to see my breath in the freezing air, and for me to note that Gabriel wasn't in the shelter with us. I nudged Kieran with my foot, and he jumped violently, pulling a dagger from his boot on instinct. I jumped back and glared at him.
“It’s just me, for God’s sake!” It was a ragged half-scream, half-gasp. I clutched my chest, trying to ease my rapidly pounding heart.
Kieran groaned and sheathed the dagger, shaking his head groggily. “Why’d you wake me?”
“It’s sleeting, and my dog is missing. Didn’t the innkeeper say something about it being summer? I’m not sure what summer means in this crazy world, but we don’t have heavy sleet in summer where I come from.”
Kieran sighed and ruffled his hair in obvious frustration. “The queen has a college full of mages at her disposal. She’s probably recruited them to manipulate the weather in hopes of slowing us down and making it easier for her Elite Guard to catch us. I should have expected something like this to happen. As for the dog, there's really nothing you can do if he's run off. We're probably better off without him slowing us down and consuming our resources, anyway.”
I yawned and stretched, trying to ignore the crushing disappointment threatening to overwhelm me at Gabriel's absence. “Should we go ahead and pack up camp?”
Kieran nodded. “Yeah. We need to put as much distance as possible between us and them, especially considering this development in the weather.”
As we were packing, I heard a high-pitched whimper. Kieran and I both froze, and our eyes locked for a few long moments, mine triumphant and his chagrined. We turned in unison, peered out into the darkness and spotted two pinpoints of reflected firelight. We watched, mesmerized, as Gabriel slinked out of the darkness to get back close to the fire’s warmth.
Without consulting Kieran, I raided the food supplies in my pack and found a couple of small scraps of dried meat to reward him for coming back. I crouched at the edge of the shelter and held the jerky out so he could smell it.
“What the hell are you doing,” Kieran hissed, shaking his head in disapproval.
“I am not going to let this poor, gorgeous puppy starve and/or freeze to death. Besides, he could come in handy. He could hear the QEG coming before we ever would, and he could give us a better chance at escaping, should they sneak up on us again.”
“You are not keeping that dog. I was so relieved when I woke up and he wasn't in the shelter with us.”
I stared him down with a determined smile as Gabriel eagerly took one of the scraps of jerky from my hand. “Watch me.”
After four days of traipsing through alternating fronts of rain and sleet, I was almost certain that Kieran, the dog (who I decided to call Gabriel because he was my angel), and I were all going to get trench foot. I imagined we would have to be amputees by the time we got to where we were going. We broke through the tree line around sunset on the fourth day, and I gasped when I saw the sheer face of a massive mountain just a few miles across the clearing.
“Almost home,” Kieran sighed, relief obvious in his voice.
“I thought we were going to a fortress of some kind.” I felt a confused frown wrinkle my forehead and tug the corners of my lips down.
“The mountain is the fortress, princess. The ones who designed it just wanted it to look like a sheer cliff face. On the inside, it's partially mined out in an open mine style, and the open courtyard area between the outer wall and inner fortress carved into the mountain is both irrigated and cultivated with soil they brought in from outside. The whole setup is brilliant. This fortress has been hidden and left undisturbed by the elves for ages.”
My mouth fell open, and a choking noise somewhere between disbelief and incredulity popped out. Gabriel’s head snapped up from where he’d been sniffing the ground, and he cocked his head, blond ears perked up.
“Aww, look at that face," I cooed, reaching down to rub the dog's ears. "I can’t believe you didn’t want me to keep him. Gabriel’s the sweetest puppy ever.”
Kieran scowled. “You’ve named it? Great. Just bloody fantastic. We’re never going to get rid of him now.”
I glared back at him, not backing down. “That’s why I named him. He’s mine, and I’m keeping him. There’s nothing you can do about it. And let me tell you something else, if you ever tried to harm a single hair on that precious angel, I would break every bone in your body with my bare hands. Do we understand one another?”
Kieran threw his head back and laughed so hard tears trickled down his cheeks.
“What’s so funny?” My indignation only seemed to increase his amusement.
He shrugged, still suppressing chuckles. “It’s just nice to know that there’s something in the world you feel strong enough about to not back down, even if a whole army was after you.”
“A whole army is after us, genius.” Sarcasm was the best defense mechanism I could think of to throw at him.
“Fair point. Let’s move." Kieran struck out ahead of me, straight toward the cliff face. "It’ll be the dead of night by the time we reach Tiernan.”
“How the heck do you even get in there? I know you said it has an inside, but I don’t see any openings in that cliff face.”
“The dwarves designed it with precisely that in mind.”
I found myself shaking my head with wonder. “There are dwarves in this crazy world, too?”
Kieran shook his head, his expression somewhat solemn. “No. They collectively sailed off the edge of the world and destroyed themselves thousands of years ago.”
I snorted. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, why would I be?”
“Because it is not physically possible for any world to be flat. Because of the way space and gravity work, I’m pretty darn sure that all planets are spherical, which means that they’re still alive somewhere. They’re just not in Daraglathia.”
Kieran frowned. “But that’s not what the histories say. That’s not what the maps show.”
“Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your histories and maps are dead wrong. They’re likely mistakes, at best.”
"And at worst?" I could hear him starting to work out where my mind was going.
"Maybe they're deliberate lies to keep the people of Daraglathia from looking for the dwarves. Ever thought of that?" I arched a brow at him, and he shook his head, choosing to continue our trek in silence.
9
Tiernan
When Kieran said it would be the dead of night by the time we reached Tiernan, he was far too optimistic. The sun was coming back up by the time we reached the base of what appeared to be a sheer cliff. I stared up at it with a growing sense of dread.
“Please tell me that we don’t have to climb this.”
Kieran chuckled and shook his head. “This wall is impossible to scale.” He reached down and depressed a rock that was jutting out, which caused a small panel to open. He pulled out a sledgehammer and used it to knock on the cliff face. Moments later, we were greeted by the sound of massive metal gears clanking. The portion of the clif
f face that we were standing in front of slid backward with a hiss.
Frost: An Otherworld Tale (The Otherworld Tales Book 1) Page 10