Rise of Fire (Reign of Shadows #2)(14)

His words hit me with a jolt. Cold dripped down my back and settled into my spine. He’d see me mended, but my arrival in Lagonia would be no secret. My father would know. He’d come for me eventually. I was his heir. As far as he was concerned, that meant I was his property.

The man leaned around Luna, his gaze clashing with mine across the distance separating us, pinning me with the hard truth.

He knew.

Grinning, he nodded to a spot ahead. “Let’s rest the horses here.” He dug in his heels and hastened ahead of us. We fell into pace behind him and Luna. I stared after him, trying to remember where I had seen him before. He knew me, so I must have seen him somewhere, but I couldn’t place his shadowy face.

It all clicked into place. I understood why he was even bothering to bring me back to Ainswind. I was a commodity—the prince of Relhok to be hand delivered to King Tebald. My hope for escape died a swift death. He wasn’t going to let me slip away. Not considering who I was. But perhaps Luna could. Luna was just a boy to him.

We stopped near a grove of trees. I dismounted with little grace, my arm hugged to my chest. Even with it immobilized, every movement sent pain ricocheting through me.

Luna was at my side, moving hastily. Her lack of sight was another thing they didn’t know about her. That was for the best, too. Better that they not see her as impaired in any way.

“I’ve got you,” she murmured near my ear, and I grimaced as we hobbled toward the tree, needing her help more than I should. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. I was supposed to protect her. That’s what I’d promised to Sivo when we left the tower.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” I whispered, anger frothing, mingling with the pain bubbling in me.

“Doing what?” she asked, turning her head slightly, listening to the three men behind us. Always careful, always vigilant.

“Helping me,” I growled. “You need to look after yourself.”

“Like you did when you saved my life, oh, at least a dozen times? I actually think we’re pretty good at saving each other.”

I didn’t acknowledge that she might have a point. That would only encourage her. I kept a careful gaze on the three soldiers as they stood near the horses. “You have to get out of here, Luna. Before they find out you’re not a boy. I don’t trust them. They’re only taking me to Ainswind because they expect some reward for handing over Cullan’s son. They’re out for themselves. You’d be a prize they couldn’t pass up either. We’re not so far from Relhok. They still could take your head and turn it in for a bounty.”

She sighed as she wrapped an arm around my waist and helped lower me to the ground. “You worry too much.” Once on the ground, she crouched near me and pressed a palm to my forehead. “You’re still warm. Too warm.”

I snatched hold of her wrist. “I’m not going to make it—”

“Don’t say that. They said they have medicine that can cure you.”

“They’ll say anything. As long as they get me to Ainswind, dead or alive, they’ll be rewarded in some manner.”

Luna frowned and directed a look back at the soldiers as if she could see them. It was always eerie the way she did that. To these men it made her look normal, fully sighted, but I knew Luna was anything but normal. Even over the pain buzzing along every nerve, pain that ran so deep and intense it made my teeth ache, my gut tightened thinking about her and just how not normal she was. She was special. An anomaly. She shouldn’t even be alive, but she was. She lived, and I wanted to pull her inside me, absorb her and keep her until I knew her as well as the shape and protrusion of my own bones. Until the taste of her was as clear to me as my own.

But none of that would happen. It couldn’t.

“I’m not leaving you here,” she vowed.

Still holding her wrist, I pulled her close until her face was almost nose-to-nose with mine. She winced at the pressure of my hand on her arm, but I didn’t relax my grip. I had to make her understand. “Don’t let them take you into the city, Luna.”

“You need to rest, Fowler.” She peeled my fingers off her arm. “Don’t think about it. I can handle this.”

I knotted one fist and beat it dully against the ground. “What’s it going to take for you to do what I say just this once?”

She opened her mouth, but whatever she was going to say died abruptly. Rising to her feet, she whirled around suddenly.

I gripped the end of her tunic and gave a tug. “What is—”

She cut a hand through the air, silencing me. “Hear that?” she said, her voice so low it was practically inaudible.

I held still, listening, trying to decipher what it was she heard, but my ears weren’t as good as hers. No one’s were. Well, except perhaps for dwellers themselves. She shared that with them.

Several moments passed, but there was no telltale shriek that signaled the approach of a dweller. Exhaling, she crouched back down at my side. She’d cleaned her face. The freckles stood out starkly against her milk-pale features as she closed a hand around my good arm. “Horses are coming this way. Half a dozen at least.”

I squeezed her wrist with hard fingers and studied her with an urgency I hope she felt. “This is your chance. Go. Slip away.”

She shook her head at me, her voice a fierce hiss. “You wouldn’t leave me. I’m not leaving you.”