Page 67 of Deadly Maiden

Well now.

“The gun worked perfectly, though I can use a sword.” Landos was possibly not the best teacher.

“How fast can you load that gun? How many…what are they? Bullets? How many do you have?”

“Slowly. And not that many. Yet. How many am I needing to shoot?”

“I don’t know, but stabbing is quicker.”

I want to go home. Stabbing people, killing, this is not happiness.

“I want to be in a world where I do not need to kill anyone.”

“Then we need to leave Zardrake. Is this what you really want?”

I suck in my lower lip, exhale. “Maybe that is the answer?”

Leave my country and everything and everyone I ever knew? I’m already not supposed to enter a golem town.

“And if we do that, Wyntre, I’m still not sure the king will leave you alone.”

“Fuck.” The horses’ clopping punctuates my angry thoughts. “This is more complicated than algebra equations.”

Rorsyd leans away, stares. “What the fuck are those?”

“Oh my gods. You really don’t know?” He shakes his head at me. “It’s like…ummmyou have ten apples, and a flock of birds comes down and eats four but leaves a half of every third apple, and then worms eat X number of holes, so how many children can you feed?” I shrug, grinning. “Like that.”

“You are definitely crazy.” His eyes are wide. “Taking away your soulmate certificate.”

Snorting and laughing, I double over the pommel, ducking to avoid a branch drooping with yellow blossoms. A second later, he’s chuckling.

He rips off a handful of blossoms and throws them high, showers me with them.

Finally, the day is looking up.

Life has presented me with a vital question.

Is algebra older than dragonshifters, too new for Rorsyd to know of it, or was it invented purely to torture me?

Chapter 20

Rorsyd

“Wait.” Wyntre throws up a hand and reins in her dun mare. “Can we stop here?” She casts about, no doubt searching for onlookers.

I ride up to her, where a narrow track branches to the left, going westward. A gray stone building is visible past overgrown branches. “The road is clear. We haven’t passed anyone for an hour. Langordin is a day away, and this is the least-traveled road that heads there. You know all of this. What interests you?” I thumb toward the track. “That?”

“Yes. That.” Her hands are relaxed on the reins, but she studies the track or the building as if it intrigues. Her brow creases. “I can feel something.”

That’s vague. “You know the place, somehow?”

“No.” She puffs out her lips.

It’s been two days since my disastrous shift and the blood hawk killing. They’ve been uneventful, apart from the combat practice with sword, hand, and dagger. Wyntre can fight but onlypassably. In a close fight with a blade, she has skills. Hand to hand with a male, she will lose. It worries me.

Worries me almost as much as my own deficiencies with shifting.

Well, far less than that, really.

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