Page 216 of Kingdom of Ash

He leaned his brow against Farasha’s dark side. Swaying enough that Elide wrapped a careful arm around his waist.

“You didn’t rutting die,” she snapped. “And you’re not dead yet.We’renot dead yet. Soget in that saddle.”

When Lorcan did nothing other than breathe and breathe and breathe, Elide spoke again.

“I promised to always find you. I promised you, and you promised me. I came for you because of it; I am here because of it. I am here foryou, do you understand? And if we don’t get onto that horsenow, we won’t stand a chance against that dam. We will die.”

Lorcan panted for another heartbeat. Then another. And then, grittinghis teeth, his hands white-knuckled on the saddle, he lifted his leg enough to slide one foot into the stirrup.

Now would be the true test: that mighty push upward, the swinging of his leg over Farasha’s body, to the other side of the saddle.

Elide positioned herself at his back, so careful of the terrible slash down his body. Her feet sank ankle-deep into freezing mud. She didn’t dare look toward the dam. Not yet.

“Get up.” Her command barked over the panicked cries of the fleeing soldiers. “Get in that saddlenow.”

Lorcan didn’t move, his body trembling.

Elide screamed, “Get up now!” And shoved him upward.

Lorcan let out a bellow that rang in her ears. The saddle groaned at his weight, and blood gushed from his wounds, but then he was rising into the air, toward the horse’s back.

Elide threw her weight into him, and something cracked in her ankle, so violently that pain burst through her, blinding and breathless. She stumbled, losing her grip. But Lorcan was up, his leg over the other side of the horse. He slouched over it, an arm cradling his abdomen, dark hair hanging low enough to brush Farasha’s back.

Clenching her jaw against the pain in her ankle, Elide straightened, and eyed the distance.

A long, bloodied arm dropped into her line of sight. An offer up.

She ignored it. She’d gotten him into the saddle. She wasn’t about to send him flying off it again.

Elide backed a step, limping.

Not allowing herself to register the pain, Elide ran the few steps to Farasha and leaped.

Lorcan’s hand gripped the back of her jacket, the breath going from her as her stomach hit the unforgiving lip of the saddle, and Elide clawed for purchase.

The strength in Lorcan’s arm didn’t waver as he pulled her almost across his lap. As he grunted in pain while she righted herself.

But she made it. Got her legs on either side of the horse, and took up the reins. Lorcan looped his arm around her waist, his brutalized body a solid mass at her back.

Elide at last dared to look at the dam. A ruk soared from it, frantically waving a golden banner.

Soon. It would break soon.

Elide gathered Farasha’s reins. “To the keep, friend,” she said, digging her heels into the horse’s side. “Faster than the wind.”

Farasha obeyed. Elide rocked back into Lorcan as the mare launched into a gallop, earning another groan of pain. But he remained in the saddle, despite the pounding steps that drew agonized breaths from him.

“Faster,Farasha!” Elide called to the horse as she steered her toward the keep, the mountain it had been built into.

Nothing had ever seemed so distant.

Far enough that she could not see if the keep’s lower gate was still open. If anyone held it, waited for them.

Hold the gate.

Hold the gate.

Every thunderous beat of Farasha’s hooves, over the corpses of the fallen, echoed Elide’s silent prayer as they raced across the endless plain.

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