Page 148 of The Wolf King

But Sebastian is riding North to get me, the Wolves are surely on our tail, and Blake’s warning rings in my ears: the game is far from over.

***

We ride throughout the night.

As the sun rises, the valley around us is bathed in orange light. With it, the whisky-induced fuzziness in my head is replaced by monotonous thumping. Every jolt of the horse rattles my brain. The sound of the birds chirping is shrill and irritating. And my mouth tastes horrible.

“How much further is it?” I say. “We’ve been riding for hours.”

He chuckles. “Sore head, Princess?”

“That is neither here nor there.”

“Highfell is a week’s ride away. We’re—”

“A week!”

“Aye.” Amusement laces Callum’s tone. “A week. The Northern Pass is the quickest route to my castle, but also the most well known. That’s the route James’ll use to send his Wolves after us—so we’re taking a slight detour. When they don’t find us in a few days, he’ll call them off, and they’ll go back to fighting the Southlands armies.”

I frown. “That doesn’t sound sensible.”

My mouth is dry and I swallow.

“No?” As if sensing my thirst, Callum reaches down into one of the saddlebags and passes me a flask. I snatch it from him, and greedily gulp it down. “And why is that?”

“James’s men will get to Highfell before us.” I take another sip of water, savoring the freshness that travels down my throat. “They’ll be waiting for us when we arrive and we’ll be captured.”

“If James truly wanted to capture us, then aye, that would be a good plan,” says Callum. “But he doesn’t care about the Heart of the Moon. Not enough. Getting hold of that thing was always a long shot. He won’t want to make an enemy out of me.”

He shifts behind me, running his thumb absently over my thigh.

“No. He won’t bother. He’ll pretend to have you, lure Sebastian out, and put his efforts into killing him. And good riddance to him, too. I only wish I could have been the one to do it.”

Doubt seeps through me as I pass the flask back. “Are you sure? You seem to be putting a lot of trust in a male who just betrayed you.”

Callum takes a sip, then puts the water back in the pack.

“Aye. I know my brother. If we can stay out of his reach for the next couple of days, we can put all of this behind us. I’m certain of it.” He squeezes my leg. “That means we don’t stop to rest until nightfall.”

He chuckles as I groan.

***

It is dark when we finally stop on the shore of a great dark loch.

I sit in front of the fire Callum lit before he led the horse to a copse of trees.

My headache has eased, and though my muscles ache and I’m weary from travelling, my soul feels lighter than it has in days.

It’s peaceful here. It seems as though we are the only souls around.

Perhaps I have finally escaped my fate.

When Callum doesn’t return for twenty minutes or so, though, fear starts to gnaw at me. What is he doing? Has someone found him? Has he grown tired of my foul mood and abandoned me?

I’m about to go look for him when he emerges from the trees carrying some hunks of bread and cheese. The pebbles crunch beneath his boots.

Relief floods me, but is quickly replaced by a strange tension as he passes me the food, then sits on a rock on the other side of the flames. Something shifts in the air.

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