Page 40 of Lifebound

“Quiet,” he said. “It’s best if we remain quiet for now.” And he drove his heel against the side of his horse, and the horse took him forward, between me and the front guards.

Regret made its way into my very bones. I pressed my knees tighter against the saddle, but now I wasn’t concerned about riding a horse—this one actually made it very easy because he was so big and stable.

No, now I was concerned with what could be out there that could haveattackedus had we not been here by orders of the queen.

Fuck, I shouldn’t have come here without a weapon. A knife or whatever—just something to protect myself with. Something to make me feel a little safer.

But all I had was my backpack and no amount of trying to calm myself down was working. Even so, the horse moved forward without needing any kind of guidance from me.

We didn’t stop moving for a long time.

The trees never changed. I felt so tinyamong them. Everything looked the same as if we were walking through the same part of the forest over and over again, until…

“There!”

Helid pointed ahead. Beyond the two guards leading the way, there were small twinkling lights we could barely make out in the distance. If it wasn’t so absolutelydarkhere, we would have missed them.

My heart took a pause.

“The Neutral Lands,” Helid said. “The forest ends there, and the nearest town begins right down the hill.” He turned to look at me, and indeed he looked relieved, his golden eyes lighter. “We’re almost there.”

I believed him, and the relief was instant. Air went down to my lungs with much more ease and my hands were slightly numb when I relaxed my muscles.

“Now, you’re going to tell meexactlywhy you were so terrified back there, Helid,” I said with a sigh. “What the hell is in this forest that could have attacked us?!”

But Helid didn’t need to tell me anything.

I saw them with my own eyes in the next moment.

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Beastsas big as the horses we rode.

There was no time to even be afraid or scream or have any kind of reaction because they came from between the trees on all sides and at the same time.

Dark fur covered them, andmonkeyswere the closest animal I knew to how they looked, if monkeys had longer faces and fangs that fell below their chins, eyes made out of red glitter and horns over their heads as thick as my forearms, curved toward the front.

The sound of them made my heart stop beating for a good moment. I saw it all in slow motion—how the guards, all five of them, jumped off their horses and produced golden swords from underneath their jackets. I saw how they moved, so swiftly, and charged the monkey monsters, stabbed and cut them with those shiny blades while Helid shouted at the top of his voice:“Protect the mortal at all costs!”

He was still on the back of his horse when he raised both hands toward the sky and said a word I had never heard before. It wasn’t English or any other kind of language I’d ever heard, but a bright ball of light shot from the palms of his hands, so hard and so fast it nearly knocked him right off the horse.

The sky exploded in a golden shower of sparks like fireworks or like a beacon that could probably be seen from everywhere around us.

Then, my horse moved, and time regained its usual pace.

The horse neighed and jumped to the side because one of those beasts had clawed it on its back leg and I hadn’t even heard it approaching.

“Run, Aro!GO!”

Helid jumped off his horse and toward me. He slapped my horse on the side of his neck with all his strength.

Aro neighed again and I screamed when he rose on his hind legs for a second. The look in Helid’s eyes as he reached for a pair of very big knives that had been hidden underneath his jacket told me everything I needed to know—I was going to die soon.

Then he spun around and went to meet one of the beasts that was coming for him, and Aro ran forward, followed by three of the other horses.

It had been comfortable to ride on the back of this horse when he was walking, but now he was running, and there was no way I wasn’t going to fall off this saddle. The view in front of me changed, became darker, and my ears were full of the sound of swords cutting, and beasts making this screeching noise—not a roar, but something closer to a scream.

I made the mistake of looking back.

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