Page 58 of The Princes of Stone and Steel

“We’re never going to make it,” I called to Steele.

He tugged me along behind him even faster. My lungs screamed in pain from the pace we kept, still, we pushed on.

Taking one step too many, I came down wrong, twisting my ankle.

“Ah,” I cried out.

Steele turned to me, his intention clear on his face: he was willing to scoop me up and carry me the rest of the way. But he didn’t need to.

A loud whinny sounded behind me a split second before something blunt bumped me hard on the backside, flipping me in the air feet over head in a move that if I hadn’t just lived it, I’d never believe, to land on the shoulder of a magnificent eight-legged beast, jet black with a flowing black mane.

Next to me Steele held on to the beast carrying him too.

Mine spoke to me. Telepathically.“News of the flesh and the Forfex prince spread to our home. You will save us. You will save our lands.”

“I’m going to try,” I answered back.

“We are at your service. You will save our lands.”

I held on to the mane as the path before us cleared wider to accommodate the massive horse creatures. Trees shifted. Branches moved. I sensed time slowing down around us as we ripped faster through it.

And in what should’ve taken us hours by foot, we cleared the edge of the forest. I’d never seen the castle from the front before. Or maybe I had and that memory had yet to resurface.

A town filled with quaint houses and shops fashioned from wood and iron spread out to the tree line in both directions, east to west.

There, a large fence made up of silver blocks encompassed the entire castle. A wrought-iron gate with a golden dagger slicing through a golden wreath at the center kept the townsfolk from entering.

The dagger and wreath had to be the family’s crest, seeing as past the gate, that same symbol, this time spun gold, adorned several vibrant purple flags hung from the turrets.

For some reason, I thought the castle wasn’t as large as others, but to see those details from back here, it had to be massive. It just never felt that way walking to the gardens with Steele.

To the left of the front gate, the tops of the gallows showed. I needed a better look and called to the wind, which lifted me into the air, suspending me. People lined up at the gate exactly the way they would at a rock concert.

Vendors with carts lined the front of the fence.

“Thank you,” I said to the wind, and gracefully, it set me on the ground. “Let him off here,” I ordered the Slippies. “Then go around back. Wait for my signal. I’ll call to you.”

The one holding Steele bent low to let him slide off, and our companions moved back into the forest so as to not be seen.

“Welcome to Regno,” Steele deadpanned.

Regno? An interesting name for a town.

“We need to blend in,” I said.

The poorest of the town lived on the outskirts. We broke in to the closest home, not that it took much effort. The poor didn’t have much in the way of security. Probably because they didn’t appear to have much in the way of anything.

With little money, they had little in the way of entertainment, thus they all surely were in line to see the princess’s execution.

Steele found a short-sleeved tunic and drawstring pants to wear. The tunic, dull off-white and made of some sort of linen, pulled tight at his broad shoulders and the trousers only fell to his ankles.

I tried not to laugh at him. High-waters and too-tight top. How could I help myself?

“You look like meat stuffed into a sausage casing,” I teased.

He winked and handed me my clothing. A tunic dress. This one made of wool. Long-sleeved and scratchy. Ugly, muddy brown.

To finish our looks, he pulled a bowl hat with a floppy, wide brim down over his ears, or as far down over them as he could, to conceal his hair. No one but the royal family had rose-gold hair. The rest of the Forfex were born with hair the shades of copper, bronze or black ore.

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