Page 19 of A Sword of Ice
Two.
Three.
Four.
Under the fourth plank, she dropped to her knees and pried it loose, lifting it. Beneath was a thin bag with her papers inside. She double checked to make sure everything was there and slipped them into her coat pocket. She already had her bag of coins on her, now all she had to do was go free her familiar.
Easy, she hoped.
Iona stepped out of the building, but before her boot could seep into the snow, she heard a soft crunch and paused.
Her ears twitched beneath her cloud of hair as she strained to listen. The iron in the air always made it difficult to concentrate her senses completely, but she heard it.
The faint sound of a heartbeat. Of shifting in the snow.
Someone was out there.
Careful to shift her weight, she stepped down. The footfall beneath the snow sounded thunderous and seemed to reverberate in her ears. She paused, and the shifting stopped. She heard a breath hitch and then… footsteps.
She was wedged between two buildings with two exits, one that led out to the street and another that led towards a maze of alleyways and abandoned buildings.
The noise had come from the side that led to the street.
Iona took a step.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
She tried to keep her pace as casual and as light as possible, but the footsteps behind her sped up and she was forced to move fast, breathing hard. The footsteps followed.
Iona let out a curse. She turned the corner, catching sight of gleaming steel and red leather in her periphery.
A soldier.
Fuck.
Iona forgot about not making noise completely and ran.
12
A Clash of Ice and Fire
Every furious slap of her feet against the ground made her ankles twinge with a brief scream of pain. But she didn’t stop running, not when the soldier was gaining on her in footsteps that were too fast to be human.
But what else could it be?
No human could ever outrun a Fae. Unless living so long surrounded by iron had weakened Iona more than she thought possible.
She didn’t think about that. Instead, she focused, biting the inside of her cheek as she twisted, darting to the right towards a different alley. She put in a burst of strength, her head jarring and lungs wheezing for breath as she picked up momentum.
There was a curse from behind her, in a soft voice that Iona couldn’t quite make out. Like the sound of music garbled beneath water.
Her heart beat in time with her heavy, gasping breaths, and that’s where she anchored her attention. On the sound of her breaths, and the footsteps of the soldier behind her.
Which was why she didn’t realize until it was too late.
A figure dropped from the rooftop, slamming to the ground and making it shake beneath her like an earthquake. Iona’s feet skidded back. Snow sprayed, icy bits slapping against her exposed cheeks. The figure on the ground unfurled and stood to a mammoth height.
Clad in a soldier’s uniform, leather and steel that were worn just a bit too tightly against his massive frame. The figure’s bright green eyes looked at her from beneath the shadows of his black helm. He cut a formidable presence, with bare hands that looked like they could crush her skull with a single squeeze. The too-tight uniform looked like it was bursting, unable to contain the girth of his thick, tree-trunk muscles.
