Page 32 of Stalk the Dark
I wasn’t sure if Hemlock was just uptight by nature or if my presence just rubbed him the wrong way, butif we were going to survive the year, we’d need to maintain a good working relationship, and if his icy temperament was anything to go by, the effort would have to be on me to make this work.
Great, just fucking great.
I clomped outside and down the steps toward the carriage, where Hemlock was parked in the driver’s seat. Ordell held open the cabin door.
I was going to be riding inside with him?
My stomach fizzed, and his eyes warmed as if he could sense my pleasure. This was bad. I should not be feeling this way.
Blessed wings give me strength and?—
A shadow blocked out the moon.
“Look out!” Ordell ran toward me.
The airwhooshed,and I ducked a moment too late to avoid being snatched off my feet. Ordell’s fingers grazed my boot, and his horrified face was the last thing I saw before I was carried off into the sky.
Chapter 12
“Don’t fight. I not want to drop you,” Godor shouted from above me.
“I’m not stupid,” I called back. A fall from this height would kill me.
“I sorry.”
“I assume your master asked you to pick me up?”
“Yes.”
Typical.
I squinted against the cold air, grateful that I’d opted to wear a jacket, wishing I’d also put on a hat because my ears were freezing.
The road below us was a deserted dirt track that widened, spilling into fields and woodland. Not the road Ordell and I had taken to New Town but another leading away from both pockets of civilization toward the shadowy mountains in the distance.
Isolated. Cold. Those were the words that came tomind, and deep foreboding filled my belly. “Am I going to end up in the dungeons again?”
“Master has ordered a feast to be made.”
So he wasn’t lying about dinner.
“Yah! Yah!”
I looked down to see two men on horseback galloping below us, and my heart lifted. Hemlock and Ordell were trailing us.
“Bad,” Godor said. “Master won’t like it if they come to the castle. We go fast and you prepare him. Maybe he not kill them.” Godor swerved away from the road, taking us over forestland. My stomach tightened because was that the Silverwood below?
“Don’t you dare fucking drop me.”
His grip on me tightened so it was a fraction away from being painful. “Never.”
Ezekiel couldn’t kill Ordell and Hemlock. They’d be safe. He might not let them in, but they’d be safe…right? Shit, we were close now, mountains rushing closer as Ezekiel’s epic fortress rose to meet us. Turrets on turrets clawed at the night sky. The building was vast and sprawling. A home and a prison.
There was a drawbridge, an actual fucking drawbridge, but no water beneath. Just a chasm.
“Broken,” Godor said. “No worry. They will cross.”
We flew over the bridge and over the wall, dipping suddenly as we entered a cobbled courtyard. My boots were a meter off the ground when Godor let go.
