Page 20 of The King's Man
When we came upon a clearing with water nearby, I proposed that we stop.
“We camp. Get an early start and hopefully find them quickly. If they’re with Jhonas we can make it back to Melek while it’s still daylight tomorrow. And if not, we’ll have the rest of the day to travel on.”
She answered by dismounting and beginning to unload her horse.
I would have made a quip about how the Fetch were supposed to have better manners, but I was too tired to spar with her. So, I followed suit.
As twilight turned to night, we had a fire and a campsite. I asked her what the hunting was like in these woods, and Diadre smiled.Then fucking disappeared.
I scrambled to my feet, fear spearing through me. “Diadre?”
If she left me here, the Shadows would come for me.
“Diadre, where the fuck are you?!”
I half-crouched, my skin crawling, head spinning with memories of my time in the shadows before. Had this been her plan all along? Did she know where Jhonas was, and this was just a way to sacrifice me?
No wonder she’d been more relaxed and better humored. She’d been planning to get me fucking killed the whole time!
I turned a circle, my eyes wide, staring into the dark mists that shrouded the trees and swirled even when nothing moved through them to disturb them. The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
How long would it take her to be far enough away that the shadows would reach for me? How long would it take them to kill me?
Could they outrun a horse? My beast was tired, but he was a warhorse. If the shadows came for us, he’d run until his heart gave out, I was sure of it.
I turned another circle, heart thundering in my ears. “I knew you Fetch were liars—sorcerers! The lot of you! ” I spat into the dark. “I will haunt you for this, Diadre. I will not walk into the embrace of the Divine, I will stay on this earth and hunt you fuckingdownfor this—”
“DearGod, you'redramatic.”
I whirled at the sound of her voice behind me, to find her standing there, a limp creature hanging from one fist, the other planted on her hip as she stared at me with one brow arched.
“You left me in the fuckingShadows.”
“I didn’t leave. I walked the Shadows to hunt because it’s a lot easier and faster when the creatures don’t hear or see a great, hulking, manchild creeping through the forest thinking he’s being sneaky—”
She stopped abruptly when I turned, manifesting my wings and slipping into the shadows beyond the firelight, under the nearest large tree.
Her mouth dropped open and she looked around. “Jann? What the fuck? Where did you—”
I chuckled and stepped back out from beyond the tree, ruffling my wings and grinning at her to cover the dredges of my nerves that still jangled in my veins.
My wings weren’t nearly as foolproof as her shadow walking. But they obscured me in shadows and aided hiding. If she’d walked around the tree, she would have seen me. But still, it was nice to shock her back.
“How the fuck did you do that?” she asked nervously.
“You aren’t the only one with tricks.”
“Clearly.”
We stared at each other for a moment, then she shook her head. “I can’t decide what kind of trouble you are,” she said quietly—with no hint of humor.
“Definitely both kinds,” I chuckled.
She didn’t smile.
She did, however, do a quick and efficient job of gutting and skinning the creature she’d caught, then impaled it on a spit over the fire in record time.
When we’d both eaten and checked the horses were tethered securely, the moon was high, making the fog overhead glow. My eyelids grew heavy.
