Page 214 of A Dagger of Ice and Intrigue
And neither one of us knew how to make them behave.
Another roar rattled the trees–and we were rushing straight toward it.
My hectic gaze darted around us, looking for any solution. It fell on the wooden hinge that held the wolves’ gangline to the sled. If I cut them loose, we would stop, and maybe they’d disperse enough to calm down–or until Ryker wrangled them back.
I kicked the furs away and with careful movements, crawled forward on the sled. The next roar almost stopped me, pure primal fear coursing through me.
But I pushed through.
It wasn’t just my life on the line.
Whatever had produced that bellow sounded big and dangerous and I was not about to face it.
As I reached the end of the sled, I embedded the tip of my new dagger into the hinge. The sled shook, almost throwing me off, but I held on with that famed Vegheara stubbornness.
The jolt didn’t stop the wolves. If anything, they ran faster, even as Nadya screamed at them in a language I didn’t understand and hadn’t heard in Solkar’s Reach so far.
I pressed the knife deeper into the wood. A few splinters detached and flew past my face in the wind, but the hinge had been carved with purpose.
Just as I called upon the well of power inside of me–still hazy, still not under my full control–the forest began to clear.
But instead of a peaceful valley, a cliff edge speared up in front of us.
My heart clenched.
“Take the wind and soften our fall, no life lost, no bones undone,” I chanted.
Just as blue tendrils burst from my hands, Nadya yanked harder on the reins and the wolves mercifully changed direction, running alongside the edge.
But the shift was too sudden.
The sled turned on its side right on the ledge. Gravity was too strong to hold on and it claimed me.
In a sea of blue light bursting out of my palms, I fell over the cliff.
Chapter
Forty-Six
ALLIE
Iplunged into a net of blue tendrils that bounced right above the ice.
But the light shimmered out of existence a few feet above the ground, letting me fall onto the rock. The air wheezed out of my lungs and my ribs moaned in pain. Two arrows cracked underneath my weight, but the bow held true.
It took a few moments to blink myself back to reality and for the weightlessness in my stomach to settle.
I lay on my back, bruised and rattled, but not broken. Snow fell above me from the ridge standing at least thirty feet above me.
No sign of Nadya, the wolves or the sled.
They must have continued their mad dash through the forest after I was thrown off.
I hoped.
Even in my fall, body out of control, I hadn’t let go of the dagger–Orion had taught me that much.
I was armed.
