Page 48 of Promise of Darkness
“Thanks.” I share an exhilarated smile with him, before a baying sound makes my blood run cold.
The archer isn’t the only problem we have to contend with.
“How many arrows do you have?” Thiago yells.
“Not enough!” And banes are far more difficult to kill than the fae.
Bolting down the hill, I follow a narrow animal track that winds through the trees. Branches flash past me, tearing at my cloak, and I nearly lose the bow. I’m almost to a clearing when Thiago yells, “Vi!”
A heavy weight hits me in the back, and I go down, kicking and struggling as Thiago collapses over the top of me. Cold bites my front as I slam into the snow.
“What are youdoing?”
Steel flashes.
An enormous iron maw snaps out of the snow—some sort of bane trap, I realize, as we roll into it—and my eyes widen as the metallic reflection flashes in Thiago’s dark pupils.
He flings me to the side.
I slam onto my back as the trap snaps shut. Hot blood splashes across my face as spikes of iron slam through Thiago’s chest and pin him there. A low scream thunders from his throat.
Mother of Night….
“Thiago!” I scramble across the snow and grab his hand just as his knees give out, leaving him pinned in the iron maw.
My hands flutter over the bloody ruin of his chest as he gasps.
“Get… out of here.”
I try to tear at the iron trap, but it burns my hands.
A long, mournful howl echoes through the mountains.
My gaze locks on Thiago's, and I see the same knowing slide over his expression, his nostrils flaring.
"They’re too… close,” he gasps.
As if to mock me, another howl goes up, this time to the north. I spin in that direction, an icy chill running down my spine.
"Vi!" Thiago barks. "R-run!"
Leaving him here…. He’ll never survive. Not trapped by iron that will blunt his magic. And he’s too badly injured to fight his way free. They’ll eat him alive.
It would be the perfect end to the Prince of Evernight, my mother whispers in my mind.
But he shovedmeout of the way of the bloody trap.
And as much as I hate to admit it, he’s never given me a single cursed reason to hate him.
“No.”
A fist catches in my cloak, and his teeth gleams as he clenches them. "You need to… get out of here. Find my cabin." He manages to point to the west. “Two miles. Warded. Take some of… my blood for wards.”
"Stay still," I growl, setting hands on the rusted metal. My mind’s made up. I’m not thinking like an Asturian princess, and I know my mother will never forgive this if she hears of it.
But who’s going to tell her?
The burn of the iron sears my clammy skin. I can’t help wrenching them away, seeing the pale white burn marks on my skin. How in Maia’s name can he bear it?
