Page 117 of Thief of Souls
And she senses it.
“Didn’t you?” she snarls, shoving me back with a hard slam to the chest.
Instinct kicks in. I sweep low, taking her feet out from under her, and the second she moves to retaliate, I’m gone, punching back into being several feet away.
“What was I supposed to do?” I demand, my fists curled at my sides. “Leave you behind? The only thing keeping it off our backs was the fact there were two of us. It couldn’t work out which one of us to focus on.”
“I don’t need you to watch my back—”
“Because you were doing such a good job of it before I found you in Malechus’s sarcophagus!”
“I didn’t ask you to rescue me,” she says coldly, examining the cavern. “When Malechus came back—”
“Ifhe came back,” I point out. “You could have suffocated in there. And you’re welcome. You’re always bloody welcome.”
Bristling with fury, she stalks past me. “Where are we?”
It’s Soraya’s way whenever there’s conflict. If she knows she’s in the wrong, then she simply won’t argue any further. I want to scream. I’ve been bottling this all inside me for years.
“I don’t know.” Bending to pick up the horn, I wrap it in a piece of my shirt and concentrate, plucking shadows from the air to weave around it. It’s nowhere near as good as the protective veil Falion had created, but it will do to guard it from anyone’s eyes. “I had a monstrous gnashing beast trying to take a bite out of me. I wasn’t mapping where I was running. Why?”
“Because I’m fairly certain something drove that creature off, and it wasn’t your grymhounds. Nor was it us.”
There’s something about the way she stares into the darkness of the cave that sends a shiver down my spine. I take the chance to Sift to the side, hiding the horn in a rocky crevice before I reappear at her side.
Soraya looks at me sharply, as if she sensed the movement, but she’s still distracted by the current threat.
The questing beast could be lurking outside.
And she’s right. It was injured by the grymhounds, but the second a wound is cut into its hide it starts repairing itself.
Something about the cave unnerved it.
“Guess we’re going to find out,” I mutter as I turn toward her. “Are we taking bets on what sort of vicious beast lurks in—”
A hiss of air whips past my face, a sting alighting on my cheek. I clap a hand there in surprise, but it’s the brief scream Soraya gives that stalls my own shocked cry.
An arrow embeds itself in her chest, and she staggers back, her feet scrambling to keep her upright.
The last thing I see before she hits the ground is the ebony shaft of the arrow.
24
One glimpse of those short, clipped raven’s feathers on the shaft and I know who hunts us.
Iknow.
Ruhle. And his seven.
I spring forward, slamming Soraya back to the floor as she struggles to rise, just as another arrow screams past.
And then they’re singing toward us like a flight of ravens. Rolling her, I manage to find cover under an overhang of rock for both of us.
“Get out of here!” Soraya screams, coughing blood.
Leaving her here is leaving her to our bastard brother’s mercy. “Not without you!”
Grabbing the arrow, she grits her teeth together as she snaps the shaft. “You stupid fool, you’ll only slow me down. The way you always do. The way you did the night of our final test. You’re not ruthless enough, Zemira. And you’re going to get us both killed.”
