Page 122 of Thief of Souls
I can fight as good as Soraya can, but I’ve always lacked the ruthless edge she owns.
But this time…. This time there will be no mercy.
I punch into the shadows, alighting just long enough to kick a branch behind him. Semirhyn spins, his arrow driving into the tree root I was just on, but I’m already gone.
I slide into being on my knees, driving the knife across the back of his heel to cut the tendon.
With a scream he goes down, and I lunge to bury the knife in his throat, punching in and out of black smoke.
“She’s here!” someone yells, and then sunlight bursts over the clearing as though someone’s jerked a curtain from the window.
Rhyvaen. My brother’s little sun mage. It’s his one gift: the ability to conjure a shocking amount of light, although he can only hold it for seven seconds at best.
It’s long enough.
I scream as the light hits me and then vanish.
Through the trees. Rippling through shadows. Trying to smother the burns on my skin. When I’m shadow melding, I’m incredibly vulnerable to searing light.
The sound of a cantering horse suddenly captures my attention.
Shades of white and black glint between the trees. A rider clad in elegant finery, completely alone—
And then I see his face.
Keir.
Curse it.No. What is hedoinghere?
And he looks like he’s alone.
I flash to his side, startling the horse. It dances to the side, threatening to bolt, and Keir brings it back into line with the squeeze of his powerful thighs.
“Goddess’s mercy,” he hisses, as he wheels it around me. “Where have you—?”
I press a finger to my lips. “We’re not alone.”
That amber gaze locks on the blood dripping from my knife. “Mira?”
An arrow hisses out of the trees. The gelding rears, taking the shaft right in the chest. Its frightened whinny turns into a scream as it starts to fall.
Keir throws himself free of the stirrups at the last second, rolling to his feet beside me.
“What’s going on?” he snaps, scrambling to the side of his horse.
It screams in pain, its legs thrashing.
“It’s complicated!”
“It always is when it comes to you!”
“What are you doing here?” I demand. “You’re supposed to be at the court!”
“And you were supposed to be back by now!” He snaps the arrow, teeth gritting in fury as he strokes the beast’s frothed flanks. A certain kind of chilly rage settles over his face as the horse grunts and falls still. “I came to help you.”
There’s something about the way he soothes it that sends calm through it as it dies. It’s a particular kind of kindness, and the grief on his face is real. He couldn’t heal it. Not in time. So instead, he took its pain away.
And I know what he’s not saying.
