Page 5 of Untempered
Then bloody Kadan was out of his saddle and tossing his reins to Callum, offering an apple in an outstretched hand to the half-mad creature. “Only Kadan,” someone muttered behind me even as the beast was rearing again. The wry calm of the statement was at odds with the life-and-death battle before us, jarring me from my own razor focus for a moment.
“Whoa, there,” he was saying, his voice low and easy, but it was too little, too late. The rest of us knew it. Even, I suspected, the rider knew it. The horse’s hooves struck the air, and I watched as if time had slowed as the beast went over further, then further again. My heart beat fiercely in my throat.
I knew people were going to die. We were coming to La’Angi, after all. But this was not a fortuitous beginning.
“Jump!” Kadan shouted, at the precise moment his father called out the exact same word.
Whether it was the two layers of wisdom or that the rider simply knew what was good for him, he leaped clear of the horse, rolling across his back on the ground and springing to his feet like a cat.
“Get him clear!” My liege lord commanded, but again it was an unnecessary order. I was out of my saddle, wrapping my arm around the lad and tossing him as far as I could from those deadly, flailing hooves. Kadan lunged for the reins at the same time, trying to save the horse, reacting on instinct.
I found myself stumbling as the youth latched onto my arm, spinning himself around and pulling me with him—and then my legs went out beneath me. My head was full of the smell of rich orchard and terrified beast. I drove my boot heel into the ground and shoved us both away from where I could feel the reverberations of its struggle. Everything was a blur around us as I put all my energy into getting away from the threat, my arms firmly locked around the youth. With the roar of my heart in my ears, I again planted my heel and shoved. I still felt hooves nearby. Kadan had the reins, though. If anyone could salvage this, it was him.
Now another body length away, I rolled over the youth, risking a glance to get the briefest idea of how close those deadly hooves were.
Or, I tried to, but the world spun. I was lifted and then landed on the ground again. My bones rattled with the force of impact, and the air rushed out of my lungs. Disoriented, I tried to make sense of how the youth’s knees were squeezing my ribs and my right arm was pulled across his body at a strange angle, while also keeping track of our distance from the terrified horse.
Gray, smoky steel moved through my vision, but my mind didn’t actually identify it until after I felt the cool edge of it against my skin. That sensation spoke to a deep part of my brain. I froze, and my focus snapped from the horse to the youth.
A bird sang nearby, a strange, unfamiliar call, and men spoke in rushed, hurried tones, but it was all background noise. My limbs felt overfull. Remaining still was agony.
I didn’t try to swallow around that warm steel, but let out a very gentle breath.
Well, fuck.
“Hold,” someone said nearby.
The horse made an irritated noise, and I realized quiet had settled over us. I almost preferred the chaos.
I knew the youth above me probably had more than a dozen bows bent in his direction right now. Kadan had talked our way out of the Ltonan prince’s dungeons, into a peace treaty with the Red Hand, and away from a dozen hungry heiresses—but my faith in him hadn’t stopped the roaring of my heart.
Killed at the hands of a boy who didn’t even look where he was riding before we could even start this rebellion. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
“The horse needs some time to calm, Sister,” I heard Darrius say. His voice was as relaxed as if he were discussing the weather.
“Sister?” The question came from beyond the youth above me, and a quick laugh followed. “Well, if you’re my brother then my old papa’s got some serious explaining to do.”
The words danced over me like dappled sunlight, barely felt and hardly a distraction. Most of my vision was taken up by a floppy brown hat and the curve of the youth’s head beneath it. He wasn’t big, but he seemed to weigh more than a dozen horses, and his hand on me was like a vice. The blade against my throat didn’t shake. I could feel the strength in his thighs and the bite of his fingers. In another situation, I would’ve quite enjoyed it.
“We were just on the trail of a fox that’s been killing my brother’s chickens these past nights.” The youth was listening intently, but I couldn’t make myself focus. My mouth was a desert. A tickle on my neck made me wonder if I’d been cut or whether I was just anticipating the brief movement that would end my life. “Didn’t mean harm. Guess we weren’t watching as close as we ought, but we’ll be on our way—gotta catch this fox before we lose the track.”
Above me, the rider turned his face ever so slightly. His hand stayed steady, and he remained like a block of granite atop me, but I could see more than a sliver of his face for the first time.
He had pale brown, whiskey-colored eyes, and they were locked onto something beyond us—someone wielding a bow, I suspected. His jaw was square but smooth. The crinkle of leaves under a boot in the direction of that gaze confirmed my suspicions.
I’d never developed a taste for whiskey. People in my family liked it a little too much.
Resisting the urge to draw in a deep breath or try to hurry Darrius along, I stayed still, wondering who it was he was pinning with those eyes.
While I doubted, at this point, I was about to have my throat cut, I was very ready for us to be done here. The ground was cold and damp and aches had started to set in.
Suddenly, that gaze cut down and locked onto me. Trapped behind my ribs by a sudden, inexplicable tightness, my breath burned. Heat spread throughout my body, and my discomfort fell away as I became deeply aware of every point of contact between us. His thighs gripping my chest. His hand wrapped around my wrist. The crush of his weight pinning my arm between us. The heat of him. The strength. I flexed a little, pressing up into the resistance above me.
I wasn’t in the hands of a young man, but a highly skilled woman.
“… never known a Matri’sion to lose a track.”
The words came from the other side of a waterfall. They only registered at all because of the ripple I felt going through the woman above me.
