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“Ahh,” I cried, jumping up and down. “Did you see that? I did it.”
“Again.”
His warmth left me so fast, I stumbled.
“You will continue until you either hit the bull’s-eye, or your fingers bleed,” he said, returning to his post against the fence. “I suggest you hit the bull’s-eye.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Alisdair was deadly serious.
He made me shoot again and again and again—going so far as to magically glue my feet to the snow-covered ground when I tried to leave.
Dry, cracked fingers pulled, yanked, and gripped the bow until my tears ran and my skin split open—slicking the wood with blood. I tried to draw it again and the string slipped,snapping me across the face. I dropped the bow, hands flying to my face, then crying harder for the pain of my touch.
A shadow fell over me.
“Go,” I shrieked. “You’ve gotten your wish, seeing me bleeding and crying in the dirt, so just leave me!”
“Don’t despair of blisters, little bird.” Hands grasped mine, drawing them away from my face. My breath stopped as cool, tickling magic washed over my skin. “For they become calluses.
“Stronger than they ever were before.”
The open, weeping seams on my fingers healed. Still pink and raw, but no longer bleeding and painful. I touched my cheek, finding its pain gone too. I looked up as Alisdair walked away. “Well done,” floated over his shoulder.
THAT EVENING, I ATEmy dinner in our strange, three-walled bedroom. It was the perfect place to keep watch for the orblights to brighten to their maximum—the sole signal that the sun had gone down beyond the dark clouds.
I checked and re-checked my coat, boots, and supplies a dozen times. I mentally ran through my plan a dozen more times. This was it. I was finally going home.
The minute the lights blasted their radiance, I bolted out the door.
Foalan and Aeris were walking past the end of my hallway, deep in a conversation that had them both laughing. They caught sight of me.
“Good evening, Lady Ana,” Foalan said brightly. “Is everything all right?”
“Run,” I shouted, and then launched at him—throwing my arms around and rubbing my body against him in the most obscene hug I’d ever given. “Preferably in the opposite direction.”
“My queen!” Foalan bellowed, throwing himself back much too late.
Aeris’s face went deathly pale. “My lady, what have you done?”
A roar ripped through the castle, rattling it off its very foundation.
I ran.
Racing through the halls, I touched, grabbed, and threw myself at every man I came across, leaving shouts and panic in my wake. Alisdair thought his mark would keep me on a leash, but that’s the thing about leashes. They can also be used to hang the bastard holding the other end.
I made it outside and kept running, holding back the laugh trapped in my throat.Goodbye, Alisdair. All the best with the shortest, most ill-conceived invasion in history. It ends the minute I get home and tell the world about you.
Riordan glanced up when I came sliding across the corner, feet scrambling on the ice-slicked cobblestone. His weighted-down carriage was waiting right beside the path out of Lumenfell, and filled to the brim with vegetables for market—with one other addition. Magic aided him in building a wooden roof and compartment for a small, nimble person to hide in, buried under mounds of goods.
“Arrggghh!” A roar resounded over the horizon, chasing birds, rabbits, and all manner of flying creatures out of the trees, and winging away as fast as their wings could carry them.
“That would be my blessed husband,” I said, grinning wide. “Chasing my scent to every corner of the castle.”
“We’ve no time for gloating. My lord will realize he’s been tricked sooner rather than later. Hurry, Lady Ana,” Riordan belted. He tossed me a dura dura. “Get on!”
Dura dura. The most foul-smelling fruit in these lands or any other. Working fast, I held my breath and rubbed the stinky thing over my face, hands, clothes, arms, and everywhere.
