Aiming, drawing, and nocking the arrow in one smooth movement, she loosed it—then cursed as it flew past her target by a hair. “Close,” she muttered. “Now do better.”
Taking a calming breath, but not holding it—that caused tension and tension ruined both aim and power—she ignored Jadren’s scream of pain. Aim, draw, nock, release. Boom! The hunter raking furrows down the wizard’s back melted in a pile of sludge. Jadren did his part, managing to get the edge of the machete into a hunter rather than the blunt side, melting it into a stew with ligaments unfortunately still intact enough to tangle around his arm. The third hunter currently trying to kill him snapped its unnaturally long jaws at Jadren’s throat. Before she consciously planned it, Selly had let loose another arrow and put it right through the creature’s eye.
Startled, Jadren glanced back at her, his grin flashing white amidst the auburn frame of his beard and gore-smattered visage. Another hunter rose up behind his back. Selly aimed, drew, nocked, and fired, enjoying the utter shock on Jadren’s face as the arrow whistled past and embedded itself in the hunter’s open maw. “If I was going to kill you, I’d do it up close,” she shouted to him, gratified when his lips curled in a snarl.
No other hunters appeared around the bend, though Jadren waited and Selly remained poised with her last dozen arrows. Finally, he picked his way through the sludge, sparing her having to go to him, for which she was grateful—though she wouldn’t admit it to him—as she didn’t want to touch the oily remains, even with boots on. He grinned jauntily at her. “Rear guard accomplished! That wasn’t so bad.”
“If you say so,” she replied sourly, so he wouldn’t get the idea she found him even remotely charming. What had been up with him kissing her ear? And licking it… It should’ve been disgusting and distracting, not something that sent a shiver of heat through her body so intense it had driven out what should’ve been far more consuming concerns of death or capture.
“Oh, come on,” he wheedled. “That was pretty much an epic deed. Now we can catch up with the others and brag.”
“What I live for.” Briefly she considered that she should search the dead-hunter stew for her arrows, as she had so few left, but… no. She simply didn’t have the guts for it. So to speak. “Let’s commence with the catching up,” she said. “If we ride fast, we can meet them before they take the barge upriver.”
“Easy as pie.” He whistled a happy tune, leading the way toward where they’d left the horses.
“Who doesn’t know how to tie up horses so they can’t run off?” she demanded, trying to master her frustration as they tramped down the road.
“Why was it my job to secure the horses?” he demanded in return.
“Because you were the one to interrupt the saddling up to volunteer to play rear guard. You could have been securing the horses while everyone else was contributing weapons and supplies.”
Jadren slid her an annoyed look. “I am a wizard, not a hostler.”
“It’s not possible to be both?”
“It’s not necessary when one employs people to look after one’s horses,” he answered in an aggravated tone, made even more strained by the bags of supplies he’d shouldered. And him with numerous injuries, too, though they seemed to be less severe than she’d originally thought.
She hadn’t been able to talk him out of leaving any of the stuff behind—but she had refused to help carry anything except her few weapons. She was accustomed to living off the land and valued being unencumbered, to having her hands free to shoot her bow. Move fast and move often, a small, feral voice whispered in the back of her mind. That was freedom. Running and fleeing, dodging, evading, always a hair ahead of the snapping madness threatening to hamstring her and drag her under.
And the madness was there. She’d thought she was doing better—and she had been, before the confrontation with the hunters—but now every shadow snagged the corner of her eye, seeming to slink and snap, making her start with alarm. The fear that hadn’t paralyzed her during the fight with the hunters had arrived belatedly, like a drunk relative coming late to the party and ruining what should be a celebration with belching predictions of doom. Now matter how she tried to shut it up, it held court in the back of her mind, droning on with endlessly embroidered tales of what could have happened.
“If one lives in civilized Convocation society,” Jadren continued in an arch tone, oblivious to her dark thoughts and still justifying how he’d neglected to secure their horses, apparently, “one uses magical conveyances for transportation rather than hay-chomping fart-beasts.”
She could never decide if Jadren’s carelessly cynical remarks amused or irritated her. The high house wizard was in some ways everything she’d assumed Convocation citizens would be like when she was a girl—and before she lost her mind—though she’d been admittedly ignorant, living in the distant wilds of Meresin on her parents’ farm, hearing occasional tales of glittering and politely violent Convocation society. As with all tales, they’d represented only part of the picture.
“Nic grew up in civilized Convocation society and knows horses,” Selly pointed out, very reasonably, she thought, given the insult to their faithful equine companions. Even their erstwhile steeds who’d abandoned them in a moment of panic could be forgiven. She’d certainly wanted to flee. Only determination to be useful to her house instead of a crazed burden had prevented her.
“I thought you’ve had about three sentences of conversation—sane conversation, that is—with your new sister-in-law.” Jadren raised an auburn brow at her.
This was something else about Jadren that she both disliked and liked. He taunted her without remorse, and yet he was also the only person who directly referenced her recent madness. Everyone else tiptoed around her, giving her those bright, encouraging smiles reserved for newly recovered invalids who might relapse at any moment. They danced around admitting just how crazed she’d been. And how close she’d come to killing Gabriel.
Jadren didn’t scruple about speaking the bald truth. It was accurate that she hadn’t spoken with Nic much as a sane person. By the time Selly had emerged from the mists she’d wandered in confusion, Nic had already been abducted. She did remember, though, through the tattered and chill veils of madness, the story Nic had told Selly when Nic had first arrived at House Phel. An enchanted princess cursed so she couldn’t explain to anyone about the evil spell she struggled to escape. Until her brother, the prince, broke the spell and they lived happily ever after.
The metaphor had somehow penetrated the morass of confusion and layers of reality and dreams that had obscured her reason and touched a nerve of understanding. It had been a lifeline Selly had grabbed onto and still held with shredded mental fingernails of determined intent. When Gabriel had appeared in the pervasive mist she’d existed in, she’d known he was there to rescue her. And he’d done it because Nic had been the only person to know what was wrong with her.
Even without all Nic had done to help restore House Phel, and even if she hadn’t made Gabriel happier than Selly could remember him being since the magic took him so hard and ferociously, she would love Nic for that.
She would die for Nic for that reason. And for Gabriel. Though she was wise enough not to say that aloud. People got uneasy when crazy people talked about dying.
“Gabriel talked about Nic with me,” she explained. Not that Jadren deserved an explanation, but they did have a long walk ahead of them, unless the horses miraculously came trotting back. And ha to that. “He said Nic took care of Vale when Gabriel was incapacitated.”
Jadren snorted. “Yes, well—there’s an Elal for you. Sneaky, crafty, and always doing the unexpected.”
“Knowing how to handle horses is sneaky?”
“You have no idea,” he muttered darkly.
“So tell me.”
