Page 139 of The Stolen Throne
Omma gives a dry cackle of a laugh. “She could do worse.”
“I could do better, too,” I mutter.
Tabra pokes me in the side with a finger. Right where she knows I’m ticklish, and I squirm.
“Not long now,” Bene’s voice sounds in my head.
I have to translate for Tabra and Omma. We all go silent, getting ready for what comes next.
I don’t know about them, but I’m scanning the flat, mostly empty horizon. Is Eidolon here? Did he send anyone after us? At least we have a full-size Devourer for protection.
The Sacred Tree draws nearer and nearer until it is directly ahead. I don’t realize that Bene has been dropping lower to the ground until the tree is right in front of us. Even in the dark, I can see the charred, black husks of its leafless branches. And the flames aren’t just red. There are so many colors. Within the reds and golds are wisps and hints of greens, blues, pinks, lavenders. There, then gone, like spirits.
I twist the cuff on my wrist. Cain wanted us to make our troth as heartmates under this tree. I can picture it, though now the image in my mind sends sadness swelling up in me. Sadness because he and I aren’t who we once were. Not anymore.
And I don’t know what we will be in days to come. After all this. If we survive it.
Tilting, we swoop past it, and I whip around to keep staring only to lose my balance, since I’m precariously in place on Bene’s broad back. I grab a hunk of his sandy lion’s mane to keep from sliding off.
“Careful.”
“Careful.” Tabra unknowingly echoes Bene’s warning, fingers gripping me harder, though I still barely feel the touch, she’s so feeble.
“Sorry.” I face forward reluctantly.
A second later, we land close to where the canyon that marks the border between the land of the living and the not drops away.
Returning to the ground is like jumping an obstacle on the back of a really big horse, only a lot more awkward because my legs are spread so far wide and I can’t grip with my thighs. Bene comes in like a shooting star. Unfortunately, this close to the ground, to see it rushing up to me… I’ve never gone this fast in my entire life.
My nerves hold a wrestling match in my stomach, and I try to remember what Cain taught me about horses. Move with their body.
Suddenly, Bene tips back, wings catching the air in a violent thrash of beats, and all four hooves strike the ground hard enough to jolt all three of us forward with teeth-rattling violence. Omma and Tabra crash into me, and I’m so focused on keeping Tabra from falling that I forget to hold myself on, so I go sailing.
I land with a ploof and a grunt in a sand dune, the fine black dust of the Obsidian Desert spraying up and covering me. If I thought it was going to be soft, I was wrong.
“Meren!” Tabra yells from Bene’s back, where she and Omma managed to stay put.
She should not be yelling. What if someone has laid a trap for us? Only I can’t talk to tell her that. There’s no air left in me to speak. I lay here winded, reviewing the twists and turns of my life that brought me to this precise moment, until Bene comes over, nosing at me.
“Are you deceased?”
“No,” I groan.
“That is good.”
Is it, though?
“Are you all right?” Tabra asks.
Aside from my pride and a few other bruises? “I’m okay.”
Omma grunts. “Then get your ass up, girl. No time to waste.”
59
They Do Exist
Bene looks up at the first vague glow of light entering the predawn sky. “Time is slipping.”
