Page 95 of The Stolen Throne
I shake my head. “Wanderers don’t leave their zariphates.” There is safety and power in numbers.
“I know. Which is why I didn’t. Everyone I asked for advice told me to just let it be, not speak up. That this was how things worked. But if I had gotten her away from there, maybe today—” He cuts himself off and gives an extra hard scrape to the ice. “If I could go back, I’d do what I thought was right. Even if it meant going against every piece of advice I received from well-meaning people I trusted.”
We both keep scraping while I think about that.
“What I’m saying, is… Do you see any other way?”
“No.”
“Then you’re doing the right—”
He suddenly looks over my head, eyes turning sharp. Then, with no warning, lunges for me, tackling me to the ground hard enough that I hit the back of my head on the ice with a resounding thwack and a starburst of pain. He grunts once as something leaps over us.
A yell goes up from the others, and before he can get off me or I can look around, the unmistakable shoop of loosed arrows fills the air. That noise is drowned out by a rumbling roar.
A familiar roar.
A massive shadow passes overhead for a heartbeat. Through Horus’s arms, I can only see a sliver of what’s on the ground, but through that sliver I see Bene’s full-size talons land on a large, white-furred creature. Then a snap of his horrendous jaws, and he rips the thing in two, blood spraying across the ice.
Followed by silence.
“Horus?” Reven’s voice is razor thin. And close.
“She’s good.” Horus raises his head from where he has me covered, and I tip my head back, looking upside down at Reven, who is practically vibrating with rage. He’s also visibly breathing hard, and I think I see the ripple of another face over his.
“Reven?”
He looks down at me, then swallows. “I’ve got it.”
“You sure about that?”
He looks away, jaw tight, then gives me the signal before walking off.
“What was that?” I push Horus up off me. Then stare, jaw flapping open, at what’s left of the white-furred creature. The top half. That’s all that’s left. The animal looks like something between a bear and a cat with long canine teeth that protrude from its lips. Its paws are bigger than my head, with nasty-looking claws that glitter almost like diamonds. Arrows riddle the remains laying in a growing pool of blood, stark red against the ice. Vos and Pella, meanwhile, are putting away their telescoping bows, an inventive Wanderer weapon that is easier to travel with.
“It’s a krov,” Vos says. “A blood bear. Deadly and carnivorous.”
“I apologize,” Bene sounds in my head. “I think I scared it right to you.”
“Horus, did it touch you?” I’m still sitting on the ground, but I tug at him to check his back. I hiss at the sight of tears in his thick coat where the blood bear’s claws struck. Only, when he takes the coat off, we find no blood. The thickness of the fur lining and leather protected his skin.
I throw my arms around his neck. “Don’t ever do that again.”
He remains stiff against me, but he doesn’t push me away. “You’re my sovereign,” he says simply.
“That’s debatable.”
“Not to me.”
“Well, it’s debatable enough not to be worth your life.”
He huffs a laugh and gives me a quick hug back before letting go only to lean down, eye to eye. “It is to me.”
I peer after him as he gets up and moves toward the dead creature and studies it. “At least we can eat well tonight.”
Getting to my feet, I stand next to Reven, surprised when he doesn’t immediately put distance between us. Even though he’s assured us that, since leaving the Shadowood, he hasn’t heard the voices anymore, he still hasn’t come within ten feet of me, even in our shelter. Not since he was attacked.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asks softly.
