Page 8 of Sky in the Deep
He shoved me again, sending me back into another tree. The bark grated against my vest as I slid down the trunk and landed on the ground.
I got back to my feet, following him. “Where is he?” I tried to even the shaking in my voice.
When he turned again, he snatched my injured arm up and dug his thumb into the fresh wound he’d made the day before. I screamed, falling to my knees as the stitches popped through the skin. Bursts of light ruptured before my eyes and my stomach turned on itself, making me feel like I was on the water.
He stood over me, his face hidden in the shadows. “You’re going to get us killed. Stay away from Iri.”
I opened my mouth to speak and he clamped his hand down harder until my eyes lost focus. I was going to faint. His voice echoed in my head as the Aska retreat whistle sounded far away.
“Fiske.” Iri’s voice came from somewhere behind us—a voice I knew in my bones.
He stood behind us, holding an axe in each hand. “Let’s go.” He nodded toward the tree line, avoiding my eyes.
“Wait!” I stumbled to my feet, but he was already walking away. “Iri!”
“Go back, Eelyn. Before someone sees you.” The strain in his words was buried deep beneath the hardness that knit his face together.
His face.
My jaw dropped as I marveled at it. He was fair like me and our mother, but he looked like my father. There, in the eyes and the line of his wide shoulders. He wasn’t a boy anymore, but it was him. It was my brother.
“You’re real,” I rasped, trying to catch my breath. I slid my axe into its sheath on my back, staring.
“Iri.” A warning sounded in the Riki’s voice.
“Go.” Iri turned again, giving me his back. “Forget you saw me.”
I leaned into the tree, pinching my eyes closed against the pain in my arm. Against the ache in my chest. Because Iri was alive. And if he was alive, it meant something terrible. Something far worse than losing him.
“Iri?” Another voice sounded in the forest and my feet slid out from under me in the mud.
Iri stopped mid-stride, turning slowly and searching around us.
Ahead, a large man stepped forward, into the slice of moonlight cutting through the trees. “Fiske?”
The three of them looked at each other for a moment and the air turned cold around me, my senses heightening. I pulled my knife free again and looked toward the river. Iwasn’t stronger, but even injured I was probably faster than all three of them.
I could make it.
Iri’s jaw clenched, something working in his mind before he looked back to Fiske. He gave a slight nod before his eyes dropped and my breath caught.
Fiske was already reaching for me.
I pitched myself from the tree, propelling my weight forward, but he caught me, wrenching me back toward him. His fingers wound around my throat, his thumb pressing to the pulse at my neck. I kicked, trying to slide free, but his grip tightened until I couldn’t pull the air into my lungs. I clawed at his hands as the black pushed in at the edges of my vision. Behind him, Iri’s tight eyes were pinned on the ground.
Fiske’s gaze locked on mine, his hands like iron. My heartbeat slowed, my body growing heavier with every missed breath. I blinked, my eyes turning up to where the stars glimmered through the treetops. The pounding of my heart thrummed in my ears. One beat. Two.
Then dark.
FIVE
Iwoke to the sound of wooden wheels cracking over stones in the dirt and light passing like shadows over my closed eyelids. I tried to place the smell.
Winter. Pine and woodsmoke. My eyes opened to a stretch of empty blue sky overhead. The footfall of horses. The shifting of a cart.
I threw myself forward, sitting up, and struggled to get my feet beneath me before I fell back down. My hands were bound at the wrists, the wound on my arm bleeding fresh through my sleeve. A few Riki glanced up from where they rode on their horses around me, and my eyes widened, trying to focus.
We were in the eastern valley. Headed toward the mountain. Thora’s mountain.
