Page 36 of The Concubine King
He looked over his shoulder.Kyarin held out his folded cloak.Ethyr stared at it, confused.
“For your head.”
“But it’s yours.”
“I don’t need it tonight.”
Ethyr hesitantly reached out.As soon as he touched it the man let go and Ethyr fumbled to grab it before it fell.Kyarin went back to looking at the stars with his hands under his head.
“Don’t you want a pillow?”Ethyr asked.
“No.”
Ethyr stared between him and the cloak.He slowly placed it down and laid his head on it.It was certainly more comfortable than hard dirt and sharp grass.“Thank you,” he said again.
“Mhm.”
He closed his eyes.
“Your Divinity!”
He jerked awake and away from the hands grabbing his shoulders, looking into the distressed face of a guard.
“Are you okay?”the man asked.
Ethyr glanced down at the folded cloak on the ground, indented where his head had been laying, then around at the fields and road.Sunlight slanted down on them from the horizon.Kyarin was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m… I’m fine,” he said, not sure if he even believed himself, but the guard seemed satisfied with that answer.
He stood, taking Ethyr with him by his armpits.“We must make haste, Your Divinity.Everyone is in a panic.”
Ethyr snatched the cloak and shawl off the ground, then let the guard push him to the horse standing in the road.He crouched next to it and laced his fingers together.
“Give me your foot, Your Divinity.Hold onto her mane.”He hoisted Ethyr over the horse’s back into the front of the saddle, then mounted with the stirrups to sit behind him.
He gathered the reins and swiveled the mare to face the other direction before kicking it into a canter.Ethyr hugged the cloak tight to his stomach and kept a steel grip on the horse’s mane as it thundered down the road.
When they reached the bridge into Mahyria, the endless lines coming and going had turned into stagnant seas of people corralled to either end, leaving the bridge free.The horse cantered straight over it before the guard pulled it to a halt.
“I found him,” he told another guard standing watch over the crowd.She took one look at Ethyr and ran off.
The horse continued to a little stone hut that was constructed beside the gate.The guard dismounted, tied the reins to a metal circle in the wall, and held out his hands for Ethyr.He sighed, reluctant, but he had never ridden a horse before and certainly not one so large, so he leaned into the guard’s arms and let himself be pulled down like a child.
Another guard rushed from the building.
“Your Divinity!Are you alright?”she asked him.He nodded and her attention turned to his captor.“Did you—?”
“Rasaf has gone up,” he said.“We still need to send runners out for those on the road.”
“I’ll tell Lyrian.”
Ethyr perked up at the name, but didn’t have time to ask anything before the woman had taken off and he was being herded into the building with a hand on his back and a polite but firm, “It’s safer in here, Your Divinity.”
It was simple inside, just stone walls and floor, furnished with two wooden benches.Was it safer, or easier to keep him captive?
A guard stood at attention when they entered.“Your Divinity,” he said with a low bow.“Thank the gods you’re safe.”
Ethyr eyed him.He didn’t know what kind of reception he’d been expecting, but surely one more irritated than this.Or curious, at least.They were acting like he’d been kidnapped, but he’d left of his own will and no one wondered why?
