Page 106 of A Dance with the Fae Prince (Married to Magic 2)
Chapter 30
Numb.Inside and out. I feel nothing.
My skin is so cold that I’m surprised it hasn’t cracked and started bleeding. Its healthy hue is gone, replaced with a shade as ghostly as the barren earth beneath me. Every muscle has seized from shivering for so long.
Even my mind has frozen over. My thoughts are still, encased in frost. The only thing I seem to be able to comprehend is forward. Ride forward. Keep going.
So when I see a shadow emerge at the edge of my vision, I can hardly react in time. The Butchers have finally caught up to me. They have me now, and the magic, and I left Davien behind for nothing.
“Katria!”
“No!” I scream back and try to spur the horse onward. The mount is exhausted from riding hard all morning. He’s got nothing more to give.
“Katria.” The man approaches.
“I won’t let you take me. I won’t—” I finally turn and realize who it is coming toward me. “Giles?” I rasp.
“I thought it was you.” He rushes over. I can only imagine how I look to him—still in nothing more than my small clothes, my wet hair hanging in knotted clumps, my lips blue, my body covered in mud and rock and blood. “What’s happened?”
I shake my head and choke on the words. Moving my head back and forth sets my whole body in motion. I’m shuddering, violently. I rasp incomplete breaths, wheezing them out only halfway before I inhale again. I stare at the necklace in my hand.
“I— I— Davien— He.”
Giles frowns. He knows what I’ve done. He knows I’ve left his king behind for the Butchers. Will he believe me that it was Davien’s wish? Will it even matter? I left Davien—the heir of Aviness—behind.
What have I done?
“Let me take this.” Giles slowly reaches for the reins of the horse.
“We have to keep going. We can’t go back there.”
“Obviously. There’s a tree not far from here that I holed up in last night. I was making my way north when the fog lifted and my compass worked again.” As he speaks, he shrugs off his coat, and it’s then that I notice his shirt is covered in blood.
“You’re hurt.”
“I was. It’s why I didn’t meet you both at the keep. Instead, I found shelter and healed myself. I’m fine now.” He says it in a way that betrays his true meaning—I’m fine, you don’t need to worry about me, worry about yourself. Giles drapes his coat over my shoulders. “We’ll go there now.”
“We have to keep moving, it’s not safe.”
“It’s not far and you’re going to die of exposure if you keep on like this,” Giles says firmly. “We need to get you warm and dry.”
I’m too tired to argue anymore. I let him take the horse’s reins and he leads us diagonally away from the course I had been charting. Fortunately, it’s still in a somewhat southerly direction, and away from the main road.
But nowhere feels safe as long as the Butchers know I have this necklace. Boltov has the crown, the hill, and now the heir that was standing in his way. All he needs is this power to be the unquestioned ruler of the fae.
Soon enough, we arrive at one of the larger trees of the skeletal woods. We’re definitely closer to the forests of Dreamsong. The trees here are larger and well-nourished. They still lack life, like the rest of the once foggy forest. But they’re large enough that two people can fit inside, albeit tightly, which is just what we do.
We squeeze into a split in the trunk. Giles suggested we tie up the horse at a distance, still in our field of view, but far enough that if someone attacked it they wouldn’t immediately see us. I don’t want to watch another horse die…but I want to die even less.
“Pass me back my coat. I only need it for a second.”
I oblige him. Giles places it on the ground just outside the tree. He peels off his socks, belt, and riding gloves. After drawing some lines and circles in the soft earth, he piles them up. With a soft incantation and a touch of his hands there’s new clothes—a long tunic, leggings, and a simple pair of ankle boots.
He hands them to me and says somewhat apologetically, “They’re not my best work. I don’t have much in the way of materials out here right now. But it’ll be better than nothing.”
That much is certainly true. No sooner have I pulled the tunic over my head than I feel it trapping in what meager warmth my body is still producing. When I’m dressed, Giles shifts closer, wrapping an arm around me.
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “I’m just trying to warm you up as quickly as possible so we can get moving again.”
