Page 84 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“Are there privies in the woods whereyoucome from?”
“You know very well it’s just a turn of phrase.” I wriggled in my bindings. “I have to pee. Like, right now.”
His mouth quirked. “I suppose you want me to untie you.”
I glowered. “Unless you know of some other way I can do it.”
A witty retort twinkled in his eyes, though he refrained from voicing it. “Fine, but if you even so much as look like you’re plotting another foolhardy attack, I’ll tie you up again, and you can stew in your own waste until we reach the Shadow Palace. Is that clear?”
I bared my teeth. “Yes.”
Prick!
He grunted and opened his hand again. Moments later, all tethers had recoiled from me—save the one around my ankle. Pete snorted at my aggrieved look. “Oh, that one’s staying. If wind tarries in your blood, you may be able to fly.”
I nearly laughed.If only—
“Don’t mistake my kindness for stupidity.”
“Kindness?”
His lip curled. “Perhaps I should give you a taste of how other harbingers would treat you after that stunt with myscian.” He clasped his dagger hilt. “Maybe that’ll teach you some gratitude.”
Gulping, I stuck my bare foot back in my boot and scurried from the wagon.
“That’s what I thought,” he said as I dashed into the ferns.
I went as far into the brush as I could before that damn leash grew taut. Which wasn’t far at all. I could still hear Pete shuffling on the road, talking to the donkey and Sionna, who’d begun snuffling the ground like a possessed hog when we’d stopped. The trees made a pathetic barrier between me and Pete’s searing gaze.
“You better not look!” I warned, pressing my legs together in a desperate search for privacy.
“Orwhat?”
“Just—argh!”
“Go already!” he groused, doing something that rattled the wagon. “I’ve no interest in watching you piss!”
Flushed, though the forest canopy did wonders against the spring heat, I hiked up my skirts, yanked down my panties, and hunkered down by a mossy tree stump to release a small, glorious flood upon the crunchy leaves at my feet.
“Have you finished yet?” Pete shouted from the road after five solid minutes. “You can’t have a drop of moisture left in you!”
“I’m almost done!” I’d finished a minute after I’d started, but without toilet paper—and damned if I’d ask if he had any—evaporation was my only means of cleanliness. Scrounging for hygienic leaves was the second item on my to-do list. The first was escape.
I’d just recomposed my clothing when the berry bushes to my left shook, and a creature I’d never seen before stuck its head out of the branches to blink at me. With the slanted blue eyes of a cat, the jowls of a dog, and the fluffy brown mane of a lion, it was a hybrid the likes of which only a child could imagine. And the coolest one I’d ever seen. I giggled when it chirruped like a robin.
“Oh,lookat you,” I cooed. “Don’t be scared. I swear I’m nice.”
The creature loped out from the bush on four fluffy paws, its small, brown, bearlike body as plush as a stuffed animal. My initial instincts were to squeeze the stuffing out of it. Instead, I patted my knees to entice it nearer.
“Can I pet you?” I asked, already reaching out.
Examining me with wide, guileless eyes, the beast neared in stunted zigzags. Feeling me out.
“I won’t hurt you.”
Lifting its shiny black snout, the hybrid whiffed me. Then sneezed, fur ruffling.
I laughed. “I don’t smell very good, do I?” I was caked in dried mud and stunk like it. It didn’t help matters that I hadn’t had a proper washing in almost a week.
