Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 424(@200wpm)___ 339(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
“Can you stop him with magic?”
“Best not to give myself away.”
“I’ve seen how skilled you are at furtive spellcasting. Pretend he’s chasing me.”
Quin laughs. “Free my hand first?”
I look down at our joined hands and up at him, shaking my head. “Use the other one.”
He shifts the hand in mine and, after my stomach drops in disappointment, he laces our fingers together. My chest hitches at the soft slide of our skin and the pressure of his tightening hold, and I watch as Quin drums the fingers around his cane handle and sends out a sneaky spell.
An overhanging branch snaps, knocks our culprit to the ground, and pins him there. My legs no longer know how to move; Quin is the one who steers us over to the trapped man.
When I shift the leaves and see his face, I startle. It’s the man whose face I healed before a restaurant of patrons. The man who conned me, who’d hacked off the captive king’s . . . “You!”
He doesn’t recognise me. Of course he wouldn’t. I’d been wearing a curacowl. He frowns at me as he struggles to wriggle out from under the branch.
Quin rests a foot on the wood and our culprit swears at him. “Who are you?”
I glance at Quin and to the heaving mass half buried under green leaves. He doesn’t recall the king, either?
“Never mind that,” I say, rummaging under the scratchy bark to yank the sack of wedding runes free. “That’s all we’re after. Later, when you’re free, you should go home and think about your life choices.”
“Later?” he snarls.
Quin follows my gesture and suspends our culprit by the wrists from a nearby streetlamp.
“The spell will hold for twenty minutes.”
I nod and reach up, and pull his leggings to his knees, exposing the long shirt tucked about his privates. “And that,” I say, slinging the stones onto my shoulder and turning away, “is for his braids.”
Itake Quin’s hand and slink through backstreets, bypassing the square to the dueller’s bridge. We stop in the middle and stare at the glistening glacier as a unit of stormblades marches at our backs.
“You’re shuddering,” Quin murmurs.
“You might be recognised.”
“I’m in disguise.”
I glance at Quin and pay more attention to his outfit. He’s wearing coarse fabrics of earthy colours, and plain vambraces, and a thick leather belt around a hide vest. His boots aren’t his usual, polished ones. These have faint rune scratches on them. He’s dressed as if he comes from the Skeldar countryside. But what good are clothes when he flaunts his chiselled face like that?
“I’ve seen better disguises on you. I see right through this one.”
Quin faces me, a pivot that feels like a wall of heat pressing towards me. Ice is all around us, yet in this moment, I feel it will all melt into a gushing river and snatch us along with it. His gaze fuses with mine and he leans forward without so much as a smile, as if he wants me to be certain how serious he is. As if he wants me to feel it to my soul. “As I saw right through yours.”
My sack slips down my arm and swings to my front. I cradle the runes between us, holding his gaze, noting its slight flicker. I can see the memory that swims to the surface. I see it and experience it again, like I did inside the dromveske the first time.
It’s a cold night and Quin is a captive, sitting in a Skeldar cage, his hair already hacked off. His escort moves him relentlessly along the lantern-lit main street.
When I go through this door, the moment I see the moving cage I’m racing after it. With an angry shout that the stormblades don’t hear, I yank open the door and crawl into the small space.
I slide before Quin, swallowing hard. I know the state of his back, his chest. Know he must’ve been in pain everywhere. So even though he can’t feel it, even though it’s only a memory, I carefully touch his legs, shaking to comfort him while he pretends to be stoic, while he holds his chin up and stares towards the lights of the temple in the distance.
The cage shudders over cobbled stone and stops suddenly. Stormblades double-check it’s securely locked and scoff as they head into the inn for a gloating drink. I spy the one who’ll soon splutter out his story about the Lumin king’s capture. I remember Chaos on this night. He’s sitting with his aunt on the second storey. Just above us.
If Chaos only knew.
My breath fogs in the cold night, wisping around Quin’s jaw. I clutch his knees. “Quintus . . .”
He tilts his head up suddenly, as if something’s caught his eye, and I follow to the flash of something small falling. It clatters against an overhead bar and drops onto Quin’s outstretched hand. His fingers curl around the object too quickly and I shuffle closer, peering along with Quin as he opens his hand.