Total pages in book: 197
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186911 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
“Very well.” Alisdair hopped over the fence. “Regard me.”
“Wait, what?”
“Foalan, you’re dismissed.” Alisdair grasped my waist and I spun—gasping to find myself crushed to his chest and tucked under his chin. “I fear you’ll regret this, little bird. I’m not nearly so forgiving an instructor as Foalan.”
“You fear nothing,” I said, hating the desperate look I threw at Foalan’s back. “Least of all giving me regrets.”
His chuckle rumbled against my back. “To begin, point your feet away from the target.” We moved as one. Nudging his leg between mine, Alisdair moved my feet shoulder width apart. “Relax,” he ordered. “You’re tensing up before you’ve even touched the bow.”
I sent the call for my muscles to relax, but they didn’t obey. Alisdair had never been this close to me without fucking me senseless, or protecting me from getting pummeled. To have his body pressed to mine in a benign situation, wasn’t one mine understood.
“You’re both pulling back too far, and holding on to the bow too long,” he said. “You’re tiring yourself out before you’ve released, and then the force of it knocks you off-balance.”
I found myself nodding along. What he was saying made sense. “What do I do, then?”
“Relax,” he murmured. “Only pull back to the corner of your mouth, and then release. Don’t hesitate. Don’t overthink. Just let go.”
Nodding, I lifted the bow and—
“Stop,” Alisdair broke in. “You’re overextending.”
He reached out and laid his hand over mine—touch surprisingly cold. Surprisingly gentle. His other slid around my waist, moving me back into the proper position... pressed against his middle.
“You want your elbow slightly bent,” he said, pulling my mind out of rushing thoughts. “Now draw back, anchor to your mouth, and—”
I let go, a small cry leaving me as the arrow sailed away.
Thwack!
The tip burrowed into the target off-center. Very off-center, but it hit the target.
“Ahh,” I cried, jumping up and down. “Did you see that? I did it.”
“Again.”
His warmth left me so fast, I stumbled.
“You will continue until you either hit the bull’s-eye, or your fingers bleed,” he said, returning to his post against the fence. “I suggest you hit the bull’s-eye.”
“You can’t be serious.”
Alisdair was deadly serious.
He made me shoot again and again and again—going so far as to magically glue my feet to the snow-covered ground when I tried to leave.
Dry, cracked fingers pulled, yanked, and gripped the bow until my tears ran and my skin split open—slicking the wood with blood. I tried to draw it again and the string slipped, snapping me across the face. I dropped the bow, hands flying to my face, then crying harder for the pain of my touch.
A shadow fell over me.
“Go,” I shrieked. “You’ve gotten your wish, seeing me bleeding and crying in the dirt, so just leave me!”
“Don’t despair of blisters, little bird.” Hands grasped mine, drawing them away from my face. My breath stopped as cool, tickling magic washed over my skin. “For they become calluses.
“Stronger than they ever were before.”
The open, weeping seams on my fingers healed. Still pink and raw, but no longer bleeding and painful. I touched my cheek, finding its pain gone too. I looked up as Alisdair walked away. “Well done,” floated over his shoulder.
THAT EVENING, I ATE my dinner in our strange, three-walled bedroom. It was the perfect place to keep watch for the orblights to brighten to their maximum—the sole signal that the sun had gone down beyond the dark clouds.
I checked and re-checked my coat, boots, and supplies a dozen times. I mentally ran through my plan a dozen more times. This was it. I was finally going home.
The minute the lights blasted their radiance, I bolted out the door.
Foalan and Aeris were walking past the end of my hallway, deep in a conversation that had them both laughing. They caught sight of me.
“Good evening, Lady Ana,” Foalan said brightly. “Is everything all right?”
“Run,” I shouted, and then launched at him—throwing my arms around and rubbing my body against him in the most obscene hug I’d ever given. “Preferably in the opposite direction.”
“My queen!” Foalan bellowed, throwing himself back much too late.
Aeris’s face went deathly pale. “My lady, what have you done?”
A roar ripped through the castle, rattling it off its very foundation.
I ran.
Racing through the halls, I touched, grabbed, and threw myself at every man I came across, leaving shouts and panic in my wake. Alisdair thought his mark would keep me on a leash, but that’s the thing about leashes. They can also be used to hang the bastard holding the other end.
I made it outside and kept running, holding back the laugh trapped in my throat. Goodbye, Alisdair. All the best with the shortest, most ill-conceived invasion in history. It ends the minute I get home and tell the world about you.
Riordan glanced up when I came sliding across the corner, feet scrambling on the ice-slicked cobblestone. His weighted-down carriage was waiting right beside the path out of Lumenfell, and filled to the brim with vegetables for market—with one other addition. Magic aided him in building a wooden roof and compartment for a small, nimble person to hide in, buried under mounds of goods.