Kingdom of Ash
“Lorcan!” She screamed it, so loud it was a wonder her throat didn’t bleed. “Lorcan!”
The dam remained intact. Which of her breaths would be her last?
“LORCAN!”
A pained groan answered from behind.
Elide twisted in the saddle and scanned the path of Valg dead behind her.
A broad, tanned hand rose from beneath a thick pile of them, and fought for purchase on a soldier’s breastplate. Not twenty feet away.
A sob cracked from her, and Farasha cantered toward that straining, bloodied hand. The horse skidded to a halt, gore flying from her hooves. Elide threw herself from the saddle before scrambling toward him.
Armor and blades sliced into her, dead flesh slapping against her skin as she shoved away demon corpses, grunting at their weight. Lorcan met her halfway, that hand becoming an arm, then two—pushing off the bodies piled atop him.
Elide reached him just as he’d managed to dislodge a soldier sprawled over him.
Elide took one look at the injury to Lorcan’s middle and tried not to fall to her knees.
His blood leaked everywhere, the wound not closed—not in the way that Fae should be able to heal themselves. The injury that had felled him would have been catastrophic, if it had taken all his power to heal him this little.
But she did not say that. Did not say anything other than, “The dam is about to break.”
Black blood splattered Lorcan’s ashen face, his dark eyes fogged with pain. Elide braced her feet, swallowing her scream of pain, and gripped him under the shoulders. “We need to get you out of here.”
His breathing was a wet rasp as she tried to lift him. He might as well have been a boulder, might as well have been as immovable as the keep itself.
“Lorcan,” she begged, voice breaking. “We have to get you out of here.”
His legs shifted, drawing an agonized groan. She had never heard him so much as whimper. Had never seen him unable to rise.
“Get up,” she said. “Get up.”
Lorcan’s hands gripped her waist, and Elide couldn’t stop her cry of pain at the weight he placed on her, the bones in her foot and ankle grinding together. His legs not even kneeling beneath him, he paused.
“Do it,” she begged him. “Get up.”
But his dark eyes shifted to the horse.
Farasha approached, steps unsteady over the corpses. She did not so much as flinch as Lorcan grasped the bottom straps of the saddle, his other hand on Elide’s shoulder, and moved his legs under him again.
His breathing turned jagged. Fresh blood dribbled from his stomach, flowing over the crusted remains on his jacket and pants.
As he began to rise, Elide beheld the wound slicing up the left side of his back.
Flesh lay open—bone peeking through.
Oh gods. Oh gods.
Elide ducked further under him, until his arm was slung across her shoulders. Thighs burning, ankle shrieking, Elide pushed up.
Lorcan pulled at the same time, Farasha holding steady. He groaned again, his body teetering—
“Don’t stop,” Elide hissed. “Don’t you dare stop.”
His breath came in shallow gasps, but Lorcan got his feet under him, inch by inch. Slipping his arm from Elide’s shoulder, he lurched to grip the saddle. To cling to it.
He panted and panted, fresh blood sliding from his back, too.
This ride would be agony. But they had no choice. None at all.
“Now up.” She didn’t let him hear her terror and despair. “Get into that saddle.”
He leaned his brow against Farasha’s dark side. Swaying enough that Elide wrapped a careful arm around his waist.
“You didn’t rutting die,” she snapped. “And you’re not dead yet. We’re not dead yet. So get in that saddle.”
When Lorcan did nothing other than breathe and breathe and breathe, Elide spoke again.
“I promised to always find you. I promised you, and you promised me. I came for you because of it; I am here because of it. I am here for you, do you understand? And if we don’t get onto that horse now, we won’t stand a chance against that dam. We will die.”
Lorcan panted for another heartbeat. Then another. And then, gritting his teeth, his hands white-knuckled on the saddle, he lifted his leg enough to slide one foot into the stirrup.
Now would be the true test: that mighty push upward, the swinging of his leg over Farasha’s body, to the other side of the saddle.
Elide positioned herself at his back, so careful of the terrible slash down his body. Her feet sank ankle-deep into freezing mud. She didn’t dare look toward the dam. Not yet.
“Get up.” Her command barked over the panicked cries of the fleeing soldiers. “Get in that saddle now.”
Lorcan didn’t move, his body trembling.
Elide screamed, “Get up now!” And shoved him upward.
Lorcan let out a bellow that rang in her ears. The saddle groaned at his weight, and blood gushed from his wounds, but then he was rising into the air, toward the horse’s back.
Elide threw her weight into him, and something cracked in her ankle, so violently that pain burst through her, blinding and breathless. She stumbled, losing her grip. But Lorcan was up, his leg over the other side of the horse. He slouched over it, an arm cradling his abdomen, dark hair hanging low enough to brush Farasha’s back.
Clenching her jaw against the pain in her ankle, Elide straightened, and eyed the distance.
A long, bloodied arm dropped into her line of sight. An offer up.
She ignored it. She’d gotten him into the saddle. She wasn’t about to send him flying off it again.
Elide backed a step, limping.
Not allowing herself to register the pain, Elide ran the few steps to Farasha and leaped.
Lorcan’s hand gripped the back of her jacket, the breath going from her as her stomach hit the unforgiving lip of the saddle, and Elide clawed for purchase.
The strength in Lorcan’s arm didn’t waver as he pulled her almost across his lap. As he grunted in pain while she righted herself.
But she made it. Got her legs on either side of the horse, and took up the reins. Lorcan looped his arm around her waist, his brutalized body a solid mass at her back.
Elide at last dared to look at the dam. A ruk soared from it, frantically waving a golden banner.
Soon. It would break soon.
Elide gathered Farasha’s reins. “To the keep, friend,” she said, digging her heels into the horse’s side. “Faster than the wind.”
Farasha obeyed. Elide rocked back into Lorcan as the mare launched into a gallop, earning another groan of pain. But he remained in the saddle, despite the pounding steps that drew agonized breaths from him.
“Faster, Farasha!” Elide called to the horse as she steered her toward the keep, the mountain it had been built into.
Nothing had ever seemed so distant.
Far enough that she could not see if the keep’s lower gate was still open. If anyone held it, waited for them.
Hold the gate.
Hold the gate.
Every thunderous beat of Farasha’s hooves, over the corpses of the fallen, echoed Elide’s silent prayer as they raced across the endless plain.
Hold the gate.
CHAPTER 61
Agony was a song in Lorcan’s blood, his bones, his breath.
Every step of the horse, every leap she made over body and debris, sent it ringing afresh. There was no end, no mercy from it. It was all he could do to keep in the saddle, to cling to consciousness.