Page 83

“Help!” My throat felt like it was bleeding. I ran into the road, waving my arms wildly.

They must have seen me, because what had been a slow shuldu trudge a second ago suddenly became a furious gallop. Xennet and Dorn raced down the muddy road, vaulting off their mounts as soon as they reached me.

“The shed out back!” I flung my trembling arm in the direction of the disaster. “They need you. Please!”

But if they were the sorts of men who cared about words like “please,” they didn’t stick around to hear it. They were already gone, running around the side of the building. Just before I started running, too, I noticed that, like Rivven had been earlier, they were both dressed in their painstakingly-made human tuxedos. The fabric was entirely soaked through.

Soon, they’d be soaked with worse than just rain. Mud and blood would ruin the special outfits they’d made for my arrival.

My heart nearly cracked right down the middle.

I didn’t let it. Not yet, anyway.

There was too much work to do.

25

ZOHRO

As I rode my shuldu through the endlessly pissing rain, I asked myself, for what felt like the thousandth time, why, in the great bloody blazes, was I doing this?

Why was I out here in this storm, every part of me soaked, from my hat to my pants to my boots? Why was I leaving my herd – and all the work that went along with that – in order to spend days travelling to Warden Hallum’s province? Why was I willing to subject myself to the unsavoury company of the convicts from said province, in as absurd a location as a saloon?

The very same saloon that was now coming into view ahead?

I swiped water from my face. A pointless exercise, considering it was replaced immediately by yet more rain.

Asking these questions was also a pointless exercise.

Because I already knew the answer. I was doing this – the trudging, the travelling – because, against all my better judgment, I wanted a human bride.

There. I’d admitted it.

The very thing I’d fought so hard against when Warden Tenn had first told us about the possibility was now the thing I coveted most.

Coveted. I could think of no better word.

I’d hated the idea of having a human bride.

But then I’d seen the ones meant for Silar, Fallon, and Oaken, with their pretty smiles and strange eyes and I…

I’d coveted. Not those three women, specifically.

But one for myself.

And so, when the warden had commanded me to come here, telling me to line myself up alongside Warden Hallum’s men, like I was a bull to be judged in a fair, I’d swallowed my complaints and done it.

Well, not all of my complaints.

But at least I was here, wasn’t I?

“Almost there, Wyn,” I muttered. I patted Wyn’s golden neck, dark and slick from the rain.

The saloon was a long building of wood construction. Apparently, it was the establishment run by some fool named Rivven.

Rivven was not outside to greet me on my approach, which I would have considered rather horrendously rude, if I hadn’t been distracted by the sight of three men coming around the side of the building.

Three men….