Page 115 of Lady of the Drowned Empire

“All right, partner,” he whispered. “Hold on tight.”

The door slammed open, and we were gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

My feet touched down on cold, hard grass frosted with a light coat of snow. Before I could become oriented to my new surroundings, I steadied myself, preparing to take on Rhyan's weight while he recovered.

He crashed against my body with a groan of pain.

I stumbled back, unprepared, but quickly tensed my core muscles, managing to hold him up. I felt his head resting against my shoulder in the dark and pressed my heels into the ground, tightening my arms around him.

“You okay?” I asked. I stroked the back of his neck, it was covered in sweat despite the cold.

He was still breathing heavily as he groaned. “My leg. It was bothering me before, but now it’s like…like I walked across the country with it injured. It would have healed by now, but….” He sucked air in through his lips.

“I should have taken the bags.”

“It wouldn’t have made a difference. I still had to carry you to travel.”

Gods. He’d carried me and our bags on an injured leg for who knows how many miles. “I want to look at your leg and all your other injuries. I’m going to take care of you.”

His chest heaved against mine. “We need to get to safety first. Akadim are a real threat now, especially here—along with everything else.”

“Where’s safety?” I asked, suddenly cold despite his body heat. “And where are we?”

“Elyria. Right past the border,” he groaned.

“Rhyan! That was too far.”

“I know. But we had to get out of the country. They’ll know you’re missing by now. And the borders will have closed with the akadim attack. I needed to get us beyond them.” He made a pained sound, and at my worried expression, added, “I’ll recover. I’ve had worse.”

“Here,” I said, pulling his arm over my shoulder. I slid one of the bags off his back and threw it on top of mine.

There was a rumbling sound coming from behind us. Boots pounding into the ground. Marching.

Soturi.

“Against the trees,” Rhyan ordered. “Now.”

My breath caught, but I started moving. Holding tightly to him, I backed up, step by step, until my backside was against a large moon tree, its silver leaves glinting beneath the stars. Rhyan pushed the bags off our shoulders and loosened his soturion cloak enough to cover me in it, holding it over our heads.

His forehead pressed to mine, his body flush against me.

The marching grew louder, the soldiers moving quicker. My nerves were getting the better of me as my entire body started to shake. We were barely off the road. I knew soturion cloaks camouflaged their wearers, and we were in nature, and it was dark. I’d seen soturi vanish under far less ideal circumstances. But testing the concept now felt too risky. What if a soturion stopped to take a piss? What if the magic of the cloaks failed? What if they searched this area?

“There’s no way the Batavia girl got all the way out here,” came a yell. “She’s probably hiding in one of the hundred rooms of the fortress.”

They were close. Too close.

“Well, if she gets here, we’ll be ready.”

“Ready for a nap,” said another with a laugh. “Did they check under her prison bed? Or in Viktor’s?”

These were Ka Kormac soturi. And they weren’t hunting akadim or trying to rescue my sisters—they were hunting me. Sent to bring me back to the Imperator.

My breath came in quick, and loud spurts.

Rhyan pushed his knee between my legs, pinning me in place, pressing harder against me until I stilled. “Shhh,” he whispered in my ear.