The orange arclight of evening was streaming through the branches when Adeya opened her eyes. She looked up at the tree tops, brushing a lock of hair out of her face. She frowned.
Bolting upright, she looked at Kyen.
He lay limp against the tree trunk, head lolled on his chest, his face pale in the shadows.
Adeya crawled over to him.
“Kyen?” She shook his good shoulder. “Kyen!”
With a groan, he lifted his head and opened tired eyes.
She sat back with a sigh of relief.
He lifted his face to the light and, seeing it already dimming, he came fully awake. “What time is it?”
“You scared me.”
“We should’ve been gone two arcquarters ago.” With a tight clench to his jaw, he rose to his feet, gripping the tree trunk with one hand.
Adeya put out her hands as if to catch him. “Are you sure you can?”
Kyen nodded. He straightened and after a moment steadied. In a taut voice, he said, “We’ll need the lantern.”
She grabbed the pack and dug out her shaded lantern. She set the wick alight with a bit of flint and tinder while he gingerly pushed his way out of the copse of trees. Latching up her pack, she picked it and the lantern up and hurried after him.
“We need to make it down to the highway. Hope we can outrun Ennyen. I won’t stand a chance up in the foothills.” He looked at her as she emerged out of the trees behind him.
They both turned to head downhill but a few steps brought Kyen to a stop. Adeya, fiddling with the shades on her lantern, almost bumped into his back. She looked up.
Hidden in the shadows of the trees, a black outline perched. White teeth glinted as the fiend caladrius grinned at them.
Kyen backed away, pushing Adeya behind him.
The fiend’s mouth widened.
They turned and hurried the opposite direction.
“Don’t stop.” He glanced over his shoulder.
The fiend kept its perch, still grinning, even as the copse of trees they passed hid it from view.
They fled. Kyen held the arm with the wounded shoulder close to his side, using the other to help himself up rocky slants or push aside piney branches. Adeya kept close, lantern in one hand, her other hand outstretched to support or catch him in case he fell. They both kept looking over their shoulders, but the fiend caladrius didn’t reappear.
“Your sword, Kyen. And mine. I never picked it up after Ennyen disarmed me. What are we going to do if it catches us?” Adeya asked.
“What do we have left for weapons?”
“I don’t know. I’ve the knife on my belt. You should take it.”
Kyen paused a moment to catch his breath. “You keep it.”
“But—” She began but cut off when Kyen faced her. He looked troubled, his stormy eyes bright with uncertainty.
“You might need it.” He turned away and kept walking.
“But…” Her face sank.
“This way.”
Adeya hurried after him.
Kyen, having made a wide sweep around the caladrius fiend, angled their path downhill again. The twilight died around them, leaving the glow under the lantern as their only light. The round clumps of pines and the lumpy boulder mounds materialized out of the darkness to meet them, then disappeared into it again as they passed. The descent of the slope offered the only guide to the highway below in their pitch black surroundings.
Reaching the crest of a half-buried boulder, they stopped. An unearthly wail screeched from the outline of some pines ahead. Adeya clapped her hand to her ears and Kyen winced; he ducked them both low. As the sound echoed away, shadows slid into the edge of the lantern light—two cougar-like fiends stalking towards them.
Adeya sucked in a breath.
“Run,” Kyen said, putting himself between her and the fiends.
Together they turned and fled.
A skin-tingling wail followed them.
Skirting outcrops of stone and weaving between trees, they ran. Kyen lagged, and Adeya slowed long enough to take his good hand. She pulled him along, holding her lantern aloft in the night. They both started panting hard as the ground steepened under their feet. Another wail, this one more distant, rose into the darkness of the night. Adeya glanced over her shoulder. The forest lay empty behind them.
As they dashed away, Kyen’s knees gave out, and he dropped to the ground. His weight yanked on Adeya’s arm, pulling her down with him, and she landed with a thump on her backside, barely saving herself from smashing the lantern. It bobbled back and forth in her upraised hand.
“Kyen! Are you alright?” She clambered back to her feet. Gripping him under his good arm, she tried to pull him upright, but his knees unhinged beneath him. He collapsed back to the ground. He remained on his hands and knees, breathing hard, head hung.
Adeya set the lantern down, drew her dagger and stood at the ready. Her eyes scanned the dark trees on one side and the steep slant of rocks on the other.
Below them another wail screamed out, but nothing appeared from the trees.
Her breathing slowed.
Kyen shifted himself to sit down. He looked pale.
“Where are they?” she asked him. “We couldn’t have outrun them.”
Another wail answered the first, this one to the left. A third joined in, but rising in the distance on the right.
“They… they aren’t coming for us?” Adeya glanced at Kyen.
He frowned. Clenching his jaw, he struggled to regain his feet. “We need to keep moving.”
Adeya pursed her lips and, with bright eyes, watched him wobble, but she said nothing. She gripped him under his good arm. Sheathing her knife, she bent to take up the lantern.
“Keep moving,” Kyen whispered as if to himself.
Deep night set in as they pressed on. The air grew chill. A black sky yawned over their exposed backs as they met with a steep slope of rock and began climbing. The lantern alone held back the darkness. Beyond, it swallowed up all else. Only the sounds of their heavy breathing—Adeya’s panting and Kyen’s ragged—disturbed the silence. Clambering to a stretch where the slope relented, she set the lantern down to help Kyen to the top. He staggered a little.
“We should stop. You need rest,” she said.
Kyen only nodded. He lowered himself to the ground next to a pumpkin-sized boulder.
Kneeling next to him, Adeya set aside the lantern to dig the waterskin from their pack. She offered it to him. He accepted it, but when he lifted it to his mouth, he didn’t drink much.
She pulled up his tunic to check the bandages. He made no protest. Fresh red splotches marred the undersides of the white strips.
“You’re still bleeding.” Adeya tugged his tunic back in place. “If you keep going like this, you’re going to kill yourself.”
Kyen upended the waterskin, but again, took only a mouthful. He handed it back. Their hands touched as Adeya took the waterskin. She frowned. Snatching his hand in both of hers, she felt it and then rubbed it between her palms.
“You’re going cold. You’re losing too much blood.”
“It’s cold out here.” Kyen sounded weary.
“My hands are cold, but yours are freezing!”
“We need to keep moving.” Holding onto the boulder, he climbed to his feet. Adeya hurried up in time to catch him as his knees buckled.
“Let me help you.” She pulled his arm over her shoulder. Propping him up, she bent to pick up the lantern. “Hold onto me.”
Kyen gripped her without a word.
“We’ve got to get to the highway.” She angled them downwards, but they didn’t get more than a few steps.
The cougar fiends rose out of the rocks.
Adeya stopped. She turned her back on them and staggered back up the slope, walking as quickly as Kyen could go and biting her lip.
A chortle sounded behind them, but she didn’t dare glance back, not until they’d made it a stone’s throw away. Then she looked over her shoulder.
The fiends had vanished.
Kyen dragged on her as they inched their way up the mountain. He walked with his head hung, gray eyes fixed on his next step, saying nothing. Adeya broke a sweat from supporting him; he began to shiver with chills, and his feet slowed to the pace of a crawl.
They struggled together up a slope so steep and rocky, they both bent to hands and knees, scrambling for the top. Almost falling twice as Kyen lost his balance and nearly dropping the lantern altogether, they topped the precipice. They both collapsed, Kyen to his back and Adeya to all fours.
“No more!” She panted. “We can’t go farther.”
Kyen stared at the black sky as he struggled to breathe.
Shoving herself to her feet, Adeya held the lantern aloft. In front of them, a mound of boulders lay half-buried in the mountainside. Young pines clustered around two or three towering elders in the shelter of the outcrop.
“We can rest there.” Adeya bent to help him up. He struggled to rise as she lifted him by his good arm. Without warning, he dropped, but she clung to him and strained with all her strength to keep him from falling. She half-carried him, stooped under his weight, and they staggered together into the cove between the boulders and the trees.
Beneath the largest pine, Adeya lowered him to the ground. He rested back against the tree trunk. She placed her lantern beside him and set about gathering pine cones and sticks. Kyen watched her with tired gray eyes, shivering uncontrollably. Arranging the needles, cones, and branches in a hollow, she lit a stick from the lantern.
“I don’t care if the fiends see us. If they wanted to kill us, they’d have done it already.” Adeya thrust the burning twig into the wood and blew on it until tongues of fire crackled up. Hopping to her feet, she seized on a heavy log twice as long as she stood tall. Her first tug failed to budge it. She puffed out her cheeks and threw her weight against it. The log shifted, and she dragged it over to drop its fat end in the fire.
Kyen, with slow hands, fumbled with his empty scabbard until he got it untied from his belt. He set it aside. Shivers continued to wrack through him.
“Here.” Adeya unlatched her cloak. She dropped it around his shoulders.
“You can’t. It’s cold,” he said as she tucked the folds around him.
“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do, Kyen of Avanna.” She shifted to sit beside him, holding out her hands to the fire but not quite repressing her own shiver. The blaze crackled and cast off waves of heat as it licked up the hefty log.
“You’ve got to keep up your strength.” Adeya dug out the waterskin and a journey bread. “Eat something.”
“I’m not hungry.”
She broke off a piece and held it out under his nose. “Eat it.”
His hand emerged from the cloaks to take the piece, only to withdraw into the folds with the bit uneaten.
Adeya glowered at him.
“I’ll take some water,” he said.
She handed him the bottle; he drank a couple mouthfuls, no more.
“Rest!” she said. “I’ll stay up and keep watch.”
Gingerly, Kyen lowered himself to the ground, curled up under the cloaks.
Adeya, breaking a big stick, added it to the fire and chomped on the rest of the journey bread. She searched the surrounding woods, watching the firelight dance off the trunks and play over the boulders. It reflected in Kyen’s dark, tired eyes as he watched it.
“We should have made Bargston already,” he said.
Adeya stopped chewing, swallowed with difficulty.
“If we go much higher into the mountains,” he said. “We’ll be nearing the borders of Norgard.”
Adeya frowned, setting aside her bread.
Kyen, still shivering, nestled deeper underneath the cloaks and edged closer to the fire. His eyelids sank. His mussy, black hair stood in sharp contrast to the paleness of his skin. “If he comes... don’t fight him.”
“You’re in no state to defend yourself,” she said.
“Promise me. Don’t fight him.”
“But he’ll kill you!”
Kyen opened his eyes to look at her, but she wouldn’t meet his weary gaze. He waited until she finally looked at him.
“He’s not after you. Don’t give him a reason to be,” he said.
Adeya sulked, turning her face away from him.
He sighed, closing his eyes. “Take Kade, if it comes to it. Find the other arcangels.”
She drooped as her stubbornness dissolved. Tears bubbled into her eyes. “By myself? But—”
“Promise me.” He murmured, half-conscious. Adeya watched as his face relaxed and his breathing deepened into sleep. She drew up her knees and hugged them to herself.
“I promise,” she whispered. “Just promise me you won’t die.”
The fire snapped and crackled.
Adeya, her gaze flitting over the shadows beyond the firelight, wiped away an escaping tear. “Don’t leave me by myself.”