Brent Weeks - Shadow's Edge

Nysos! Kylar might not even know she’d taken Uly. She didn’t know if that was a good thing or not. It did explain why he’d gone charging past them in the fog that morning, though. He would have been sure she’d return to Cenaria as quickly as possible.

Several hundred paces ahead, Vi saw the forest change. No, not change. It transformed as abruptly as if the earth had been split with an axe. On the near side, the forest was like what they’d been riding in for days. On the far side, enormous sequoys grew. They must be near Torras Bend. It didn’t mean much to her, but it looked like the riding would be easier under those great trees. There was almost no undergrowth in a forest that old.

They were only fifty paces from the sequoys when an old woman stepped out from the trees in front and to one side of them. She looked as startled as Vi felt. She was holding a glowing sheet of gold in her hands.

Glowing gold could only mean magic. The woman was a mage.

“Stop!” the old woman yelled.

Vi snapped her body back in the saddle and yanked the reins of Uly’s horse out of her hands. As she sat back up, she jabbed her heels in and looked toward the mage. The woman was running heavily, awkwardly—and not toward Vi and Uly. She was running away from the old forest and she had flung aside the glowing gold sheet.

What the hell? It was strange, but not so strange that Vi stopped. In all the world, the only people she had to fear were wetboys, wytches, and mages.

The horses charged for the forest, almost throwing Uly out of the saddle.

The mage was only thirty paces away now, almost even with them. She ran a few more steps, and Vi could have sworn that the woman was emerging from something like a vast, nearly invisible bubble covering the forest.

The woman brought up her hands and spoke. Something crackled and whipped forward. Vi dropped her body as far on the opposite side of her horse as she could. There was a concussion nearby and Uly flew off the horse.

Vi didn’t stop to look. She grabbed a throwing knife from an ankle sheath and threw it as she brought herself back up into the saddle. It was a long throw—twenty paces at a target she couldn’t see before the she released the knife—but it was really only meant as a distraction. Vi looked back.

Uly was lying on the ground, unconscious.

There was no hesitation. A wetboy doesn’t hesitate. A wetboy acts, even if it’s the wrong action. Vi couldn’t stay still, it made her a target. She dug her heels into her horse’s flanks again. The horse lunged forward—

And promptly crashed into the ground, its front legs cut out from under it.

Vi pulled her feet from the stirrups. She would land in a ball, roll free of the horse, draw throwing knives— except the horse fell faster than she expected. She slapped into the ground hard, her body flipping over as she skidded on her back. Her head kissed an iron-hard root and black spots swam before her eyes.

Up, damn you! Get up! She got on her hands and knees and tried to stand, eyes watering, head ringing.

“I’m sorry, I can’t let you do that,” the old woman said. She looked like she actually meant it.

No. It can’t end like this.

The beefy old woman raised a hand and spoke. Vi tried to throw herself to one side, but she didn’t make it.

I t was two small cuts. A line along the ribs, and a matching line across the inside of his arm. Neither was deep. The knife had cut skin but not muscle. Even together, they were nothing a clean bandage and some fresh air wouldn’t have seen heal in a few days.

But in the Hole, nothing was clean. Fresh air was only a memory.

Logan recognized the signs, but there was nothing he could do. He was hot and cold already, shivering and sweating. The odds were, he wouldn’t come out of the fever. After all the time he’d spent in the Hole, he was a shadow of his former self. Cheeks sunken, eyes bright, face skeletal, his tall frame now skin and bone.

If he survived, he could get worse yet, he knew. For all that he’d starved, Logan still didn’t have the malnourished, emaciated look that those who had been in the Hole for years had. His body was clinging to its strength with a stubbornness that surprised him. But the fever cared nothing for that. It would take days, at the least, to fight off the fever. Days of total vulnerability.

“Natassa,” he said. “Tell me again about the resistance.”

The younger Graesin daughter had a hunted look in her eyes. She didn’t respond. She was looking across the hole at Fin, who was gnawing on sinews to add to his rope.

“Natassa?”

She sat up. “They move around. There are a number of estates that welcome them in the east, especially— especially the Gyres’. Even the Lae’knaught have helped.”

“Bastards.”

“Bastards who are our enemy’s enemy.”

She said that like she’d said it before. Damn, she had said it before, hadn’t she?

“And our numbers are growing?”

“Our numbers are growing. We’ve been conducting raids, small groups going and doing anything they can to hurt the Khalidorans, but my sister wouldn’t let us try anything big yet. Count Drake has set up informants for us in every village in eastern Cenaria.”

“Count Drake? Wait, I asked that before, didn’t I?”

She didn’t respond. Her eyes were still on Fin. Fin had killed four of the newcomers in the last three days. Three days? Or was it four now?

Count Drake was part of the resistance. That was great. Logan hadn’t known if the man had made it out alive.

“I’m glad Kylar didn’t kill him, too,” Logan said.

“Who?” Natassa asked.

“Count Drake. He betrayed me. He’s the reason I’m down here.”

“Count Drake betrayed you?” Natassa asked.

“No, Kylar. Dressed all in black, called himself the Night Angel.”

“Kylar Stern is the Night Angel?”

“He was working for Khalidor all along.”

“No, he wasn’t. The Night Angel’s the only reason there’s a resistance at all. I was there. We were all herded into the garden and he saved us. Terah offered him whatever he wanted to escort us out of the castle, but he only cared about you. He left us to try to save you, Logan.”

“But he—he killed Prince Aleine. He was the one who started all of this.”

“Lady Jadwin killed Aleine Gunder. She’s been given a portion of his estates as her reward.”

It didn’t seem possible. After everything had been stripped away from him, Natassa was giving him back his best friend. He’d missed Kylar so much.

Logan laughed. Maybe it was the fever. Maybe he’d imagined that she said that because he wanted it so much. He was so sick that the entire world hurt. Everything was fuzzy, so fuzzy. He thought he was going to start blubbering like a little girl.

“And Serah Drake? Was she with you, too? She’s part of the resistance? Kylar saved her?” Logan asked. He’d asked that before, hadn’t he?

“She’s dead.”

“Did she …did she suffer?” He hadn’t dared ask that before.

Natassa looked down.

Serah. His fiancée, not so long ago. She seemed part of another life. Another world. He had loved her once. Or thought he loved her. How could he have loved her when she’d barely crossed his mind in all the time he’d been down here?

She’d betrayed him. She’d slept with his friend, Prince Aleine Gunder, when she had never even slept with him—the man she said she loved. Had that been it? Had that betrayal extinguished his feelings for her? Or had he ever loved her at all?

He’d thought that he was finally understanding love on his wedding night.

Everyone who’s infatuated thinks he understands love. But Logan couldn’t help it. What he’d felt for Jenine Gunder—the fifteen-year-old girl he’d been so sure was too young and immature for him—had seemed like love. Maybe she’d been snatched away before he’d had time to see her flaws, but Jenine Gunder—Jenine Gyre, his wife, if only for a few tragic hours—was the woman who had haunted his thoughts. He’d dreamed of her in the moments before sleep yielded to the hard stone and cruel stink and howling and heat of the Hole—her full smile, her bright eyes, her golden curves in candlelight as he had seen her just once, so briefly, before the Khalidoran soldiers had broken into the room, before Roth had cut her throat.