Priestess

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Her fingers woven through Lodan’s mane, Ara forced her eyes open. She hadn’t slept more than a few hours in over three days, and the rhythmic motion of Lodan’s gate was hypnotic. Her eyes grew heavy again. She felt herself leaning precariously and jerked upright.

“It’s just until the storm stops. We need to take advantage of the rain.”

Coen had to choose that moment to look back at her—the one moment when she’d nearly fallen out of the saddle. Yet he appeared as fresh as steaming bread. “I know,” she mumbled.

            Hunching her cloak higher over her shoulders, she took a deep breath and shook herself. She glanced down at Lodan. Steam rose from his tired hide, and she was certain that sweat intermixed with the rain as it dripped from his belly. “Lodan, are you fit?”

            “I have had harder rides,” he replied simply.

            Ara grunted. Coen was injured and subsiding on less sleep, Lodan was carrying her, and she was the one about to fall out of the saddle.

            “Coen has been a soldier for years. He is used to this kind of life.”

            “You’re not suffering either,” she said stubbornly.

            “I am a Unicorn,” he said, as if that alone were answer enough.

            Perhaps talking would keep her awake. “Coen, what is a Shield?”

He replied as if by rote, “The Gifted have the ability to Fragment their souls. We then weave those Fragments around our minds—a Shield.”

That’s why the Assassin hadn’t hurt her. Coen’s Fragment had been protecting her. “Will you show me how to make one?”

His eyes raked across their surroundings, scanning, always scanning. “It takes months and months to perfect a Shield, and years more to protect another person, as I did with you. I think it best if we leave such complicated work for your teacher.”

            “My teacher? Coen, where exactly are we going?”

            Rain dripping from his cowl, he peered at her. “To my father, Jarrer, in the Blood Mountains.”

            She came fully awake. “The Blood Mountains! With the Miners?”

            An ambiguous smile crept across his face. “Yes, Ara. With the Miners.”

            “I don’t understand. I though you were a Fairone? Won’t you take me to Laurel?”

            He didn’t say anything. Just when she’d decided that he’d chosen to ignore her, he cleared his throat. “I’m what the Fairones call a Half—half human, half Fairone. When my mother died, my father blamed himself. Something about betraying a prophecy. After that, he said Nonae and the Fairones in Lourel were doomed to fall. He took me to the safest place he knew—the Miner stronghold, Sanctity.”

He sighed deeply. “My father fled the pain of war. I choose a different path.”

“To end it,” Ara concluded.

Coen pressed his lips together. “To end it.” He removed his cowl. “The rain has stopped.”

Her gaze darted to the heavens. She hadn’t even noticed. Dismounting, she followed him into a dense thicket bordering a small river. The moment Lodan was free of his saddle, he plunged in and rolled.