•~ in which a runaway bride made a deal with a man of shadow ~•
"I'm not coming with you"
"you don't really have a say in this you know?" he said as he walk toward her.
lifting her chin gently, she could feel his breath as now they are standing fac...
When you look back up, I'm under you pulling your hair
Getting lost inside my world,
you don't know where I've been
Oh no, oh no
I feel it coming
– Aimed to kill by Jade LeMac
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Lunetta was tired..
They have walked for hours in complete silence. Periodically, Mal would gesture for her to stop, and she would wait as he disappeared into the underbrush to hide their tracks. Sometime in the afternoon, they began climbing a rocky path.
Lunetta wasn’t sure where the stream had spit me out, but she felt fairly certain that he must be leading her into the Petrazoi.
The longing track was killing her…
Each step was agony.she could feel her boots were wet, and fresh blisters formed on her heels and toes.Her miserable night in the woods had left me with a pounding headache, and she was dizzy from lack of food, but she wasn’t about to complain.
She kept quiet as he led her up the mountain and then off the trail, scrabbling over rocks until her legs were shaking with fatigue and her throat burned with thirst. When Mal finally stopped, they were high up the mountain, hidden from view by an enormous outcropping of rock and a few scraggly pines.
“We shall rest here,” he said, dropping his pack. He slid sure-footed back down the mountain.
Gratefully, she sank to the ground and closed her eyes. her feet were throbbing. her head drooped, but she couldn’t let herself sleep. Not yet.
Dusk was falling by the time Mal returned, moving silently over the terrain.
He sat down across from her and pulled a canteen from his pack. After taking a swig, he swiped his hand over his mouth and passed the water to her. Lunetta drank deeply.
“Slow down,” he said. “That has to last us through tomorrow.”
“Sorry.” She handed the canteen back to him.
“We can’t risk a fire tonight,” he said, gazing out into the gathering dark.
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“ You know” Lunetta starts, “ i thought you were no ordinary tracker, thought that maybe we could find the stag in only two days”
“ And i thought you are no ordinary Grisha” Mal returns, he is now setting a firecamp. “ Now make the fire or else we would freeze to death”.
“ Alright your awesomeness tracker, get me dinner now” she said as she summoned the fire and gestured to the chopped woods.
They are finally grilling the snake they found not long ago….
— The Next Day —
When we finally began the northwest descent out of the Petrazoi, she was thrilled to leave the barren mountains and their cold winds behind.
Her heart lifted as they descended below the tree line and into a welcoming wood.
After days of scrabbling over hard ground, it was a pleasure to walk on soft beds of pine needles, to hear the rustle of animals in the underbrush and breathe air dense with the smell of sap.
They camped by a burbling creek, and when Mal began gathering twigs for a fire. Lunetta summoned a tiny, concentrated shaft of fire to start the flames, Mal seemed particularly impressed.
He disappeared into the woods and brought back another snake that Lunetta insisted that he cleaned and roasted for dinner. With a bemused expression, he watched as she gobbled down my portion and then sighed, still hungry.
“ How is the snake your royal Grishaness?” Mal said mockingly.
“ It’s tough, should have tenderize it”
“ Well unfortunately, we don't have a kitchen in this bewilderment.”
___________
WE SPENT THE NEXT few days in the areas surrounding Chernast, scouring miles of terrain for signs of Morozova’s herd, drawing as close to the outpost as we dared. With every passing day, Mal’s mood darkened.
He tossed in his sleep and barely ate. Sometimes I woke to him thrashing about under the furs mumbling, “Where are you? Where are you?”
He saw signs of other people,broken branches, displaced rocks, patterns that were invisible to me until he pointed them out,but no signs of the stag.
Then one morning, he shook me awake before dawn.
“Get up,” he said. “They’re close, I can feel it.” He was already pulling the furs off her and shoves them back into his pack.
“Hey!” she complained, barely awake, trying to yank back the covers to no avail. “What about breakfast?”
He tossed her a piece of hardtack. “Eat and walk.Lunetta want to try the western trails today. She has a feeling.”
“But yesterday you thought we should head east.”
“That was yesterday,” he said, already shouldering his pack and striding into the tall grass.
“Get moving. We need to find that stag so I don’t have to chop your head off.”
Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, Lunetta caught a flickering movement.
“Mal,” she breathed softly, gazing over his shoulder, “look.”
Several white bodies emerged from the trees, their graceful necks bent to nibble at the grasses on the edge of the snowy glade. In the middle of Morozova’s herd stood a massive white stag.
He looked at us with great dark eyes, his silvery antlers gleaming in the half light.The stag walked slowly forward and stopped just a few yards from them.
She knew it’s time to come back to the palace and bring back the good news.
