I stared at her, horrified. Dinah betrayed us? Stupid girl. What have you done? Oleez had been certain she could trust her and needed to bring her with when she escaped. Did Dinah think this would gain her favor with the king, or was she just hysterical with fear? She lay there whimpering, and Montegue turned back to me.
His jaw was rigid. All the passion that had consumed him just minutes ago was now channeled in a new direction. His attention dropped to my feet. “I see your limp is gone.”
I nodded. “A miraculous healing.”
His cheek twitched. “We can still work this out,” he said, making a poor effort to soften his voice. He had no intention of working it out. I saw the inner workings of his mind—he was an architect working on a new plan. “You were frightened for the children,” he continued. “I can understand that. I—”
“Really, Montegue? You would forgive me? How lucky I am. Because of course, you are not a monster, as you have told me so many times.”
His stance shifted at my sarcasm.
“How brave will you be now without children to shield you?” I asked. “Will you still ride freely among your adoring subjects?” I laughed just to rub it in, because I knew how much he hated disdain, and I wanted him to feel this moment all the way to his marrow.
He was immovable, a stone standing in front of me. “Where are they?” he repeated.
“Out of your clutches and far away by now,” I replied. “They have a good hour lead and a skilled soldier helping them. Lucius is quite remarkable.”
“Lucius?”
One of the guards behind him answered, “The soldier who was assigned to them.”
“He was in on it too,” I said. “See? I know your own soldiers better than you do. How many of those standing behind you right now are really on our side? How many of them might be aiming an arrow at your back even as I speak?”
Blink last. He knew the game too, and he resisted the urge to turn around, but I saw the flutter of his lashes and the doubt that swept through his eyes. He glanced at the dull, useless weapons at my side, already planning a new strategy.
As he eyed me, I eyed other things. In a split second I judged the positions of the soldiers behind him, two with arrows nocked, four with swords drawn, and four with halberds poised to charge. I eyed the soldier who aimed a launcher at me. He couldn’t fire it. He was in too close of range, and the blast would surely injure or kill the king as well. I noted the clouds passing overhead, and the shifting light and shadows, and when the sun might be in the soldiers’ eyes. I tried to remember how many steps to the wash behind me, and what trees, tombs, and gravestones stood in the path for cover, and then I tried to remember the steepness of the embankment along the road, and where the soldiers stationed below were positioned, and then the distance to the deep canyon just beyond it. Pivot. A new plan. It all flashed through my mind in a few short seconds. I had to decide whether it was viable, but it was obvious the odds were not in my favor. Not remotely. Not this time.
Montegue smiled as if he knew what I was thinking and stepped closer. “There’s nowhere for you to go. Put your weapons down, and we’ll talk.”
A grin lit his handsome face, and his voice was warm. But I saw the flush at his temples, the tension in his shoulders, the rage that seethed in him. I would be thrown into a cell and left th
ere to rot until he had wrung every bit of information out of me that he could. That was not an option either. I would never reveal where Lydia and Nash were.
His eyes drilled into me, judging the timing of his moves too. And then he lunged. Because he was stronger and could overtake me easily. Because he had the gods on his side.
But this time I didn’t have a pickle fork clutched in my hand. Beneath my cloak, I gripped something else in my fist.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
KAZI
My arm shot out, slashing upward, the razor-sharp push knife catching him in his chest and jaw. He fell back, screaming, clutching his face as blood spurted between his fingers. In the flash of chaos as soldiers leapt to help the king, I turned and ran for the wash.
“Fire!” he screamed. “Fire!”
I heard scrambling and shouts behind me.
“Get out of the way! Out of the way!” someone yelled.
Arrows whirred past. I heard the thunk! chink! whoosh! as they hit tree and stone, and purred past my ears.
I was about to jump into the wash, when the force of an explosion ripped through the air. I was thrown from my feet and sent rolling down the dry creek bed. Dirt and rocks sprayed all around me. Splinters of stone pierced my skin. Dust choked the air, and my ears rang with pain. I rolled to my feet and kept moving. I couldn’t see through the cloud of dust, but I knew the direction I needed to go.
Rocks crunched beneath my boots as I ran, the air still thick with dust, but once I was past the cloud, another volley of arrows screamed past me. I varied my steps like an unpredictable rabbit, then ran up the opposite side, out of the wash, and down an incline, finally out of their line of sight, but I was running so fast I couldn’t stop when I hit the embankment, and for a few seconds I was airborne, hoping I wouldn’t hit the tree straight in my path. I reached out, grabbing a branch that flung me in a new direction, narrowly missing a trunk, but then I hit the ground hard, tumbling out of control, the thick bed of slippery needles giving me nothing to grab hold of, rushing me downhill like a raging waterfall. I flailed, trying to find something to hold on to, and finally dug in my heel as I grabbed a sapling. My grip ripped its branches clean as it slowed my slide, and I came to a stop just before I reached the road below.
The cover of the trees had at least hidden my descent from the soldiers stationed on the road, but the soldiers above me were still in pursuit. Their arrows were blocked by the trees between us, but not for long. I had no choice but to make a run for the canyon that lay past the road. Screams and orders echoed all around me—including the voice of the king—and the soldiers below turned, weapons raised, looking into the trees for the source of the commotion. I threw a pinecone past them, hoping to divert their attention, if only for a second—that was all I needed—and I ran.
“There!”