Page 32 of Reap & Sow

A second too late, she realized what he meant to do.

He stepped into open air.

Eda screamed.

The fall was short but utterly terrifying. Wind whipped about her hair, roared in her ears. The landing was just as rough. Kit’s shoulder knocked the air clean out of her, but he was already setting her upon her feet. She swayed. Down the street, a rush of red and silver flooded toward them. People screamed in alarm.

“Get on.”

Eda’s vision barely cleared before he transformed again. Black tendrils twisted and writhed into a new shape, much, much larger than before. The breath caught in her throat.

A towering black stallion bent down on one knee. She stared at the intimidating majesty of him: corded muscle; rippling haunches; a proud, arching neck. He huffed through velveteen nostrils. A fiery eye blazed at her, wretched and beautiful.

Get the fuck on, he seemed to be saying. Only the sound of drawn swords was enough to make her listen. Eda sent a fearful glance toward the Blades and grabbed fistfuls of his long mane, hauling herself up. It was soft as silk. Kit’s great body rocked as he stood, and she scrambled to seat herself properly. If she was hurting him with her fierce grip, he didn’t acknowledge it.

A vial smashed on the ground by Kit’s hooves. He whinnied in alarm, skittering away. Another sailed by and narrowly missed his nose. Blades were surrounding them, at least ten, maybe more.

Eda hadn’t ridden since she was a girl. It was all she could do to clamp her legs around his wide back and keep a death grip on his mane. You couldn’t have turned into a bloody pony, could you? she thought heatedly, eyeing the vast distance to the ground.

Blades rushed them. Kit’s huge head snapped sideways, and that’s when she saw it: not the blunt square teeth of any normal horse, but a row of carnivorous fangs. Eda gasped despite herself as those long incisors closed over a Blade’s shoulder. The stallion’s neck twisted, and the man was thrown into the path of another, arm torn asunder.

Cries of terror. Blood on the cobbles. And a ghastly, shrill cry from the stallion as he reared.

Eda clung to his neck in terror. She braced herself to fall, but a weighted sensation snapped over her hips and legs, as though they were suddenly glued to his sides. She could not dismount if she tried. Magic. His magic.

Kit’s bloody wolflike mouth and blazing eyes rose above the crowd. Black hooves struck the air. The image was so unnatural, so frightening, that for a moment even the Blades were stupefied with horror.

Saints, what have I done?

Kit charged. The Blades had the good sense to scatter or else be knocked flying. She cast a backward glance over her shoulder and cried out in alarm. The demon seemed to understand the warning, for he banked sharply just as another silver-sown net hurtled toward them—the edge thwacked Eda’s leg and caught the hem of her cloak, ripping it free.

She hardly felt it. Hardly felt the oozing cut on her palm, nor the cold wind as they galloped down the cobbled road. People cried out and leaped aside. Kit did not slow. His warm muscles bunched and released rapidly beneath her as he charged, so breathtakingly fast that Blackbridge seemed to become one great river of watercolors around them, gray and brown and black.

They raced westward along the river. Eda dared not look back again. She couldn’t. Her old life had been a strange, secret, sheltered thing, but it had been hers. Now it was done. She had given up what remained of it, delivering herself into the hands of a monster wearing a man’s face. Her ears rang with the sound of claws rending flesh. The scent of blood in her nose like miasma.

When the tears came, Eda could not say if they were born of grief or the sting of the wind.

She’d never felt so alone.

Ten

Eda had no idea how long they rode for. All she knew for certain was the numbness in her hands and face, the endless stream of shocked faces as they galloped through the streets.

Her thighs burned; Kit hurtled around corners and weaved between obstructions in an unstoppable fury. She was glad of the pain. It was enough to distract her for a time. She hunkered down over the stallion’s back, blocking out the dark rush of the city. She didn’t know where they were going. She didn’t ask.

Eventually and all at once, Eda realized that the sky had opened up around them—the damp stench of the canals blown away. Kit slowed to a canter.

Fields. Flat farmland, stretching on for miles. They rode down the traveler’s road and followed the line of the River Embel, a tributary of the Saint’s Waterway that twined northeast. On rare summer days, the Shaws used to take a horse cart to its southern banks, as many commonfolk did when the city heat became too much. Lawrie would leap like a dog into the river, stark naked and laughing, while Ben patiently held Eda aloft as she learned to swim. Those days slowly dwindled along with their childhood, but Eda remembered: the hazy, sun-drenched light; the prickly grass under bare feet. Ben’s smile.

She glanced over her shoulder at Blackbridge. It was a wall of dark spires filling the horizon. One particular building loomed over the rest with its single pointed bell tower and arched buttresses, like the spine of some mammoth beast. The Great Templehouse. Behind it was Fell Keep, bastion of the Blades.

Somewhere in the dungeons beneath, her brothers waited to be put to death.

When last they’d properly spoken, they’d argued. Eda declared that she couldn’t wait to leave. Then the Blades arrived, and everything became a living nightmare. Was it really only the night before?

She looked away.

Kit took them through villages and farmsteads and orchards. He left the traveler’s road and cut toward the river itself, coming to an easy trot along its bank. He stopped in the shadow of a huge oak tree, sides swelling and deflating rapidly against her legs. He turned his head to glare at her.