Page 127 of Ashen Torment

I pull away. “Go back yourself! I am not coming with you.”

I move to resume the gallop, but his hand catches my arm. A flash of lightning rips through the sky, thunder follows it, deafening.

The horses bolt, hooves striking the slippery ground. The world shifts beneath me and, before I can react, the thud arrives sharp: wet mud envelops my hands, my knees, and my back. He falls beside me, gasping for breath, eyes wide.

He gets up quickly, his hands soiled with mud.

“Are you alright?”

“And the horses?” I ask, my throat dry, my gaze darting through the wet trees.

He turns his head. “They must have been spooked... I told you to turn back! Why did you flee in such a manner?”

I brush the wet hair from my face, rain trickling down my neck.

“No one ordered you to follow me! If I left, it was because I did not desire your company!”

I begin to walk, the mud biting at my boots.

He follows me.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Go back!” I snarl, hands clutching the sodden edges of my cloak.

“And how the hell am I supposed to do that?” he explodes, his tone vibrating with irritation.

I wheel around, pointing a finger stained with earth at his chest.

“If you hadn’t followed me, you’d be back at the manor by now!”

He thins his lips.

“If you hadn’t fled, I wouldn’t have moved!”

“If you hadn’t irritated me!” I scream, my heart pounding furiously, hands trembling. “Nothing would have happened!”

Another roll of thunder shakes the trees, the rain beats down harder. Suddenly, he grabs my wrist, turning me decisively.

“Come with me.”

“Let me go!” I mutter, wrenching my arm from his grip.

“There will be a shack or something of the sort,” he says, his voice lower, filled with an authority that brooks no argument.

“We are in the middle of the woods!”

He turns toward me. “And what do you intend to do, then?”

Stay as far away from you as possible.

I push on through the trees without deigning to give him another word.

He says nothing more, but I hear him breathing behind me, complaining in a low voice in Russian, every one of his godforsaken sounds is a prick against my patience.

I walk without turning back, my shoes slipping in the mud, until I catch a glimpse of something among the trees. A wooden shack, worn and crooked. He overtakes me with a decisive stride and approaches a broken window. I stay back, observing his profile illuminated by the lightning: hands on hips, eyebrow arched, eyes scanning the interior with that irritating calm that makes me shudder.

Then, a sharp kick to the door and the wood staggers.