Dorian’s hand was already reaching out for me. The scouts were galloping now, moving as a unit down the street like a flock of birds.
They knew. They saw us.
I grabbed Dorian’s hand, and he leveraged me up onto the horse’s back behind him.
He started the horse into a circling trot as the gate rose, rose, far too slow. Yells sounded; someone was ordering the gate shut. Probably the scouts’ regiment commander himself sat atop one of those horses.
Before us, the gate’s teeth had nearly risen high enough.
“Hold on,” Dorian said. “We’re going to move, Eury.”
“We can’t outrun them. We’re two on the same horse?—”
“Justhold on.”
Now I understood. I pressed my hands all the way around his waist and clasped them tight. My cheek came flush against his back.
Dorian’s heels jerked out and drove into the horse’s sides. It let out a cry, leapt forward, and Dorian ducked. Finn and Rowe stood to the side, and only when we were under the gate and past them did I realize the two guard I’d once known hadn’t obeyed the scouts’ orders.
Rowe could have reversed the wheel, lowered the gate. He didn’t.
One thing you could say for those of us who lived in the Dip: no matter who it was, we were loyal to each other. We were the poorest of a poor district. When you had so little, you made yourself rich in what you could.
We’d been rich in each other.
Carys knew. She’d grown up here, found her way into those sewers. She’d probably seen the inner district herself, seen the ease and wealth. She’d known both sides, felt the kinship and the resentment. Maybe that was why she’d only been partially able to keep her promise to Caustrix.
We passed through the gate and onto the long stretch of plains beyond the wall. The horse moved into a gallop, and I couldn’t help it—I had to look back.
The wall. My wall. My first god. The high place I’d spent my whole childhood imagining the world from atop or behind.
Now I was on the other side of it, looking back in daylight.
Behemoth. Absolutely behemoth.
We rode only half a span before the horses’ hooves thundered over the barren ground. A horn sounded—the scouts’ call. The same bellow they offered up every time they left or approached the outer wall.
A horse was a precious commodity in our kingdom, and they were riding only one to a seat. They would catch us before we reached the tree line.
Every time I glanced back, they rode closer. The first time I could make out bobbing shapes, then I could perceive the riders’ faces, then their horses’ panting reached my ears without turning my head.
“They’ll catch us.” My voice was weak in the wind.
“They won’t.”
“Dorian—”
That was when I felt it. The magic.
I had never touched another fae while magic flowed through them. Had never experienced the sensation of it entering their body—didn’t even know you could feel that.
You absolutely could.
My fingers tingled, then my arms,my head, my torso, legs and toes. Feralis, nature magic. Air magic. It washed over me like a current, so sudden and powerful I gasped.
My cloak no longer blew back. It began to press the other way, the hood flipping up over my head. The black horse’s tail that had streamed behind us now pressed forward, slapping against my leg.
A tailwind. One so powerful, we weren’t pushing but pushed.