But maybe . . . maybe it would be okay to not make it out. Maybe it was what I deserved for the deaths of my Family, an afterlife spent wandering the dead plains as a ghost. . . .
No. If the ghosts took me, then no one would make the Da Vias pay for what they’d done.
Butters shook his head, the metal buckles on his bridle tinkling quietly. I held my breath as the closer ghost paused, then turned toward me.
Oh gods . . .
The ghost shrieked—a guttural screech that echoed across the field. It rushed my way, its white, glowing form spread out behind it like morning mist.
I kicked Butters. He jumped into a canter.
Ghosts were dead. They never tired; they would keep coming until the sun rose or I could find safety.
The angry ghost caught up to me. My voice evaporated in my throat and my fingers clutched the reins until pain rushed through my fingers. I stared at the ghost as it kept pace with us, the rage on its face, the darkness in its mouth as it howled at me. It had been human, once. A woman. A faint outline glowed where her throat had been slashed. Someone had taken her life, but not someone in my Family. We marked our kills to avoid creating angry ghosts. But ghosts didn’t follow logic, or mercy. They followed their rage until it led them to a person.
The ghost reached for me. I jerked Butters away, my shoulder stretching with fresh, hot pain. Her fingers passed through the saddle. She shrieked louder, her screams reverberating in my skull.
More ghosts appeared; she’d called them in her rage. They raced to us and Butters flattened his ears, snorting, his eyes wide and white. Every hoofbeat pounded through my shoulder until my body was awash with agony.
Their screeches deafened me. They seeped into my body until I clenched my eyes shut and screamed at them, trying anything to get them to stop their terrible cries.
I leaned over Butters and forced him faster. He broke into a wild gallop. My thighs strained, and it was all I could do to stay on, one armed.
The ghosts fell behind, and for a moment it seemed we would outrun them all, but they rallied and raced after us.
Butters’s breaths beat beneath me, matching the rhythm of my own heart. A rock flew out of the night and struck Butters on the hind end. A ghost had thrown it.
Butters bucked, squealing, and I slipped across the saddle, losing the reins completely. Only my feet in the stirrups kept me from spilling off. I lunged for the pommel and grasped it tightly, gasping as spots flashed before my eyes.
With no pressure on the reins to slow his headlong gallop, Butters flew across the plains. His blond mane whipped painfully against my face as I crouched over his neck and struggled to keep my grip on the pommel. At this speed, falling off could be a death sentence, even without the arrow in my body. If I didn’t crack my skull or snap my neck, I was loaded with sharp objects, any of which could lodge fatally in my flesh.
I used my left hand, still bound across my torso, to dig through a pouch on my waist for a Saldana Family coin. I clutched it tightly in my palm and prayed to Safraella.
A ghost appeared beside us. Its spectral hands reached for me. I twisted, but its fingers slipped into the flesh of my thigh.
Icy pain cracked through my body, radiating from where the ghost touched me. I shouted as the cold spread through my leg. The ghost pulled its hands away, but with it came a transparent image of my limb, the ghost’s fingers wrapped tightly around it as it tried to tug me from my own body.
“No!” I yelled. I couldn’t fail my Family. “No!”
The coin in my hand grew warm. Then hot. It burned, erasing all other pains. I struggled to open my hand, to be rid of the coin, but my fingers were paralyzed.
I screamed, leaning over Butters, clutching my burning hand to my chest. I turned my face away as the ghost slowly pulled my soul from my body.
The pain in my hand stopped, like a quick breath. An explosion of light erupted from my skin, catapulting the ghost away.
Salvation appeared before me: the monastery, nearly hidden amid a grove of old oak trees.
I put my burned hand out of mind and focused on the reins bouncing on Butters’s neck. I counted to three, then lunged for them, the leather slapping into my palm. I hauled back, trying to slow Butters, to show him I was in charge again. He tossed his head, his mouth and eyes wide, but his ears flicked backward and he slowed.
I turned him toward the monastery as a small group of ghosts passed us by on the right and flowed around the trees.
A thunderous crack split the night and a tree jerked, showering the field with new leaves as the ghosts fought to knock it down. The tree creaked and toppled over, right in our path.
We couldn’t stop—we were going too fast.
I leaned forward over Butters’s neck again, loosening the reins until he reached the downed tree. He bunched his legs and we flew over the tree trunk, the ghosts behind shrieking in renewed anger and rage.
We raced through the gates of the monastery, free of the mob of angry ghosts.
ten