Finally, Andreus braved a look at the leg cut by the Xhelozi’s claws.
Blood. He leaned on his sword to help him balance as blackness swirled in his eyes and the world went in and out of focus. Three deep gashes running from just below his knee to halfway down his calf oozed and bubbled with blood that spilled onto the white of the snow.
A rusty cry came from the left. Then one from behind.
Close. They were close. And he was surrounded.
He ripped off the bottom of his tunic and tied the swath of fabric tight around the wound.
Another cry. This one somewhere to his right. As if they were hunting him in a pack.
He clenched his jaw as he limped away from the dead Xhelozi and whistled for Cole. But there was no time. Could he hide from them? Maybe. There were stories travelers told of surviving the Xhelozi by burying themselves in the snow. It supposedly concealed their scent and the heat of their bodies. But Andreus wasn’t sure he believed those tales, and even if he did, the bandage on his leg would only help for so long. He had to get back to Garden City.
Leaning on his sword, Andreus licked his lips and whistled again. He sagged with relief as he heard a whinny from somewhere over the hill. It took him four tries to pull himself onto the stallion. Twice the Xhelozi calls made the horse buck, but he held tight to the reins and eventually pulled himself on as a tall shadow appeared in the trees to his left.
“Go,” he said, leaning over the horse’s neck. Cole bolted forward like an arrow out of a bow. There was a snarl behind him. Then another, followed by a grinding metallic shriek. The Xhelozi were giving chase.
Andreus looked around the white landscape, trying to get his bearings. The castle was to the northwest. The fastest route was the foothills and meadows he had come through the first time, but those were mostly out in the open with no place for him to take cover. The forest was straight ahead. The Xhelozi might give up the chase in there.
Blood trickled down Andreus’s leg as he headed for the tree line.
Cole dodged over hills and around massive trunks, never breaking stride. Andreus glanced behind him at the shadows that were darting in between the trees. From the left. The right. The Xhelozi smelled his blood. They weren’t giving up and Cole wouldn’t be able to keep up this pace for much longer.
Andreus angled the horse toward the high riverbed that had yet to freeze over. There was a path—not easily seen and fairly steep—behind some rocks not far from here. He and Carys used to scare their nurse by hiding there safe from sight. Maybe the same trick would work now.
Cole plunged into the icy water and splashed across the wide riverbed. Andreus looked over his shoulder. He could hear them calling, but they were still deep in the trees.
He urged Cole up the embankment and then around the rock formation he remembered from his childhood. The horse picked its way up slowly. Too slowly. Andreus was certain they were going to be found and in the tight path, caught between stone and dirt, there would be no escape.
Finally, the horse crested the incline. Andreus bit back a shout of victory, nudged the horse forward, and heard a soft nicker.
Turning, he spotted Carys’s brown mare tied to a low, scraggly bush. The horse shook snow off its head and Andreus looked for his sister. If her horse was here, she had to be as well.
Footprints. He could follow them and pass judgment here for what she had taken from him. The Council might speculate, but no one would know that he was the one who struck her down. It would all be over then. The Trials. The betrayal. The pain of knowing all these years she’d been biding her time until she could betray him.
“Carys?” he said quietly. “Are you there?”
A screech answered him and it was close. Just over the rocks. Then another.
He didn’t have time to track his sister. He’d let the Xhelozi do it for him.
Andreus brought his sword down on the rope tethering Carys’s horse, grabbed the mare’s reins, and urged Cole forward.
Both horses shot through the night.
There was quiet.
Then the night was split open by a soul-breaking scream.
Carys.
The scream of agony raked through the night again. The wind gusted. Snow swirled. Andreus felt the pull to reverse course. To save his sister.
He turned his back instead.
The screams rang in his ears—louder until they were drowned out by the cheers as he made it through the Garden City gates.
The gongs sounded, welcoming him home.
His head rested against Cole’s neck; he cared little what the people watching him thought. He desperately held on while the horse limped down the icy streets. The shouting and cheers grew louder as more people came out of their houses. He saw a pall come over them as they noticed the second horse walking beside his—and his leg that left a trail of blood as he went.
People called his name as he reached the main square and the base of the castle’s steps. He held tight to the pommel of his horse as he pulled his injured leg over the saddle and slid off. His legs buckled. He clenched his teeth and refused to go down to the ground. Instead, he hung on to the saddle to keep himself upright. He was King. He would not be seen on his knees. Not after all he had done.
Lord Errik shoved his way around the Elders. “Where is Princess Carys?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Andreus rasped. “The Xhelozi were chasing me and I found her horse as I was fighting my way back to the castle. I couldn’t see her anywhere.”
Lord Errik grabbed Carys’s horse, leaped onto it, and wheeled to gallop down the street before Andreus had finished speaking.
Andreus scoffed. If the Xhelozi left anything for Lord Errik to find, he would find it too late.
The snow stopped falling as Andreus fumbled with cold, blood-stained fingers to pull the crown from his belt. Finally, he presented it to Elder Cestrum.
“The Prince needs a healer,” the Chief Elder yelled as he took the crown from Andreus’s hands. “Captain Monteros, have your men get a stretcher to bring him to the castle.”
The guards arrived. Carefully, they helped him onto the stretcher. As they ascended the steps to the castle, Andreus kept his eyes on the scoring board and watched as a yellow peg was added to the board.
He had won.
He was the King of Eden.
Madame Jillian was at the top of the steps when he arrived. She ordered him carried to his rooms so she could treat the leg, which had gone numb. Then it burned as she drained the wound. She gave him what she could for the pain and sent someone to the Queen’s rooms for Tears of Midnight to dull the rest.
Andreus laughed. It wasn’t funny, but he couldn’t stop laughing even when the healer wrapped the wound and warned him the leg might never be the same again.
Then the gongs sounded and his laughter stopped.
Carys was back.
That couldn’t be. He had heard her cry out. The Xhelozi. She couldn’t have survived.