“Aria,” Jack called to her when she arrived at the top. Setting her shoulders, she braced herself before looking back at him. “What do we do if you don’t come back?”
“Keep him protected, even if he dies. Also, continue to give him blood even if he dies. It may help to keep him stronger or help him rise faster if he does come back.”
“Don’t let him awaken to discover you dead!”
“That will never happen,” she replied and turned away.
CHAPTER 7
Aria
Aria bit her wrist again as she slipped through the trees. She kept her arm against her mouth before allowing it to fall to her side where drops of blood spilled onto the leaves beneath her feet. The thick canopy of the pine trees above them didn’t allow for any of the moon or stars to shine through. Whatever snow had managed to fall to the ground during the last storm had already melted as winter gradually gave way to spring.
Beside her, William and Tempest did the same with their wrists, biting into them then letting their blood trickle to the ground. Aria paused to lean against a tree. She became completely still as she listened to the distant footfalls struggling to keep up with them. Curses and grunts sounded as their trackers became entangled in the thick briars they’d traversed a quarter mile back.
She’d had to take her cloak off in order to make her way through the thorny underbrush. Her thin undershirt had been sliced to shreds by the briars, but she barely felt the chilly air against her flesh. Every part of her not focused on leading these vamps away from everyone else without being caught was focused on her connection to Braith.
Still alive. For how long? She shuddered, but it had nothing to do with the February night and everything to do with the progressing weakness she felt in their bond.
Forcing herself away from the trunk of the pine, she continued onward. They moved swiftly over another mile of forest before coming to a stop near another familiar cave system.
“How far have we gone?” Tempest asked.
“About ten miles,” William replied. “We have to go farther.”
“Yes.” Aria’s gaze searched the woods before she tipped her head back to look at the trees above her. Interspersed with the pines were some smaller oak trees. Their branches creaked and swayed in the wind. “I’m going to see how many of them are following us and make sure they stay on our trail.”
“And how do you plan to do that?” William demanded.
Aria shifted her gaze to look at her brother and gave him a sly grin. “I’ll sneak up on them and piss them off.”
“Aria—”
“We can’t keep going if they’re not coming with us. I’ll stay to the trees. They’ll never know I’m there until it’s too late.”
“We’ll come with you,” Tempest offered.
William shook his head at her when she stepped forward. “Just like I couldn’t keep up with you climbing mountains, we can’t keep up with her in the trees.”
Aria pulled her cloak from where she’d tucked it in between her quiver and her back and handed it to him. “I’ll be back.”
Adjusting her quiver and bow, she grabbed hold of the branch above her head and swung herself into the oak tree. As a human, she’d been able to move fast from tree to tree, but as a vampire, she climbed with such speed that she made it to the middle of the tree in seconds. She rubbed her chilled hands together and studied the pine tree across from her before running across the limb and leaping onto the next one.
Normally, she felt a sense of flying and being free when running through the trees. Now, she only felt a need to move as fast as she could, to get answers, to draw their pursuers onward. She didn’t think Sabine was with the group of their immediate trackers. She seemed like the type who didn’t exert herself until it became absolutely necessary. Sabine would have herself in a position to move forward with her plan to destroy Braith as soon as she received word from her followers that they’d been caught.
Aria landed on the next limb and raced across it before dashing to another limb, around the trunk, and onto the next tree. The air tore at her braid, pulling strands of hair free to whip around her face as she leapt through the trees.
She’d been a queen for almost a year and a half now, but every time Braith took her to her treehouse, she spent time running through the trees, laughing as he looked on. The memory of him smiling while he watched her caused a tug at her heart that she ignored as she continued effortlessly onward.