Able to strike and reset within a tenth of a second.
And very, very easy to anger.
Suddenly the princess was in motion, lunging for the stick and its remaining flame. She scooped it up in her right hand and tossed it at the snake just as it struck at the Eritrian. At the same time, the girl yanked him hard and pulled him toward her. He tumbled into her and in an instant they were both flat on the ground, him pinning her, as the flaming snake hissed back.
The asp’s brethren scattered—right toward where Luca and the tall boy still exchanged blows.
“Luca!” Amarande yelled as he ducked from a long swing of the tall boy’s fist. She ran toward both Luca and the fire. “Move, move, fire incoming!”
The Myrcellian boy just grunted, his attention squarely on Luca.
But Luca had his wits about him, and just like during those faux battles back home in their little meadow, he knew everything Amarande was thinking before she did it.
When the tall boy’s next automatic punch sailed toward Luca’s face, instead of ducking, Luca grabbed his opponent’s fist in both hands and used it to swing them both out of the way. As they stumbled in the opposite direction of where the girl and the blond boy were trying to untangle themselves, Amarande scraped the fat edge of her sword through the fire, scooping up embers and ashes on the thick Basilican steel. In one broad heave, the flaming kindling sprayed the advancing asps with a crackle and hiss.
The snakes shuddered and retreated, scales smoking.
And, suddenly, Amarande and Luca’s window of escape was open.
Luca extricated himself from the Myrcellian and grabbed Amarande’s outstretched hand. She yanked him in the direction they needed to go, sword out. As they ran to the edge of the camp, she dropped his hand and lifted a saddlebag from the ground—the girl’s, her journal spilling to the dirt with a thump. Luca seemed to startle at the sudden loss of her fingers in his until he realized why she’d done it and dipped down to grab another saddlebag, just a few feet away.
Then Luca fell in behind Amarande as she raced them through the forest, freedom stretching before them, his captivity at their backs.
CHAPTER
26
THIS was taking too long. Far too long.
Prince Renard fell asleep yet again to that thought, curled into himself on his bedroll, a million stars twinkling overhead and the wind howling all around. And he woke to the thought, too, a sick feeling wedged deep in his stomach, strong enough that he felt it even before the thirst that had a stranglehold on his throat. The arid landscape and hard travel were catching up to him.
He blinked awake and pushed onto his elbows. The sun was up, as was everyone else in his party, toiling around a breakfast fire, water for coffee merrily boiling. And suddenly he was furiously, inexplicably, frustrated.
“This is all wrong,” Renard grumbled, his voice cracking. He needed water. The prince got to his feet and yanked a mug out of the hand of the nearest guard, took a swallow, and then spat it down the front of his breeches.
“Tremaine! Madiran? This early? Here?” The bloodred Pyrenee wine would leave an impossible stain on the pearly white fabric. The prince rubbed uselessly at his pants.
“Your Highness, I suffer from headaches; it helps—”
Renard knocked the guard upside the head with the mug. “You deserve more than a headache for thinking this conduct proper.” The prince lobbed the mug straight to the red dirt between them, the pottery shattering as wine sprayed their ankles. “Considering the time of day and the seriousness of this quest, I expect water, coffee, or blood to wet your tongue and nothing else.”
“Easy there, Your Highness,” Taillefer chided, standing from his place by the fire and offering Renard his own drink. “Coffee?”
“No,” Renard spat. “Water.”
Bemused eyes never leaving Renard’s face, the younger prince knelt down and snatched a waterskin from beside already-packed bags. He tossed it to Renard, who took a healthy swig before wasting a conservative amount on the stain streaking his lap. This action did nothing but spread it, now pink and reaching at the edges. Renard drained the rest of the water and tossed the skin back to Taillefer, whose face was smugly recording the worsening splotch.
“Pack it up!” Renard barked, throat moistened and voice recovered. “There’s no time for breakfast—we need to keep going. The princess awaits. Kill the fire; ready the horses. Let’s move!”
His men screeched to a halt in their various movements—drinking coffee, slicing sausage, even midstream with a chin thrown over a shoulder to receive orders.
And that’s when Taillefer began to laugh. “That’s rich from the last man to wake.”
Renard’s eyes narrowed and his voice dropped into a fierce whisper. He grabbed his brother’s wrist, coffee splattering onto the rusted dirt between them. “I will not have you openly question me on this trip. I am your leader. Treat me like it.”
Taillefer’s quirked lips hardened into a line, and a single brow arched as he wrenched his arm away, purposefully spilling the rest of the coffee down Renard’s pant leg and onto his newly scratched boots. “Then act like it.”
The crown prince rolled his eyes and swatted at his clothing as the coffee soaked in with the wine. Stained in a way that made it appear he’d wet his pants with something worse than urine. So regal.
“Renard, start the morning over, man,” Taillefer said, moving in close—not to intimidate but to implore. “We’re going to find her much faster if you don’t piss off your crew. Plus, that Serville man will report your behavior to the castle whether we find her or not—you don’t want him to describe you as a brat who’s lazy enough to sleep in and undisciplined enough to rant without cause.”
“I have cause,” Renard snapped. “You should’ve woken me, Tai. We should be on our way. We’re losing time. She’s been gone two days now. And lest you forget, Mother is using every moment we’re absent to steal our rightful throne. We can’t wait.”
“No, but we need to come up with a better plan, because no matter if we’re moving or sleeping, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a princess-shaped needle in this haystack.” Taillefer made it a point then to look around them. They’d slept at the base of a perfectly vertical flattop, jutting up from the red earth, reaching straight for the moon. Around them, the only movement was the ever-drifting sands in the current of wind. Taillefer met Renard’s eyes—blue on blue, the cheeks beneath them shaded a deep pink above the line of the cowl he’d worn during yesterday’s travels. “We need a new plan.”
Around them, the men were in motion—his four men plus the babysitter, Serville, picking up the camp. Renard tried to ignore the fact that all bags but his appeared to be packed and ready, the horses saddled and fed. The pot over the fire was for a second round of coffee—most men were already finished with their breakfast. He bristled at the thought that they’d let him sleep—that he’d let himself sleep.
He wouldn’t beat his mother at her own game while dead to the world.
Renard closed his eyes. Yes, a plan. It had been Taillefer’s idea to head into the Torrent in the first place. It was the most logical place, of course. The stableboy had been born there, and though it was entirely open spaces, it was the most famous place in the Sand and Sky for anyone to hide.