Roar (Stormheart #1)(49)

He stepped back, giving them both plenty of space. “Live up to your other name, and I will.”

She threw up her hands on a growl and stalked off into the darkness.

“I suppose that was a little closer to a roar, but it still needs work,” he said, before passing her by at a brisk jog. “Come on. We’re doing things a little differently today. We’ll see if you can keep up.”

“I will.” She just hoped she could do it without spilling the contents of her stomach in the grass. One time was enough.

She fell into pace beside him and he asked, “First, tell me which direction we’re running.”

She rolled her eyes up toward the dark sky, dotted with pinpricks of light. She saw the familiar constellation of Rezna’s Gate. That collection of stars was the closest thing they had to mark true north. There were other clusters of stars surrounding the goddess’s constellation, many of them named for types of storms.

“North,” she answered. “Was that supposed to be difficult?”

“No. But this is. Follow me. Do everything I do.”

He set off, but this time he wasn’t simply running. He picked up speed, dodging left around a boulder. She planted a foot, pivoting, and followed. He hiked up a knee and leaped on top of the boulder before jumping off the other side and setting off at a run once more. She gritted her teeth and did the same, only she had to use her hands to pull herself onto the rock, and she didn’t so much jump off the other side as roll. Her still-healing arm ached from the strain, but there was no time to think about that. He took her up hills and between trees, hurtling over an obstacle course of raised roots and fallen limbs. Her legs started to burn with each leap, but she kept as close to his heels as possible. They crawled beneath raised tree roots and rolled down a sloping hill. She scraped her knees and elbows nearly raw.

Locke disappeared into the line of trees that surrounded the river. She burst through the outer layer of branches, only to find him gone. The stream was below her, trees all around her, but no movement that she could see. She tried to contain her breathing and listen, but she could not hear the fall of his feet or the quiet huff of his breath.

The skin on the back of her neck prickled with awareness a moment before she heard his voice behind her.

“You’re running from a storm. You’ve just found these trees for shelter. What do you do?”

She ignored the anxiety of having him at her back and said, “Depends. What kind of storm?”

“Good.” The word came out so close to her neck that she felt his breath crash into her skin. “Let’s say skyfire.”

She snorted. “I would turn around and leave. Being near a body of water is a bad idea.” She made the mistake of following her own directions; that left her eye to eye with Locke, their bodies so close that her shoulder brushed his chest when she turned.

“And where would you go?” His voice was low and deep in the darkness, and he leaned closer as if she might not hear him, as if she wasn’t all too aware of every sound and movement he made.

“I would … look for shelter.”

“There is no shelter.” His eyes dropped to her mouth. She swallowed, but it went down like sand. He wasn’t interested in her that way, so she had to be imagining that glint in his eyes. Which was good because she was not interested either. He was attractive, certainly, but she was here for only one thing, and it wasn’t to put her heart in danger again.

She broke their gaze and said, “I’d look for the lowest point on the land. A valley or depression. Then make myself as small a target as I could. Crouch into a ball and touch the ground as little as possible.”

“And if the land is flat?”

She chewed at her lip. “Then as a last resort, I would come here. But stay away from the water. And I’d look for a cluster of shorter trees, since lightning is more likely to strike the taller trees. And again, make myself as small as possible.”

“Excellent.” Her stomach pitched with pleasure. “And if it were a firestorm?”

“The water.”

“Then to the water we go.” He edged past her and sprinted down the bank. “Then what?” he yelled as she followed.

“If I’m in immediate danger, beneath the water.”

“You’re currently ahead of the storm.”

Heart hammering, she plunged into the stream, water lapping at her legs. It wasn’t freezing, but it was cold enough to make her muscles tighten with stress.

“Then I run. Through the stream in case the storm catches up or the trees catch fire, and I need to dive under the surface.”

“Which direction?”

“Umm … umm…” She looked one way down the river, then the other. She spun around, reminding herself which direction she’d seen Rezna’s Gate. “Firestorms usually form over dry climates and don’t move into areas with more moisture in the air. But this stream might not be big enough to make that much of a difference.”

“Good. But remember we’re not hiding in the stream, we’re using it as a means of escape. So which direction do you run?”

Her legs began to shake in the knee-deep water. “Most rivers run toward larger bodies of water. So I’d run the same way as the river.” She pointed to where the Napatya turned around a bend and headed southeast.