Assassin's Heart (Assassin's Heart, #1)(22)

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


AT THE SOUND OF BUTTERS’S HOOVES CLATTERING ON the stone entryway, the priests of Safraella rushed outside carrying lanterns.

The angry ghosts milled around the fence surrounding the monastery, held back by the priests’ faith and the holy ground, blessed by Safraella.

The priests reached my side, and I slid off Butters into their capable hands.

“Sister, how do you come to be here so late at night?” The speaker was a man with dark skin, and hair clipped close to his scalp. He had brown, kind eyes with laugh lines around the edges.

“You mean so early, Brother,” another one said. To the east, the sun crested the horizon and the wailing ghosts faded away in the soft light of morning.

My legs wobbled, but the priest helped me to stand. “I fled across the dead plains.”

He called for another priest to tend to Butters, whose chest heaved as he tried to regain his breath.

“You have been arrow shot!” he exclaimed.

I laughed. Surely he knew I was aware.

“Come, Sister.” He lent me his shoulder. “We will tend you inside. I am Brother Faraday. When you are treated, you should tell me your tale, for it must be full of adventure and daring.”

I glanced at him and his eyes sparkled. He was younger than I’d first guessed. Maybe only a few years older than me. “I know you.”

His left eyebrow arched upward.

“I saw your request to become the Saldana Family priest.”

“Ah!”

Inside the stone walls, candlelight filled the halls with a soft yellow light. Faraday led me past a great room with a stone altar at the far end and into a small chamber with only a table and chair.

A few priests hovered in the doorway, peering past one another at me.

Someone outside huffed, and the men parted to allow a priest with a bucket of hot water and towels draped over his arm to enter. Two others followed.

One of the priests, who introduced himself as Brother Sebastien, cut my cloak away from my body, carefully removing it so it wouldn’t catch on the arrow shaft protruding from my shoulder.

He examined the wound. “There’s no easy way to do this. We’ll have to force the arrowhead the rest of the way through your flesh. Then we’ll be better able to remove the shaft.”