The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(40)

She had appeared in a gilded litter back then, rather than on a war elk. There had been two princesses: she’d worn scarlet, while her sister was swathed in a blue paler and thinner than the sky. Their hair was decorated with a bricolage of jeweled pins and golden combs and little white star-shaped flowers so fresh and crisp Nok thought only magic could keep them alive in the heat.

She had drawn his eye somehow. While her younger sister had fidgeted nervously, thin fingers of sweat creeping down her brow, the elder girl sat remarkably still, like a satisfied, imperious cat. Every muscle trained by perfect will.

Then, as though feeling his gaze—though how could she? Everyone there must have been looking at her—she had turned and met Nok’s eyes. He had opened his mouth, then shut it when he realized there was nothing to be said.

A heartbeat and it was over; the princess had looked away.

She did not look away now.

His ears pricked. All at once, his senses—the wolf’s senses?—flared back to life. He smelled saliva, hot blood, animal musk, and acrid sweat. He heard a murder of crows explode from the treetops half a league away. And beneath it, he heard barking.

“What is it?” the princess asked him, seeing the change in his face.

“Didn’t you hear it?” But of course she couldn’t. He shouldn’t even be able to.

This cannot be.

“Didn’t I hear what?” she demanded.

Recognition dawned on her face as the sound reached her ears.

“Hounds,” Nok said needlessly. He looked around for some mark of the landscape that might point him homeward, but all he saw was dense wood and shadow. He had never been this far into the forest before, he realized, fear quickening to panic.

“Get on,” the princess said abruptly, closing the distance between them with her elk. Nok jumped back. “Get on,” she repeated impatiently. Nok stared stupidly at her. She frowned.

“You’re lost, aren’t you? I can tell you are. They’re hunting me, but they’ll rip you apart just as soon. Either that or my cousin will capture and torture you until you tell them where I’ve gone.”

The idea of being killed was bad enough, but to be killed for aiding her . . .

“I don’t know anything about you,” he snapped.

“Maybe not,” she agreed. “But they won’t know that. And I doubt they’ll stop to ask. At the very least, they’ll arrest you for trespassing in the forest during a royal hunt.”

She was correct, of course. With an internal growl of fury, he threw himself upon the elk’s back. The animal stamped at his touch, trying to shrug him off.

“Don’t you know how to mount an elk properly?” the princess demanded, looking far more irritated than someone in her position had time to be. “You sit like you’re used to riding donkeys.”

“A mule, actually,” he shot back.

Would that Bo were here now, he thought. The fat, surly creature would never be able to outrun imperial-trained hounds, but he might have bitten a few, as well as the princess, before they went down.

“Hold on,” she told him.

Where? he thought, sweeping his gaze down her back and reaching for her waist instinctively. Only—that didn’t seem appropriate. A flush flowered up his neck and he quickly moved his hands back, finally settling them on her shoulders.

She turned her head, incredulous. “Oh, so you want to fall off?”

He gritted his teeth and wrapped his arms around her waist. The girl’s belly muscles tensed slightly under his touch, but she seemed otherwise unimpressed by the situation. He supposed this was hardly the time for good manners.

“Ya!” the princess yelled, digging her heels into the elk. The creature lunged forward into a full gallop.

Nok’s stomach dropped, and for a moment he thought he might fall off from fear alone.

“Hold on tighter!” the princess shouted. It took a moment for his fear-blank mind to understand she was speaking to him. He did as he was told.

They launched into the dark of the wood.





CHAPTER 13


Hunter

Not fast enough.

“Ya! Ya!” Lu bellowed, urging Yaksun on with her heels. The forest became a green smear around them, but still the hounds gained.

She heard the Ashina boy gasp in her ear as the elk leaped over a fallen log. A moment later she thought she heard him do it again, but—no. This time it was the hiss of a crossbow bolt flying past, a finger’s width from her head. Behind her came the yelling of men and the crash of horses through the brush.

“They’re here!” the boy cried, his fingers digging into her waist.

Shin Yuri’s voice rang in her ears. I know you think you’re invincible, but you can’t fight them all on your own.

“Time to find out, Shin,” she muttered, reining up hard with one hand, using the other to yank her sword loose from its sheath. The elk let out a bellow as a blur of dusky gray hounds laced between his legs, nipping and baying. He kicked one in the head, breaking its neck with an audible snap, The hound’s body sprawled across the grass. The rest backed away, bristling but newly cautious.

“What are you doing?” the Ashina boy hissed urgently in her ear. “Keep going!”

“Take the dagger from my hip,” she ordered. They would both be killed, but she could grant him the chance to go down fighting. He tensed at her back for a moment, as though he were considering fleeing, but then his hand slid down her waist and she felt the dagger slip from its sleeve.