The Girl King (The Girl King #1)(92)

The trees had become sparse and thin as the days passed—staggering pines transitioning into bent scrub trees, until those too became few and far between. As they scaled the ridge, whatever remained of the forest fell away into a jagged landscape of barren foothills.

“It’s very desolate,” Lu said.

Nasan smirked and bumped Nokhai’s shoulder with her own. “I think it’s homey, don’t you, brother?”

But Nokhai’s eyes were far away. He was chewing on his lip so hard it looked like he might draw blood.

“Are you all right?” Lu whispered, touching his arm. He started, as though he had forgotten she was there.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just . . . feels strange here.”

“Well,” she said carefully. “Lot of memories for you, probably.”

“No,” he said quickly. “I mean, yes, but it’s not that . . . it’s physical. Like . . . like, there’s something humming just below my feet. Like it’s shooting straight up into my bones.”

“I feel it, too.” Nasan was looking over her shoulder. “Happens every time we get this far north. It’s the ghost of the Pact, brother. The land, or rather, the magic in the land. We might’ve lost our cauls, but a trace of it will be in us always. Our blood remembers.”

Nok shivered. Lu saw in his eyes that he still hadn’t told his sister about his Gifting Dream—none of it.

Well. That was his business.

They fell into silence as they approached the top of the ridge, the ground now so steep that they were forced to their hands and knees. Lu thanked the heavens she’d held on to her leather hunting gloves as she searched for handholds in the rocky earth. She was panting now, her breath ragged.

Beside her, Nok seemed to grow stronger and surer the higher they climbed. At one point, she slipped in the dirt, and his hand shot out to grab hers before she had scarcely fallen at all.

She gave him a questioning look and he shrugged, looking just as surprised. “Maybe Nasan is right . . . something in the earth makes us stronger. Like it recognizes us.”

For her part, Nasan barely seemed to register the change in their surroundings. She reached the top first, to Lu’s chagrin, casting a wink back at them before peeking over the other side.

Immediately, her face changed. Gone was the glib amusement, replaced by fear. She ducked back and put a finger to her lips, then motioned them forward. Lu glanced at Nok, who shrugged, his face taut and dark with worry.

When they reached the top, Lu peered over.

There was the promised lake, placid and eerily blue as the sky. A mirrored bowl set in the center of the dry valley. And along its shore, a writhing mass of metal.

Soldiers. Hundreds of them.

In their gleaming steel-plated armor, they looked like a stream of glittering beetles amassing on a corpse. Close enough that she could nearly make out the faces beneath their helmets.

Then she noticed the tents, and the central flagpole flying the flag of the Hu Empire—and just below that, the blue banner of the Family Li. Set’s men.

“Gods,” Nok breathed beside her.

In unison, they ducked back down and turned to Nasan.

“I thought you said this gate was unguarded!” Lu hissed, just as Nok growled, “What is this, Nasan?”

“Keep it down,” the other girl snapped, but her dark eyes gleamed uncertainly. “Obviously something changed. You think I just overlooked a thousand imperials the last time I was here?”

Lu bit back a retort and instead peered over the ridge again. “The far side of the slope is more densely wooded. Do you think we could make it down that way?”

Nasan frowned. “There’s some cover down at the shore . . . but I don’t think we can make it undetected.”

Lu nodded reluctantly. “Maybe we could go one at a time. They’d be less likely to see us if—”

The blast of a horn rang out from below.

Lu knew the sound right away: a military scout. It took her a moment to realize it had come from the wrong side of the ridge—back from the direction they had come. She whipped around.

“Watch out!” Nokhai hissed, grabbing Lu’s arm.

Before she could respond, the first of the crossbow bolts whipped past her ear, where her face had been a moment earlier. She turned in the direction it had come from and saw them: five imperial scouts in blue.

“Get down!” she bellowed as the riders unleashed another round of bolts. Nasan and Nok were already scrambling back in the direction they’d come, but two of the riders broke off, forcing them back up the ridge, toward the valley. Cornered, they leaped over the side, tumbling and scrabbling for purchase.

Lu half crawled and half fell after them, her knees scraping against the hard earth. She came to a rough stop a short drop below.

“We’ve got to get back—”

But Nasan grabbed her wrist.

“What—?”

Before their eyes, Nok seemed to grow. One moment, he was scrabbling down the ridge on hands and knees, and the next there were claws springing from his fingers, thick blue-gray fur sweeping easy as a wind across his face and back.

“Nokhai!” the cry tore from her, but the wolf that had been Nokhai was hurtling away from them, impossibly fast.

Lu saw the glittering blue and chrome armor of near a dozen mounted Hana soldiers cut through the scrub trees below, their swords flashing in the eerie northern light. Then she caught a blur of gray-blue fur knifing through them, lightning quick, leaving a wake of bucking horses.