Exile by Anne Osterlund

Author:Anne Osterlund
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-30T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

INTENTIONS

ROBERT HARNESSED HIS FEAR AND DRAGGED HER away from the Lion’s Den. She fought him. Of course she fought him. She jabbed him with her heels and battered his shins. She twisted in the circle of his arms and hammered his fingers with her fists. She dug her nails into his flesh and thwacked him straight in the eye with her elbow. Thank Tyralt she had never been trained with a sword, or she would have stripped him of his weapon and won.

Though what she would have won filled him with such dread it gave him the strength to carry her across the blasted marketplace, where every set of eyes hinged upon her. Staring. But there was no time to worry about the undesired attention. The Lion had hirelings. Minions.

Robert hauled her through the log barricade.

“Let me go!” she demanded.

“To the horses,” he replied with gritted teeth.

She shoved on his arms. “Not without the boy.”

“If I have to,” Robert said, “I’ll pack you all the way back to the Fortress.”

“You haven’t the strength.”

He seriously doubted he could drag her another hundred feet. “Test me,” he challenged, then added, “Listen, Aurelia, we’ll talk about the boy, after we get to the horses.”

She wrenched her torso to the side, to no avail. “All right,” she snapped.

He let go. To argue further would undercut the agreement.

She stormed through the wagons, her pace so fast he had to struggle to keep up after the exertion of fighting her, but he was grateful for the speed. She cut a direct line up the hill, and his mind held the same direct route. Get out. Get out. Get out. Before the Lion figures out who we are.

Aurelia crested the basin, and Robert hurried after her into the trees.

Both horses were still there. “Get on Horizon,” he ordered her. The stallion would move faster, even with two riders, than the roan. And if Robert needed to, he could cut the mare free.

“We’re going back for that child!” She planted her feet stubbornly.

Robert unhitched the horses and tied the roan’s lead to Horizon’s saddle horn. “Aurelia, the palace guards knew if we were alive, we would have to go through that law office. Through that man. Do you think he can’t be bought for the life of a crown princess?”

She mounted, and he swung up behind her.

“Giddyap,” he called, and they launched into motion. I shouldn’t have taken her in there, he chastised himself. But something, something deep inside him, had wanted her to understand what was happening in that law office, and the impact it had over all the people struggling to make their way north.

“Who was the other man?” she asked, her back stiff.

Robert knew there might be a danger in talking, if someone came after them and overheard their voices. But there was a far greater danger in her choosing to return to the city. They had to circle the entire basin, and he had to convince her, somehow, that she could not save that child.

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