The Matriarch by Annabelle McInnes

Author:Annabelle McInnes [McInnes, Annabelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780648947301
Publisher: AKM Publishing Pty Ltd

19

Always take the advantage.”

Marta, Matriarch of the Horde, Sixth-generation

She flipped and rolled down the cart’s pitted floor. Yolanda’s gripped nothing but dust and air. She tumbled. Her muscles bruised and her skin split when she bashed into the wooden seats and rolled over the support bars. But the pain from the descent was nothing compared to the sting from the knives embedded in her heart. There was a scream in her throat. It was a cry not born in terror, but in bitterness. They would die here. Their bodies would smash upon the rocks below, lost and forgotten, and her women would suffer a death more terrible than she could ever imagine. If it weren’t through war, it would be through famine. They couldn’t hold their borders forever, and their resources were at an end because of a conspiracy that had been going on for generations.

If everything he said was true, the Horde could only survive if she succeeded.

When she hit the wall of the cart and rolled, she vowed she would not allow herself to die. Her legs kicked out and her arms thrashed. She stretched her fingers, until, finally, her hand gripped something more than the wind.

Fabric. A thick, fibrous material. The corner of her eye caught the colour red. The Delasovian’s cloak was in her hand! She spun and whirled, but even as she did so, she wrapped the material up and around her fist. When the inevitable came, she only hoped the man held something more solid than cotton.

Yolanda summersaulted over the lip of the open window and into oblivion.

Her arm jerked and she cried out as her elbow joint stretched and her shoulder wrenched in its socket. The cloak pulled taut above her. Somewhere beyond the edge of the dust, the Delasovian King grunted and attempted to swear through a restricted throat.

She dangled in the air, held only by his ragged cloak.

Her women were out there. Cassandra was out there. They were counting on her. They needed her to succeed.

The cart groaned, swinging on a single hinge, creaking with every sway in the howling wind. Her grip on his cloak tightened, the fabric quivering with the tension. She rocked until she could grip the knot in her fist with both hands. She heard a tear, but she ignored it. “Delasovian, I’d like to come up now.”

High above, there was a choked chuckle. “I bet you would. Turn around. Try and grab my boot.”

She jerked her body, her legs pinwheeling until she was able to twist herself in the air. She looked up. Beyond the edge of the slither of red, a mud-crusted boot was just out of reach. She swore. “Can you lower your foot any farther? I can’t reach it.”

“Not if you want me to stay in the cart,” he replied, his voice strangled and muffled. “Try and climb up the cape.”

If Yolanda could end the War of Two Nations, she could climb a crimson river made of fabric towards a mountain made of man.

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