I look back at the guard, motioning for him to hold back while Rissa and I stop just inside the first row of hedges. “I know Polly expressed some…anger at you for getting her out of Ranhold,” I begin carefully. “But I think deep down, she knows you saved her life. Whether she wants to admit it right now or not, she was probably going to die on dew.”
“And she better not ever try anything like that again,” Rissa snaps as she glares at the leaves of the shrub like they’re personally offending her. “Because she will get herself killed next time, and I’m not going to swoop in and save her. I’m not going to watch her go through weeks of withdrawals.”
I wince, just imagining how that must’ve been. I have no idea what a body would experience after being cut off from dew, but based on Polly’s haggard appearance and the fact she had to go through that while traveling with the army through a frozen wasteland, the experience probably wasn’t good. I can imagine what Rissa had to endure to get her through it all.
Better her than me.
“Polly will come around,” I say gently, reaching down to take Rissa’s hand. She startles for a second, and I fully expect her to pull away. Yet to my astonishment, she actually squeezes my hand.
She lets go almost immediately, but still.
When she sees the smile creep up my face, she scowls at me. “No.”
“No, what?” I ask, still grinning.
“I know you’re thinking we’re great friends now. It was a squeeze of comfort, nothing more.”
“I don’t know,” I say with a breezy shrug. “It felt like a friendship squeeze.”
She huffs and starts walking away. “Shouldn’t you be off with your king, doing something romantic?”
“I’m not feeling very romantic at the moment,” I confess. “Besides, he’s back down at the army base again.”
“They do like to spend all their time there, don’t they?” she replies, looking put out. “Captain Oaf is always down there.”
I quirk an eyebrow just as we reach the fountain and bench where I was practicing my gold the other day. “And that…bothers you? That Osrik is at the base a lot?” I try to ask as nonchalantly as possible, but I think I fail miserably, because she stiffens up.
“Why would it bother me?” she asks defensively, arms crossed in front of her as she stands before the fountain. “He’s a lout and a ruffian. An army base is the perfect place for him.”
“Mm-hmm.”
She swings her head in my direction, narrowing her eyes and opening her mouth to deliver some retort.
Yet whatever she was about to say gets cut off suddenly when we both hear a noise behind us. I turn just in time to see my guard suddenly fall to his knees. I rush over, thinking he’s choking or passed out, but then I see the second figure behind him. The one holding the knife.
Eyes wide, I watch the guard fall flat on his face with a gurgling noise that twists my stomach. Fear pounds in my veins, and then I hear, “Auren, watch—”
I whirl around at Rissa’s warning call, and I freeze in place. There’s a man I don’t recognize holding one hand over Rissa’s mouth and the other pointing a dagger right at her heart. Her blue eyes are wide and terrified, the color drained from her face.
Just as I lurch toward her, something smacks into my temple. Not enough to make me pass out, but enough to send a shock of pain and dizziness through me, throwing me off as I stumble back.
I call upon my gold, but since it’s night, all I have at my disposal is my bracelet. It melts against my wrist, dripping down my hand to collect in my palm. It’s a tiny amount, too tiny, but it’s all I have. If I can get it to the man who just hit me, to sharpen it like a needle and stab him through the eye, then I could—
A putrid smelling cloth is suddenly slammed over my nose and mouth. I sputter and cough, inhaling something sharp and bitter and consuming. It coats my tongue, sticks to my throat, burns my eyes, flares in my chest.
No, no, no!
Panic is a scream in my head, blaring through my ears, pounding through my veins. But with the blow to the head and this dizzying drug trapped against my face, I immediately slump, unable to hold my weight, unable to do anything.
I can’t move my legs. Can’t control my arms. My fisted hand tries and fails to get the gold to help. It slows and clogs against my palm like mud in a bog, too thick and gluey to move.
Someone catches me before I collapse, and it’s all I can do to hold up my head. It’s all I can do to keep my eyes open. It’s like looking through a vortex, everything moving, everything violent and blurred. The cloth is just thin enough to let me breathe in and out, but it’s forced and suffocating, making my heart race.