the length of my arm wouldn’t be enough to name all the people who’d benefit from Braymon’s death. It’s the same list of people who want you dead. I’m surprised there aren’t more pursuing us.”
A bramble caught Khirro’s tunic—one more thing trying to keep him from his goal. It made sense others would harbor ambition for the throne, but Therrador? Braymon became king not long after Khirro’s birth and always seemed a good and fair ruler, protecting and providing for the people of his kingdom. Wasn’t that what mattered?
Around him, the others continued speaking of political plots, but he paid little attention. The conversation ended quickly and they fell back into silence, Shyn taking point. Elyea walked beside Khirro, holding his arm. She smiled and he tried to do the same, but it felt false on his lips. Ghaul made a sarcastic-toned comment from behind, but Khirro didn’t hear what he said and didn’t ask him to repeat it.
A brisk wind rose among the tree tops, rustling branches, spilling loose needles and cones down through the limbs. It was the first sound they’d heard from the forest in days, a sound some might identify with peacefulness, but peace never made its way here. Instead, it was ominous, eerie—as though the trees whispered to each other in a language only they understood.
What do they say? Who are they talking to?
Khirro thought it safer if he never found out.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The lake itself looked as it had in the other dreams. He sat in the same place, on the same rock, yet something seemed different. He surveyed his surroundings and found them unfamiliar, like someone had picked up the lake and moved it to a different location.
The time and weather also differed. A full moon shone sporadically through clouds smudged across the sky; wind whipped the lake into waves, slapping them against his rock, throwing spray onto his naked skin. The cool air snaked around him, crawling between his arms and body as he hugged himself against the chill.
He stepped off the rock onto pebbly ground, the gravel beach pressing uncomfortably into his bare feet. The moon emerged from behind a streak of cloud, its reflection choppy and misshapen on the roiling lake; its light outlined a building on the far shore. Khirro squinted at the single barrel tower perched on a rocky hill. No torches burned in windows, no banner flew above. The moon went behind another band of gray cloud and the structure disappeared.
A sound from the forest at his back startled Khirro. He looked around expecting the white tyger to appear from the dense foliage. Nothing. Leaves quivered in the wind and another noise followed: a low, guttural sound not human or animal, but somewhere in between. Nothing making that noise could be anything but evil, dangerous.
Khirro ran.
He stayed close to the shoreline, but the forest grew right to the water’s edge in places. Branches and brambles whipped his face and chest, scratched his arms and legs as he plunged through them. He ran across rocky beaches, stubbing his toes, nearly turning his ankle. It was not the kind of running he’d experienced in other dreams—the feeling of moving quickly but going nowhere. This time he ran with considerable speed, covered a great distance.
Ahead, a wide gully appeared, too wide for the waking Khirro to clear, but he wasn’t the waking Khirro. His feet hit the edge of the crevice, loam squeezing between his toes as they dug into cool, soft earth, and he leaped into the air.
And he flew.
He didn’t fly as Shyn did, with wings and feathers, talons and beak. Instead the wind carried him up and up and up. The gully fell away, fading to a line on the earth as he rose above the trees. Higher and higher he went until he brushed the clouds. From here he saw the size of the lake, the tower only a dot sitting beside it. Far off to his left, a bank of fog marked the shoreline of Lakesh while the rest of the land lay in darkness, nothing to see but tree tops below him. Cold air made goose flesh prickle on his arms and legs and chest.
He gazed around in wonderment floating above the world until a pinprick of light buried deep down in the forest caught his attention, and he knew it was the campfire his physical self slept beside. He estimated the fire about three days travel from the lake.
The clouds parted and the moon