Emberhawk - Jamie Foley Page 0,27
in the distance. Ryon crouched and followed high-pitched chirping and more scratching. Two branch runners fought and chased each other up and down a patch of old oaks, apparently oblivious to him.
Ryon cloaked himself in invisibility and reached for his bow. The stretching tugged painfully against his bad shoulder, and he held in a hiss of pain. Right. He released a silent sigh. Thanks, Kira.
His hand went to his knife instead. It wasn’t meant for throwing, but he was more familiar with it than Kira’s tiny blades. And he’d practiced throwing it once or twice.
Ryon lifted his dagger and tracked the squabbling branch runners as they tumbled back and forth across the branches and scurried up the trunks. He could just torch them with Phoera, but that wouldn’t kill them instantly, and he didn’t feel like burning a poor creature alive. Even if it was just a branch runner.
He breathed a hunter’s prayer and let the dagger fly.
The blade thunked into bark, startling the branch runners into ending their dispute and parting ways.
Ryon sighed and gritted his teeth against the protest in his shoulder. Maybe Kira would have been the better hunter tonight. If she could walk. Or maybe he shouldn’t feel guilty about roasting a rodent in an emergency situation.
A shadow swooped from the treetops and descended on one of the branch runners with a loud thump. The creature cried out and fell silent.
Ryon grabbed the hilt of his machete. An owl? It didn’t see me?
Twin green orbs focused on Ryon’s face, chilling him to the bone. The emerald eyes bore no pupils and glowed far too brightly to be natural.
Felix?
The shadow blurred into a different silhouette, then approached Ryon with the branch runner in its mouth. A rust-colored fox trotted through the brush and dropped the kill at Ryon’s feet.
“That was seriously a terrible throw,” the fox said.
Ryon eased his grip on his machete and glared down at Felix. “Oh, now you show up? Where have you been?”
The fox lifted its nose into the air and sniffed. “You smell nasty.” Its eerie green eyes squinted at Ryon’s shoulder. “What’d you do this time?”
“I got shot over the border. Thanks for the assist.”
Felix nudged the branch runner with his paw. “You’re welcome.”
Ryon snatched the dead animal and tucked its bushy tail into his belt. “I had it.”
“Obviously.” The fox made a high-pitched cackle. “Why are you pouting like a human infant?”
“So you don’t come when I’m about to be thrown in an Imperial prison, but you show up to bag a bleedin’ branch runner?”
Felix’s fluffy ears flicked as he tilted his head. “Do I look like a babysitter to you? You got out in one piece.” He snorted and his long nose wrinkled. “Mostly. You should get to Jadenvive and have that treated.”
“Working on it.” Ryon stomped over to his dagger embedded in the tree branch. “If you didn’t come to help me, then why are you here?”
“I need my syn back.” Felix sat on the mulch and curled his white-tipped tail around himself. “Zamara is up to no good.”
Zamara, of course. It was always Zamara. Felix’s rival, the goddess worshipped by the Emberhawk tribe, was in reality just an elemental like this good-for-nothing fox.
If she actually existed. She’d been evading Felix for years, and of course, Ryon had never seen her. People claimed to have witnessed her taking the form of a songbird or a great emberhawk or Queen Deirdre herself. People were crazy—of course they saw the shape-shifter they worshipped in every house cat that mewed sweetly enough.
“Fine, then take your syn and go.” Ryon grimaced as he yanked his dagger from the bark. The blade came free with a squeak. “I’ve got mouths to feed and one branch runner won’t be enough. Thanks, though.”
“That wound needs to be cauterized,” Felix said behind him. “Why haven’t you done so yet?”
Ryon sheathed his dagger and sat in front of Felix. He held his palms out and waited. “I can get to Jadenvive fast enough to get proper healing there, and I need my strength to make it in time.”
Something flickered in Ryon’s hands. A silver mist accumulated in his palms, shimmering in the starlight.
“Of all my vessels, you’re the biggest baby.” Felix trotted closer and breathed in the glistening cloud. “Your cousin wouldn’t have batted an eye.”
“My cousin’s a psycho.” Ryon’s skin tingled as the powdery syn was pulled from his bloodstream. His awareness of the flows of energy around them diminished as his connection to the Phoera