Endure - Sara B. Larson Page 0,85
I could hear the desperation behind his attempt at retaining hope.
He, too, thought I was lost.
My hands trembled as I picked up the ring and shakily slid it onto my finger. I picked up the letter to read it once more, but this time I noticed a second letter beneath it, this one written in a different language — Blevonese. I couldn’t understand any of it, except for who it was addressed to, Damian, and part of the signature:
Osgand.
The king of Blevon had written Damian personally.
When I returned to the stable, still wearing my ring, and with Damian’s letter tucked into the leather satchel at my side, Nia was standing with her head lifted and ears cocked. I unwrapped her reins from the bar and led her outside, where the storm had wound down, only sprinkling little flecks of water toward the earth, barely enough to do more than mist the air. I’d managed to scrounge up a bow and a quiver of arrows, as well as an old sword. It wasn’t the sharpest blade I’d ever used, but it was better than nothing. I also had a knapsack packed with every little bit of food I could find that had been left behind. I attached it to the saddle, to the very metal ring that I had been tied to for so long, and then put my foot in the stirrup and swung up and over Nia’s back.
As we trotted back out the gate toward the main road that would take us away from Tubatse and continue on toward Blevon, I glanced over my shoulder at the palace one more time. It rose into the roiling clouds, a massive, sprawling sentinel that had stood for centuries, housing the kings and queens of Antion until the day Hector and Armando had killed them and placed a Dansiian on the throne. Though I hated them for what they’d done, and all the deaths and suffering they’d caused, I had to acknowledge that without Hector’s atrocities, there never would have been a Prince Damian for me to guard and eventually fall in love with. And this had been his home, too.
For some reason, as I stared up at the empty windows a dark foreboding washed over me — a feeling that I would never see the palace again.
For days we rushed toward Blevon without a sign of human life — though we ran into plenty of other life, including birds, monkeys, an unfortunate scare with a massive snake winding its way across the road, and the sound of a jaguar’s throaty roar much too close for comfort, but luckily without any situations in which I had to use either of the weapons I carried. Though there weren’t any boot prints left, there were some indicators that a large group of people had passed through Antion by way of this road recently: trampled bushes on either side of the path, broken branches, and trees stripped bare of their fruits, making it so that I had to trek farther away from the road, deeper into the jungle, to find any food for Nia and me once the few supplies I’d managed to scrounge up in the raided kitchen were gone.
I only stopped to eat a couple of times a day and forced Nia to keep going long into the darkness of the nights, until I was so exhausted I couldn’t stay upright in the saddle any longer. Then I would finally pull Nia to a stop and allow myself to sleep, my arms wrapped through her reins, hoping she would wake me if she sensed any danger.
As we neared the border between Blevon and Antion, I grew increasingly anxious and determined to keep moving quickly. So far, I’d managed to outpace King Armando and his massive army, but every morning I jerked awake at first light — sometimes even before dawn — my heart racing and my nightmares making my skin cold with sweat, expecting to open my eyes to a sea of flames, or worse, to Armando leaning over me with a sword to my throat.
Finally, the jungle began to thin out and the tall grasses and sparser trees of Blevon took its place, but the road I’d been following also narrowed and turned into little more than a cart path after a day of traveling through Blevon. I hadn’t seen any towns yet, but I wasn’t sure what I would do when I reached one, since I didn’t speak their language. Was