Bloodguard

chapter 26

Leith

The moment doesn’t last long. I’m on edge, my instincts warning me that something is wrong as we walk through this run-down neighborhood.

The sound of soldiers marching is distant at first but quickly strengthens in volume and numbers.

“We should get out of here,” I say, taking her hand and pulling her down a side street.

“Wait. What are you doing?” Maeve asks.

“Soldiers are approaching in droves. Why? It’s late. Too late to do anything good.”

We don’t get far. Maeve digs in her heels. “I’m the princess of Arrow, Leith. I’m not running and hiding.”

I don’t think she understands the danger her own soldiers present with that knob of a lord and general in charge.

Wood splinters from somewhere behind us. “By the order of Lord Soro, we demand you open up!”

Maeve whirls. “It’s a raid.” Her shocked eyes narrow to slits. “He’s looking for more immigrants to imprison.”

I grab her elbow and pull her back.

“Let me go,” she bites out. “I must stop this.”

“No,” I hiss under my breath.

“Ye can’t come in my home without a royal order!” an old woman yells.

“Get out of my house, you filthy bastards!” a man with an accent similar to Ioni’s hollers.

Breaking glass follows the echoes of furniture and bodies being shoved away. “The princess shall hear of it,” another man adds.

“I’m counting on it,” Soro shouts back.

It’s this last comment that has Maeve fighting me. I pull her close, taking care not to hurt her as I drag her around the back of the building.

“They need me,” she insists, voice cracking.

“Not in pieces,” I counter.

When we hit the alleyway, I don’t stop to argue. I run ahead, my hand around her wrist. If she digs in again, there’s a good chance I’ll pull her arm from its socket.

“Keep moving,” I order.

We weave down a series of alleyways. I don’t know where the hell we are, and after taking two consecutive lefts we run the risk of turning a square and circling right back to where we started.

“Shit.”

I pause. Maeve sighs. She points to a red house. “There. That building.”

I look ahead to the horizon, where the sun has begun to disappear behind the mountains. That’s when it occurs to me how truly late it is. The encroaching darkness will cover any trail we leave, so there’s that. We can weave through this town and lose them before circling back around to our horses at the market.

But the cover of night will also benefit Soro and his pack of guards, concealing whatever atrocities they might commit.

“Do you know this place very well?” I ask.

She still isn’t thrilled with the idea of running, but she’s resigned to my plan—at least for the moment.

“We’re just at the outskirts of the new development project Father took over for Papa.”

The red house has a heavy metal door, and even I can’t get it to open.

The stomping footfalls of many guards echo along the narrow streets. They’re coming. And at a quick clip.

I can’t let them get to Maeve. There’s no telling what Soro would do to her in a sadistic state like this.

I spin and draw my sword.

She slaps her hand over the scabbard. “Not yet.”

She points up to the second-floor balcony of the bright-orange house next door. Maeve takes a running leap, barely making a sound, flips over the rail, and lands. She turns and offers me a hand. I’m good , I mouth, hoping she doesn’t expect me to pirouette or some shit.

I follow without any help, though not as quietly. And without any flipping. Bloody hell, it’s like she’s a damn acrobat. We leave the balcony door open. I can hear the guards close by—maybe even below—and any movement would only attract their attention.

I glance around the dim room.

Well, hell. This is a kitchen. It has maybe one or two rooms branching off it and stairs that lead into the rest of the house. Multiple families must live here.

We’re mice in a box.

Maeve checks the closed doors. One has shelves stacked with bowls and wood platters, a bag of dried beans, and a second sack of grains. The other opens into the bedroom next to it. A dead end. So not real helpful, either.

“There,” I whisper. I point to the hearth.

Maeve doesn’t question me. She hurries over, glides around the cooking vat, and squats down. After a quick look up the chute, she glances back at me, grimaces, and then starts to shimmy up.

I can’t fit around that giant cauldron the way Maeve did. It’s suspended on a beam by iron hooks, so thankfully I can swing it out and slip behind. As I squat in the hearth, taking care to step on the edges of the hearthstone and not the ash or burned logs at the center, I see what Maeve was grimacing about. It’s as tight as a sewer pipe. I don’t know that I’m going to fit. And sure as shit, this isn’t the best idea, but something tells me confronting Soro and his guards right now would be even worse.

She swears her papa is innocent, and that means her grandmother’s killer is walking around free. Vitor is in control right now, and by extension, so is Soro. Being alone in an isolated part of the city, where he’s stirring up trouble to have an excuse to arrest the innocent…

No good comes of us crossing paths tonight.

If Maeve dies, there is nobody to stand in the way of one of them taking over the throne—permanently. I’ve heard all about the crown reverting to the other five houses, but I for one think they’d have a hard time supplanting Vitor. Like a sabre-cat, he’s sunk his teeth in deep.

Cinders and ash are dislodged while Maeve shimmies upward, hands and feet against the wall in front of her, leaning back so her body is wedged against the other wall of the chimney. I follow her lead, back pressed against the opposite wall, and then pause, remembering I moved the cauldron. I drop down a few feet and extend my leg to pull the beam back in. By the time it’s in place, the clomp of feet on the stairwell echoes through the walls.

Maeve braces and spreads her legs so I can climb up higher.

We’re near the top, and I can see a spattering of stars overhead through gaps in the chimney’s cap. I debate knocking the cap off and getting us both to the roof, but I don’t think we can risk the noise with Soro’s militia so close.

In this position, Maeve’s arms are on either side of my face. My arms brace beneath hers. And her legs…sweet baby phoenix, her legs are on the outside of mine, so she’s sitting on top of me. And that yellow dress—it’s bunched around her waist.

She starts to slip, and I reflexively grab her by the hip.

Big mistake. Her thigh is toned, and she curls her leg around my waist, anchoring us together more tightly.

“I was hoping it’d be bigger,” she rasps.

I don’t think she means me, because, yeah… “The chimney?” I ask in a strangled voice.

“Yes. Let me try something,” Maeve says, moving around on top of me for a different angle.

She’s trying to help.

She is positively no help.

Her front is now getting better acquainted with my front. And the tightened tips of her breasts are now pushing into my chest.

It has a very immediate effect.

“Uh,” Maeve whispers. “Leith?”

I don’t mean to rub against her. She’s the one moving against me. She spreads her hands against the wall, shuddering. “I’m sorry,” she breathes. “I don’t mean to, to…”

My chin falls to rest against her shoulder, and my lips graze her ear. “You don’t mean to what?” I whisper, clinging to the last shred of my honor.

Maeve swallows hard. She groans.

It’s not her fault we’re in this tight space—figuratively or literally. And as for my body’s reaction… Well, I guess my body could give a damn that there are a dozen guards stomping up the stairs. Danger isn’t doing a thing to dampen this woman’s effect on me.

Maeve squirms and makes a small sound that causes a big reaction. I grit my teeth.

“I’m not trying to p-play games,” she whispers.

“I didn’t take it that way,” I whisper back. I’m glad it’s dark in here, because I swear on my life I might actually be blushing right now. She seems nervous—possibly more about sitting on top of me in a chimney than about the guards searching the house. I’m making her anxious, and that doesn’t sit well with me.

I try to lean away, but I don’t get far. There’s nowhere to go.

The door to this room slams open, and we both freeze. The other doors are opened and closed. The table is flipped on its side. Glass shatters, and it sounds like shelves are broken.

I lean forward until my lips brush her ear, and in the softest voice I say, “If they find us, I’ll drop down and distract them. You climb up to the roof. Hit the cap as hard as you can manage and run—”

She shakes her head. Her lips brush my neck. “No.” Her arms and legs tighten around me. “Together.”

Well, that’s not happening. Only one of us can drop out of this cramped space and hope to draw a weapon, let alone fight off enough of Soro’s guards for the other to escape.

“I saw them, Lord Soro,” one of the female guards says. “I swear to you, they came in through the balcony.”

That we did. More doors slam as the rest of the guards are likely sweeping through the rest of this home.

“I’m not your lord,” Soro says. “What I am is the future king who will cut out your tongue if I find out you have misguided me.”

There’s a chance we’ll still be discovered, and I change the position of my hands so that if I must drop, I can pry Maeve off me.

The guards’ yells echo through the chimney as they continue to ransack this place. I’m grateful that whoever lives here, if they even still do, doesn’t seem to be home. I don’t imagine this search would have ended well for them. Soro is known to keep dogs, although mercifully they don’t appear to be with him tonight.

As it is, I hope there are no shifters among his guards. Their sense of smell is above all others.

Little by little, the room goes quiet as everyone leaves. I swear Soro lingers. It’s like I can feel his presence, patiently waiting like a coiled snake. The slightest bit of movement, and he’ll strike.

Seconds stretch to minutes. Maeve’s breasts rise and fall against my chest with every intake of air, hardening her nipples further. I rub my face against the side of hers, intending to bring comfort. “It’s all right,” I whisper.

My lips graze the side of her neck, sliding over a scar until soft skin is all I feel. Not quite a kiss but close, and closer yet. She leans into me, breath hitching. My mouth is almost on hers when I realize what I’m doing. I’d slap myself upside the head if I didn’t need my arms to hold us up.

We’re wedged in a chimney right now, far from her home or any reinforcements. At least a dozen guards and one very vicious lord general could still be searching for us. No. This is not how I keep Maeve safe.

I crane my head away from hers. “Climb up,” I tell her.

Her gasp this time isn’t one of pleasure but one of hurt. Then she’s moving, as agile as a spider, climbing over me and scaling her way to the rooftop. Soot and who knows what else fall as she goes. I wait for her to flip the cap. It gives easily, but it’s still louder than I’d like. Thankfully, there aren’t any other sounds from the house. No one coming. No one going.

My arms are trembling from holding us up for so long, and my leg—the one shredded by eels—is shaking so bad I’m not sure it’s going to hold my weight on the other side of this.

Soro and his guards could still be in the house. If it was me in his place, I’d continue to wait.

“I don’t see them,” Maeve whispers down to me.

That doesn’t mean they haven’t laid a trap. I inch my way to the top and pull myself out. I’m too tall and too big to bend a leg, so it’s awkward dragging myself up to a sit and then working each leg, one at a time, out of the chimney. The only upside is it gives me a minute to rest, so when I do land, I don’t collapse.

“Go,” I tell her. “Don’t look back. I’m right behind you.”

She doesn’t hesitate. Maeve runs along the rooftops, nimbly leaping from one to the next. I’m not familiar with this part of Arrow, and I follow her, hoping she’s leading us toward her home or a busier section of the city where more people will provide a distraction or at least bear witness to whatever Soro was plotting.

I grab her hand when we’re at the last house closest to the market. From here, we can see the hitching post where we tied the horses.

They’re gone.

Maeve curses.

I consider our options. We could circle back and find a rooftop to hunker down until morning. We could take our chances and head toward the castle, relying on Maeve to rally the troops and all those still loyal to her family. Or we could try to make it back to Jakeb’s manor on foot—

A hulking cyclops comes into view, holding the reins of both our horses. It’s Uni. He pauses and looks up as if to say, What are you waiting for? Maeve jumps right off the roof.

Damn it, woman!

She leaps toward the house beside this one, catching onto the second-story window ledge, then stretches down with her toes to balance on the top of the first-floor door casing before dropping quietly to the street in a crouch, her sooty skirt billowing around her as she lands.

I’m strong and agile, but I don’t possess that kind of balance. I lower myself over the side and straddle the walls between the buildings, dropping and catching the walls with my hands and feet to slow my descent.

Maeve mounts and waits for me.

“Is the road clear?” I ask Uni.

“Go,” he bids us. “May the phoenix keep you safe.”