Page 68 of Silver & Gold
“Four miles since the crash?”
“You carried me four miles?”
“I’m not hurt, Seth, not like you.”
“What do you mean, not like me? Are you—”
“Stop it. Focus. Tell me about the gorge and why the hell we’re going there.”
“It’s steep. Too steep for the palanquins. We’re going down it. To the river.” Exhausted, Seth closed his eyes.
“Going down how?”
The words reached Seth, but his brain couldn’t quite process them.
Raider touched his face. The touch was gentle. His voice was not. “How, Seth? Wake the fuck up. Going down how?”
“Multi tool. Harpon. Harpoon,” he corrected. “Rappel.”
“This was your plan? For fuck’s sake, Seth. I’m so goddamn angry with you.” Despite the hard tone, Raider stroked Seth’s cheek tenderly.
“Sorry.”
“Yeah, you better be, asshole,” Raider grumbled and leaned in to kiss Seth’s temple. “How much farther?”
Seth tried to think. “Don’t know. Not much? We’re close. Tonight was … the plan.”
Raider let out a string of curses. Then he froze. “Shit.”
“Shit, what?”
“They’re catching up.”
CHAPTER 22
RAIDER HAULED SETH up and slung him over his shoulder again. He was so damn angry with Seth. And fucking terrified. Seth had lost a lot of blood. The emergency staples were a temporary measure. Seth needed real medical treatment.
Would he get that if Raider let the palanquins catch up? They might catch up anyway. Slowed by his heavy burden, hampered by his own cuts and bruises, Raider wasn’t exactly at racing speed.
Raider also wasn’t very confident in himself as a caretaker right now. How could he trust himself when his head was so fucked up?
Ever since that bad incident in the palace, Raider had felt uneasy about his own awareness and control. Seeing things that weren’t there, reacting all wrong to what was happening around him …
It was too familiar. Too much like his time with Kahzir.
Raider tried not to think about that period of his life, but he knew full well that it was still within him. It was still part of both his body and mind. Between the drugs and Kahzir’s mind games, Raider had lost track of reality for a long time.
Was it happening again? Was that why he kept seeing someone watching? Kahzir used to watch him like that. There and gone, like a mirage. Maybe it was Kahzir he was imagining.
What if he had another bad incident while Seth was incapacitated? He had attacked Seth that night. What if he did it again? What if he hurt Seth? What if he … killed him like he’d killed Hassan? Raider hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t even understood what was happening that night until the quicksilver had already punched from Raider’s fist into Hassan’s chest.
Raider couldn’t risk hurting Seth. So he already half knew what he was going to do, but something kept him moving forward, some kind of automatic flight response.
He couldn’t look back, but he could hear their pursuers catching up. He almost stopped, but there was a slight rise ahead. Straining under Seth’s weight, he climbed it—
“Oh, fuck,” Raider muttered as he took in the impossible gap between the canyon’s two sides and the long, steep drop to the bottom.
He carefully lowered Seth to the ground then walked to the edge. He stared down the nearly sheer rocky slope to the thin river. Greenery dotted the edges. Somewhere upstream, movement caught Raider’s eye, but he didn’t have a chance to take a better look. He was more concerned about what was behind them.