Page 6 of Royal Guard

And then I was outside in the vast, freezing sky. The plane shot away from me, shrinking to a speck in a few seconds. Meanwhile, I was falling towards the earth at a hundred miles an hour.

I straightened my body into a dart, arms behind me, and pointed myself at the ground. And I willed myself to go faster.

6

KRISTINA

I fell.

I was a leaf in the wind, tumbling and pinwheeling, one second belly-up, the next face down. The air dragged out my limbs until I was starfished and the joints burned and screamed. I thought they were going to be ripped from my sockets. The air screamed as it passed my ears and felt like a concrete block where it hit my face: if I opened my mouth even a little, it punched its way down my throat and tried to balloon my lungs. Yet however much air I gulped, there wasn’t enough oxygen.

As my eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness, I realized dawn was breaking. Sunlight was rapidly spreading across the sky, lighting up the clouds above me... and the ground below.

I saw a patchwork of gold and green squares that had to be fields, hair-thin lines that must be roads. And they were rushing up to meet me with horrible speed. It was that same sick feeling you get when yourfoot hooks into something and you feel yourself trip: a stomach-clenching, cold sweat moment... except this one didn’t end. The fear just kept building and building as the ground expanded. Wispy strands of low cloud whipped by me and with each layer I cleared, the fields grew clearer, more real.This is how I die.

I closed my eyes, but the not knowing was worse than the knowing. I opened them just as the wind flipped me face-up again….

And saw a darker speck against the lightening sky. At first, I couldn’t make out details: it was so solid, so unwavering, I thought it might be a piece of debris that had fallen from the damaged plane. Then I made out fabric, snapping and flapping at the edges. A plaid shirt. Dark hair. My rescuer from the plane, diving down towards me.

I stared up at him in disbelief.How did he—Why is he—

He drew nearer, near enough that I could make out his eyes. He was staring right at me with a look of single-minded determination.

I held my breath. Looking upward, it was as if we weren’t moving at all. I could have been just lying there, floating, as he drifted slowly towards me. Only the itching between my shoulder blades reminded me of what was rushing up towards me from behind. I reached up a hand towards him.Come on. Come on!I didn’t even know what his plan was. I just knew that I didn’t want to be alone.

He drifted closer, almost within touching distance. Then the wind caught him and spun him off to one side. He dropped a shoulder and veered towards me again, steering himself like a diving bird of prey. Hemoved across above me, grabbed for me—

Missed.

The noise of the wind had changed. It was easier to breathe and it was warmer, too. And all those things were bad because they meant the ground must be getting very, very close. I knew I shouldn’t but I couldn’t help it. I looked below me—

The fields had grown fences and telephone poles. The roads had fattened, like feasting snakes, and white lines had erupted up and down their backs. I could see little oblongs of color moving along them.

I snapped my gaze up, towards him.He was approaching again, fast, this time.Oh please, PLEASE—

His chest slammed into mine and the impact sent us tumbling. I instinctively clutched him, wrapping my arms around him. The feel of him again: sobig,so solid, after having nothing around me but air. His heart pounding against mine. He was sowarm.

My searching fingers found the bulky pack attached to his back and I suddenly realized what his plan was. I clung onto him harder than I’ve ever held anything in my life because I knew he’d be jerked away from me,hard,and if I slipped out of his arms….

I needn’t have worried. He’d already locked his arms and legs around my body in a death grip. He wasn’t letting me go.

He pulled the ripcord and my stomach slammed into my feet as our downward rush slowed. The scream of the wind dropped away and there was just the creak of fabric and cords above us.

“Roll!”he said. My face was pressed against the curve of his pec. I had to look up to see his worried eyes. “When we hit,roll.”

When we hit?

I looked down and saw a dusty road. A field filled with trees, dark green and—Oh, God, I could make out the oranges hanging from their branches. We werethatclose. And I realized my stomach was still in my feet: we were still slowing. We were coming in too fast.

“Roll!”he told me again.

I opened my mouth to speak and then everything happened at once. We hit the ground in a sort of sideways swoop, he released his grip on me so that he didn’t slam down on top of me, my legs turned to jelly as the impact went up them and, at the last second, what he’d said registered and I let my knees go slack and rolled, curling into a ball and wrapping my arms over my head.

I must have closed my eyes. When I opened them, all I could see was an orange tent, the fabric moving softly in the breeze. As I uncurled myself, I felt like one big bruise. But I was alive.

The ceiling of the tent rose and jerked. I felt heavy footsteps through the ground and thenhewas there, scrambling over to me on his knees, flinging the parachute fabric back over his shoulders as he moved under it. He stopped right next to me, his knees brushing my side, his big body hulking over me. “Are you okay?” he blurted, eyes wide with concern.

I nodded. I wasn’t capable of speech, yet. My fingers were still pressing into the dirt, reassuring myself that I was on solid ground. I just looked up at him, huge and strong and... I caught my breath. For the first time, I had a chance to drink in just how gorgeous he really was. Gorgeous in a way I’d never seen before, rough and primal and dangerous—