The bowstring creaked.
In the heavy silence of the Blackwood, the sound was as loud as a scream. It was the sound of tension reaching its breaking point, a death rattle waiting to be released.
Ciro stared at Silas, the Ranger leader. The iron tip of the arrow was steady, unmoving, aimed directly at the hollow of Ciro's throat. At this range—less than thirty feet—a master marksman of Morvath would not miss. He wouldn't even blink.
Ciro's mind, honed by years of torture and training in the Kennel, ran the calculations in a split second. Dodge left: The arrow takes the lung. Dodge right: The arrow takes the heart. Charge: Three arrows in the chest before he covers half the distance.
There was no room to dodge. There was no time to throw his dagger. There was nowhere to run.
Except backward.
Into the white, swirling void of the ravine.
"Well?" Silas sneered, his leather-gloved finger tightening on the release. The wood of the yew bow groaned. "I am waiting, Jester. Dance for us. Or do you only perform for Kings?"
Ciro's hand drifted slowly behind his back. He found Elara's hand in the shadows. Her fingers were ice cold, locked in a spasm of terror. He squeezed them once—hard. A signal. A promise.
Trust me.
"I have one last joke for you, Silas," Ciro said. His voice was eerily calm, devoid of fear. He lowered his dagger slowly, letting it hang loosely by his side, feigning surrender.
The Rangers relaxed their shoulders by a fraction of an inch. They expected a beg. They expected a plea for mercy, or perhaps a final, pathetic attempt at bribery. They wanted to see the Wolf crawl.
Ciro smiled.
It wasn't the painted, plastic smile of the Jester. It was a baring of teeth. A predator acknowledging the end of the game.
"The joke is gravity."
Before the Rangers' brains could process the absurdity of the statement, Ciro moved.
He didn't ask Elara if she was ready. He didn't offer comforting words. He spun around, wrapping his arms around her waist in a vice-like grip, and threw his entire body weight backward.
He didn't jump. He tackled her off the edge of the world.
"LOOSE!" Silas screamed, the order tearing from his throat.
THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!
Five black-fletched arrows hissed through the air, converging on the space where Ciro's chest had been a fraction of a second ago. They struck nothing but empty air and pine needles.
One arrow, fired by a Ranger with faster reflexes than the rest, dipped low. It sliced through the flying fabric of Ciro's tunic, carving a deep furrow across his left shoulder, but it was too late.
The earth was gone. Gravity had claimed them.
They fell into the mist.
For a heartbeat that stretched into an eternity, there was only weightlessness. The world turned into a chaotic blur of grey fog and white sky. Elara's scream was ripped away by the rushing wind, swallowed by the gorge.
Ciro didn't scream. He focused.
Mid-air, he twisted his body violent, fighting the physics of the fall. He grabbed the back of Elara's head, shoving her face into his chest. He wrapped his legs around hers and curled his spine, turning himself into a human shell.
I break so she doesn't, he told himself.
They didn't hit the bottom—not immediately.
They crashed into the canopy of a lower forest growing on the steep ravine slopes.
CRACK! SNAP!
It was a violent, brutal arrest.
Branches whipped at them like angry lashes. Ciro took the brunt of it. He felt wood splintering against his back, tearing through his tunic and slicing his skin. A thick pine branch slammed into his ribs—the same ribs Marcus had bruised—and he felt something crack.
He gritted his teeth, locking his jaw to keep from crying out, refusing to let go of the Princess.
They tumbled through the leaves, a ball of limbs and momentum, bouncing off boughs that slowed their lethal descent just enough to make it survivable.
Then, they hit the slope.
It was steep, covered in loose shale, wet mud, and rotting leaves. They rolled violently. The world spun in a chaotic mix of earth, sky, and pain. Ciro tried to dig his boots in, to find purchase, to stop the slide, but the mud was too slick.
They slid for another fifty feet, tearing through ferns and bouncing off exposed roots, until they finally slammed into a massive, rotting log at the bottom of the ravine.
THUD.
The impact knocked the wind out of Ciro instantly. Black spots danced in his vision, obscuring the grey mist. His lungs seized, refusing to draw air.
Silence returned to the forest, heavy and suffocating.
For a long moment, there was no movement. Only the sound of the mist settling around them.
"Elara..." Ciro wheezed, his voice a broken rasp.
He pushed himself up on shaking arms. His body felt like one giant bruise. His left shoulder was bleeding freely where the arrow had grazed him, the blood mixing with the mud on his skin. His ribs were a choir of agony.
He looked down. Elara was lying beneath him, half-buried in the leaf litter. She wasn't moving.
Panic, colder than the river, flooded Ciro's veins. It numbed his own pain instantly.
"Elara!"
He brushed the wet, matted hair from her face. Her skin was pale, scratched by the branches, and smeared with dirt. There was a nasty cut on her cheekbone.
She groaned, a low sound of distress. Her eyelids fluttered open, revealing unfocused green eyes.
"Did we..." she coughed, wincing. "Did we die?"
Ciro let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-sob. He rested his forehead against hers for a second, closing his eyes in gratitude.
"Not yet," he whispered. "But I think I broke everything else."
THUCK. THUCK.
Two arrows slammed into the mud a few yards away, fired blindly from the cliff edge far above.
Ciro looked up. The white mist was their savior. It obscured the bottom of the ravine, hiding them from the Rangers' sight. They were safe from the bows, for now. But they were trapped at the bottom of a gorge, injured, and hunted.
"We have to move," Ciro said, urgency returning to his voice. "They will find a path down. They will bring the dogs."
"Okay," Elara whispered. She tried to sit up.
As she put weight on her left leg, she cried out—a sharp, high sound of pain—and collapsed back into the mud.
"My leg!" She clutched her ankle, her face twisting in agony.
Ciro moved her hands away gently. He didn't need to be a doctor to see the damage. Her ankle was swelling rapidly, pressing against the leather of her boot. It was already turning a dark, angry shade of violet.
"Sprained," Ciro diagnosed grimly. "Badly. Maybe a hairline fracture."
"I can walk," Elara lied through her teeth, tears stinging her eyes. She tried to stand again, but her leg buckled uselessly. She fell, catching herself on Ciro's arm. "I... I can't."
She looked at him, despair filling her eyes. "Leave me, Ciro. I can't walk. I'm just a weight now."
Ciro looked at the grey sky. He looked at the arrows sticking out of the mud. He looked at the woman who had trusted him enough to jump off a cliff.
He turned his back to her and knelt in the mud.
"Climb on."
"Ciro, you're hurt," Elara protested, her voice trembling. She touched the blood soaking his tunic at the shoulder. "You're bleeding. Your ribs... I heard them crack. You can't carry me."
Ciro turned his head slightly. His face was pale, streaked with blood and dirt, but his eyes were burning with a terrifying intensity.
"I am a dog, remember?" he said, offering her a weak, pained smile. "We are built to carry burdens. Get on, Elara. Or I will tie you to my back."
Reluctantly, sobbing softly, Elara wrapped her arms around his neck.
Ciro gritted his teeth. He planted his boots in the mud.
One. Two. Up.
He groaned—a guttural, animal sound—as he stood up. Her weight settled on his injured back, pressing down on his cracked ribs. Pain flared white-hot through his spine, blinding him for a second.
He shoved the pain into a box in his mind and locked it away. He was not a man right now. He was a machine. He was a vehicle.
He took a step. Then another.
He began to walk, limping through the mist-shrouded ravine, carrying the Princess deeper into the unknown.
The fall hadn't killed them. But as the first snowflakes began to drift down from the grey sky, Ciro knew the wilderness was just getting started.