Chapter 30

Cat

The stupid horse dragged behind us. She’d done nothing but murmur to herself ever since we left the Gnomes. Sometimes, when you were unfortunate enough to be too close, you could hear her mumbling, “It was a lie… A lie…” Pathetic. As if she didn’t know what the Unicorns had once done. The Queen was a freak and needed to die, but she had gotten that right at least. She knew what Almerious had done and didn’t trust any of them. Stupid horse.

I halted as the sun almost set. It was the last night before we would arrive in the lowlands. Tomorrow we would need to decide where to go next. The horse hadn’t shared a single one of her plans, so I didn’t know if she had a tribe waiting for us. In any case, staying in the Queen’s land was too dangerous, so we had to find somewhere else. That meant east or north. East were too barren, even if I had thought about going there with Silvi. There were almost no villages, and surviving the winter there would be rough. That only left the North. I knew there were tribes that weren’t benevolent to the Queen, and maybe they would let us stay, especially if we had the Unicorn with us.

We made camp and ate the squirrel Kim had caught earlier. The horse still never shared the fire with us, but this time it wasn’t because she was making lofty plans, but because she was wallowing in self-pity. Silvi had tried to speak to her, and even Kim had dared to walk up to her one night, but she only turned away, muttering to herself that no one could understand what the Gnomes had told her. Pathetic, that’s what she was. If it weren’t for the fact that she was our gateway to any tribe that opposed the Queen, I might have just left her.

I took us north the next day as we came to the foot of the mountain. It would be colder soon, and we would need any bit of haste we could get to arrive before sleeping under the open sky would be too bitter. It was in those chill days that my mind wandered to what the Gnomes had told me. They hadn’t said where my tribe was, or even where I belonged, but they had talked about water. Hidden far away beyond the reach of the world… I didn’t know of many tribes outside of this land, I doubted anyone did, even the Unicorns with their widespread knowledge. Not that I would ask the horse in her state anyway. Maybe when the Queen was dead, and Silvi was back in her forest, I could look for them.