That might slow them down a bit, anyway, she thought. She felt peculiar, her thoughts tangled and slow. Her lips and tongue were numb, and she could no longer feel her fingers on her left hand.

She blinked away a double image, and then she knew. Poison. The arrow point was daubed with poison.

Eight on one isn’t enough, then, she thought. No. We have to use poison. So much for notions of fair play. If she’d had any to start with.

Her stubborn confidence drained away. How could she fight poison? It would be plant-based, likely of clan make. The clans produced some remarkable poisons.

She’d bled a lot at first, but she no longer felt blood trickling down her back. Was that good or bad? If she kept bleeding, might she bleed out some of the poison?

It was potent, all right. Her vision blurred and rippled, and her muscles twitched. The rocks around her shivered and quaked. Wolves moved like shadows through the darkness, whining, pressing their warm bodies against her as if somehow they could keep her in the world.

She could only hope she’d be dead before they found her.

Now she heard more commotion down below, men shouting at each other. What was that all about?

Time passed—in her muddled state, she wasn’t sure how much. She thought they would have found her by now. It had gone quiet in the canyon.

She fingered the Lady knife. When someone comes, you stick them. When someone comes, you stick them. Raisa repeated it over and over so she wouldn’t forget.

Amon always said that was the purpose of weapons practice—to train the muscles and nerves so that in a fight they do what they’re supposed to do without conscious thought.

She heard Amon’s voice in her head, low and desperate. Rai. Don’t you die. Don’t you die on me, Rai. Stay alive. Stay alive. Stay alive.

Her hand fluttered helplessly. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I did my best.

Most of all, she regretted her parting with Han. There was so much she’d wanted to say to him, confess to him. She’d wanted to create a truth between them to replace the lies. Now he’d likely never know what had happened to her. How she really felt about him. Who she really was.

She tried to fix on Han’s face, to hold it in her mind—the brilliant blue eyes under fair brows, the oddly aristocratic nose, the pale scar jagging down one side.

Tiny pebbles cascaded past her, pinging on rock. Someone was coming, climbing down from above. Her hand scrabbled through the dirt and closed on her dagger.

C H A P T E R  N I N E

A HUNT
INTERRUPTED