Chapter Seventy-One: The Dead Forest
Jace
I stopped because Shadow told me to.
Not in words, obviously. But in the way his head was beginning to droop, and his normally sure footed steps were stumbling over nothing. Gerald was letting his displeasure show as well. His normal amiable nature was disintegrating into laced back ears and threatening side-eyes.
I pulled up in a clearing off the road and sat for a moment, listening to the dark.
Nothing was wrong. There was only the sound of the forest and the road and two horses who had earned their rest. The sky was beginning to show the faintest lightening at its eastern edge. I had been riding for the better part of three days with stops short enough to barely count. I had eaten in the saddle. I had watered the horses at every stream and
