Excerpt: The Furies

Finding them was easier than I had been led to believe it would be. Attaining them was even easier still. Transporting them, however, was where the danger truly lay. How was I to know then, at the beginning, that she would lead me by the hand to my end?

It was early spring when we caught up to them. The air was warm, but the heat was lessened by a wet breeze drifting from the east. It had been uncommonly wet the past few days; it had not rained, but the air was a thick blanket of moisture around us. It seemed Nature herself was trying to lull us to sleep, distract us from the task at hand. And I might have let her, if only there had not been such a generous reward waiting for me back home.

As my second and I approached the priory, I shifted in my saddle and leaned slightly forward, urging my mount a bit faster. Hooves pounded into the soft earth. My heart seemed to keep time with the quickening sound. I strained my eyes against the velvet darkness and could just make out the faint silhouette of the priory in the light of a single lamp. The pounding in my chest began to outpace the pounding on the trail. My skin tingled with excitement and fear.

We had been riding since dawn and finally we were coming up to their sanctuary. The tip of their whereabouts had been unexpected and not wholly credible, but we’d had nothing to lose. We were holed up in an inn only two towns away from their safe house. If they were indeed here, in this priory in the middle of nowhere, we’d have found them in less than a month. And if they weren’t, we’d have wasted only one day and were no worse off than before.