TEN

Shira found the journey to be totally unpleasant, a steady reminder that she was a hostage. She had never ridden with anyone before, and now, she had to sit in front of Leywin on the same horse, and without a saddle!

Leywin said there had not been anytime to saddle the horses, and for all their hurrying, Shira could not see what the problem was.

And she missed the Shark. She finally admitted that to herself. She was feeling weird, like she had felt when she was ten and mistakenly emptied her mother’s bottle of perfume down her throat – okay that had not been a mistake. She had done it because, tired of being a lone, she had gone to play with her cousins, and they insisted she take a sip of her mother’s perfume before she would be admitted into their play. She had drunk the whole bottle just to impress them.

Now she tried to focus her mind on the journey ahead, tried to keep awake. She had a feeling, that if she slept off and fell from the horse, Leywin might think she was on