Lark Ascending Read Free

kicked out, knocking whoever it was back into the brush. I sprinted for Oren’s side, feeling for injuries with both hands. The shadow in him stirred at my touch, drawing greedily on the meager reserves of magic I held. Oren gave a soft, half-conscious groan when my fingers encountered wet, sticky blood in his hair. Something rustled behind me and I whirled, gathering my magic, ready if the thing in the brambles made a second attempt on him.
    The bushes parted and a man ran out, still brandishing his branch. I readied a blast of magic, lifting my eyes to his face—
    â€”and stopped.
    I knew this man. His clothes were ragged and torn, revealing scratches on the skin underneath. The brown eyes were wild and desperate, and a dark, thick stubble had spread across his jaw and throat. But in the heat of the moment, I knew him.
    â€œKris?” I gasped.

CHAPTER 2
    â€œIs it dead?” Kris rasped. He sounded as if he hadn’t spoken for weeks. “Lark, get away from it—it could still hurt you—”
    â€œKris, what the—what are you doing here? This is Oren. This is—” My thoughts were so jumbled I could barely spit them out in the form of words. Abruptly I realized that Kris and Oren had never met, that the name would mean nothing to him.
    â€œI thought it was a shadow,” mumbled Kris, the branch dipping until it rested on the ground. “It had you pinned, I thought—he looks like a shadow.”
    Oren was stirring feebly, to my relief. I looked down at him, helping him sit up when he reached for my hand. He was as dirty as I was from weeks of travel, as fierce as ever, as though he hadn’t spent all that time learning to control his ferocity in Lethe. If I didn’t know him, and didn’t know better, I might think he was a monster too.
    And, of course, he was. But so was I.
    â€œKris.” I couldn’t stop saying his name. “What are you doing out here?” Kris opened his mouth, but I interrupted. “Never mind—not now. Help me get Oren up. There’s a stream a ways back, where we broke camp—let’s get back there. You can tell me what’s going on after we make sure you didn’t just kill him.”
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    Though Kris tried to help me as I set camp back up again, he was absolutely useless. Eventually I made him sit still while I built up the fire—sitting on the opposite side from Oren, who was propped up against a dead log. Though Oren watched Kris in stony silence, holding a cold cloth, wet from the stream, against his head, Kris just huddled, shivering as though it was the dead of winter, watching me.
    My mind raced with questions, making my fingers clumsy. But they still knew the trick of this, and I held my tongue until the fire could sustain itself. I put a metal bowl in next to the crackling wood, filling it with water to clean the gash on Oren’s head once it was hot. I rinsed Oren’s cloth in the stream, watching the blood dance through the water, then brought it back freshly sopping and cold. He took it, still silent, still watching Kris through narrowed eyes. I could feel his unasked questions behind that stare, but he was waiting.
    Waiting for me.
    I braced myself and turned to face Kris. He was so changed from the boy I remembered—gentle, handsome, charming. He looked older, but more than that, he looked frightened.
    He was still staring at me, through me. When I looked at him he didn’t even react—it wasn’t until I nudged his leg with my foot that he started, blinking and refocusing on my face. I handed him the canteen and he grabbed at it, gulping down half the water inside before wiping his mouth with a rasp of his sleeve against the stubble on his face.
    â€œWell?” I prompted him. I kept my voice gentle. This was the boy who’d betrayed me, who’d used me to lead the architects to the Iron Wood—but he’d also tried to save