Shadow and Bone

“And now you’re a deserter.”
“Yes.”
“Because of me.”
“Yes.”
My throat ached with unshed tears, but I managed to keep
my voice from shaking. “I didn’t mean for any of this to
happen.”
“I’m not afraid to die, Alina,” he said in that cold, steady
voice that seemed so alien to me. “But I’d like to give us a
fighting chance. We have to go after the stag.”
I thought about what he said for a long while. At last, I
whispered, “Okay.”
All I got back was a snore. Mal was already asleep.
HE KEPT A BRUTAL PACE over the next few days but my
pride, and maybe my fear, wouldn’t let me ask him to slow
down. We saw an occasional goat skittering down the slopes
above us and spent one night camped by a brilliant blue
mountain lake, but those were rare breaks in the monotony of
leaden rock and sullen sky.
Mal’s grim silences didn’t help. I wanted to know how he’d
ended up tracking the stag for the Darkling and what his life
had been like for the last five months, but my questions were
met with terse one-word replies, and sometimes he just
ignored me completely. When I was feeling particularly tired
or hungry, I’d glare resentfully at his back and think about
giving him a good whack over the head to get his attention.
Most of the time, I just worried. I worried that Mal regretted
his decision to come after me. I worried about the
impossibility of finding the stag in the vastness of Tsibeya. But
more than anything, I worried about what the Darkling might
do to Mal if we were captured.