Free Seeing is Believing by Sasha L. Miller

waiting for a better shot to put an arrow through his back.
    Reid was leaking sparks again, Ty realized after a moment. Purple and blue, so if color meant anything the barrier was hopefully still following them. Ty tried to remember if he'd seen purple before, but he hadn't been paying much attention to the sparks before.
    Reid spurred the horse into going faster, making it gallop down the forest path. Ty shut his eyes and held on, focusing on breathing and not letting go and not being shot by an arrow. He fervently did not want to be shot on top of falling from his horse.
    Ty wasn't sure how long they rode like that—it felt like an age, but it couldn't have been too long. They'd been riding the horses hard to begin with, and Reid's horse wasn't up to carrying double at the same pace.
    "Are you really not hurt?" Reid asked as he let the horse slow its pace. He shifted in the saddle in front of Ty, making Ty's grip on him slip a little.
    "I'm fine," Ty lied. It was only a little lie—his side ached fiercely, but it wasn't too much worse than riding had caused.
    "Then we're not going to stop," Reid told him, sounding solemn. Ty frowned a little, but nodded. If they were being attacked by archers in the middle of the day, it only made sense to put as much distance as they could between them. Ty likely wouldn't be much good for moving come the end of the day, but better than then skewered by an arrow.
    Hopefully Ari had gotten away and warned Caj and they were on their way away from the archers as well.
    "Can you see if Ari and Caj are alright?" Ty asked after a moment of worrying. If they'd been hurt trying to rescue him…
    "I can ," Reid said, and the arrogance was back in his voice even if Ty couldn't see his smug smirk. "But I'm not going to."
    "Why not?" Ty demanded, scowling and wishing that he didn't have to be in such close proximity to Reid. There was no way to put any distance between them, and if Reid continued to be a jerk there wasn't anything Ty could do about it but grit his teeth and bear it.
    "Waste of energy," Reid replied, cheerfully, considering that they'd just been attacked and separated from Ari and Caj. "I need to mask us, not play around scrying for them."
    "Mask us?" Ty asked, ignoring the second half of Reid's answer. Perhaps that was why Reid didn't seem concerned about being followed.
    "If I don't mask our magical signatures, that mage trailing us will find us in minutes," Reid explained happily, apparently unconcerned with that statement. "Myself, I'd prefer to keep her off our backs instead of making sure two perfectly capable Vasijile guards survived an attack focused on you."
    "Focused on me," Ty repeated faintly, wishing briefly he was back in the damn jail cell. He might've played punching bag a time or two for one of the more violent guards, but he didn't have people shooting horses from beneath him or constantly provoking him with mocking comments or being attacked because of him.
    "Apparently they don't want you to fall into our hands," Reid said thoughtfully. "I don't know why they're that concerned, it's not like you're a great catch."
    "Then why bother to free me?" Ty asked curtly, glad his sore side was keeping his muscles tensed already. Less for him to give away to Reid.
    "I don't give the orders, I just follow them," Reid replied brightly, tucking his arm around Ty's arms wrapped around his middle. "Even when they're to rescue scrawny, smelly mages with little to no magical use."
    If that was true—and Ty didn't really doubt that it was—then they simply didn't want to see the killer of one of members of the high council walk free after only a year in prison. Ty focused his gaze on the back of Reid's head, wondering what Reid would do with him when he found out.
    Probably leave him for recapture if they were still on this side of the Melari border. After that … Well, that depended on what they planned to do with him then.
    *~*~*
    "We're going to have to stop for the night," Reid