Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
ALLIE
T he cover of the trees I rushed behind was nothing compared to the groans and yells beating against me.
No allies waited in the shadows. Only enemies, ready to trap The Huntress.
“You idiots!” A painfully familiar voice shook the ground. “Don’t let her get away. Find her!”
How many more times could my heart break within a matter of days?
One person could not withstand so much.
Allie could not.
The Huntress had to.
I pushed my shock and misery deep down, letting instinct reign.
Hurried steps resounded behind me, thundering against the ground. So they were large, but didn’t have stealth training.
Small comfort when I was outnumbered, outweaponed, probably outpowered, and famished. But a comfort nonetheless.
I crouched low to the ground, flitting between the few bushes which dared grow so close to the crater, careful not to rustle the leaves.
They thought they’d trap me?
Even in my weakest state, I would not become prey.
The steps thundered closer. Through the branches, I noticed five cloaked figures looming. The moonlight spearing through the trees bounced off their strange copper masks, which had even stranger symbols etched onto them. They reeked even worse than the wagon. Foul, like death clung to them.
I gripped my knife tighter.
“Spread out!” That same gruff voice cut through the stillness and my soul. “Don’t harm her–”
My ears perked. Maybe this was a misunderstanding. Maybe I–
“–we can’t risk spilling her blood, they need it. Be careful, she’s dangerous.”
The pain twisted deeper in my chest.
That’s what I got for hoping and trusting–crouching in bushes to save my life.
As the figures spread out, one of them loomed right above my hiding spot.
Tall build, not particularly perceptive since he didn’t bother looking down.
Perfect.
I sprung from the bushes and struck my knife straight in his left shoulder. He howled behind his mask. Godsdamn it. I had to find a new hiding–
As soon as I yanked my knife out, he disintegrated.
Turned into a pile of acrid ash right in front of me.
The mask fell on top of the mound unceremoniously, sending a gust of dust in the air.
I staggered back, gaze wide and disbelieving.
Dark magic.
The kind Malhaven should have ridden itself of eons ago–
The astonishment cost me.
A meaty hand coiled around the back of my neck and dragged me off my feet.
I flailed as much as I could.
I swung my knife.
I kicked my legs.
I scratched and clawed.
The world spun on itself.
It only resettled once my back slammed against the strange rock. The shock of it slackened my hold on the knife, which slipped next to my feet.
I squinted my eyes shut as the hand closed in on my neck. Wide enough that I could breath, but unmoving.
I wasn’t escaping his grip for anything in the world.
Opening my eyes was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do. Because the grim reality would stare back at me and I could no longer avoid it.
My gaze met familiar brown eyes.
The same stare I’d met a thousand different times, at dinner parties, weddings, and funerals. Who’d watched me grow up and tracked me in the training arena.
“What did you do, Orion?” I whispered, staring at one of the greatest Protectorate warriors, who was now pinning me to a rock with those famed fists of his.
The one who’d lied and set up a trap.
For me.
Those brown eyes were no longer soft. They were raging and had menacing flecks of green in them, like that blasted poison from the wedding had rotted his brain.
“What I had to,” he rumbled. He towered over me as the rest of the masked figures approached behind him. “You let that bastard threaten my wife at the wedding.”
The words stung, because they were true.
My mind flashed back to the wedding and The Dragon’s blade near her pregnant belly. I had stood there, sending secret messages, because I knew his wife was in no real danger–not from the prince, at least.
“The Dragon would have never harmed her,” I said sadly. “No Blood Brotherhood warrior worth their blade attacks the defenseless, it’s in their Clan Code. Your very pregnant wife was the safest out of us all.”
That information about the Blood Brotherhood had come from our best spy and hadn’t left the throne room. Orion couldn’t have known.
His face twitched with rage. “I don’t care about Clan Codes. I care about my family.”
The words felt hollow, no matter how hard he shouted them in my face.
“Did your wife die?”
“No.”
“Are your children safe?”
“Yes.”
I narrowed my eyes. Revenge, I could understand. Easier to blame me if one of those errant arrows had taken the love of his life than going after the real killers.
But this wasn’t about deranged feelings or righteousness.
“You’re telling me that incident at the wedding made you go against your Clan and your vows?” I said in a deadly whisper.
Orion clenched his mighty jaw. “Our magic got voided!”
“Orion, do not take me for a fool. You have the greatest fists in all of the Protectorate. You only bothered with your powers to make yourself glow and look fiercer in battle.”
A cold smirk twitched on his face. “I have power now.”
Right before my eyes, a blue tendril erupted from his huge hand, coiled around his wrist like a snake, and wrapped around my neck. But it was no longer the clear Protectorate blue. It flickered with the murky shade of a misty night and it smelled of something foul.
He had power, but it was spoiled. Tainted.
“ What did you do?” I asked, horrified.
To taint his powers meant he’d mangled his soul in ways no magic could ever unwrap.
“I have more power than you now.” His smirk grew, but it trembled at the edges, as if he couldn’t quite control his body.
The last thread of hope in his humanity deflated inside of me. “Greed? You betrayed countless generations for greed ?”
Shadows flickered in his gaze. “I don’t need to be judged by a Clan-less nobody. I did what I had to do.”
He nodded at the figures behind him. “Find the courier. We leave no witnesses behind.”
Fear gripped me. “No!”
The poor man and his horse were blameless. I’d used them to escape the crater and land myself in this trap.
One of the figures gave a curt nod and turned.
“No!” I began to flail in Orion’s grasp. His grip tightened. “Leave him alone, he’s innocent.”
“Better get used to it, Allie,” Orion said. “A lot of innocent people will die soon.”
“Stop it!”
“We need to incapacitate her,” Orion said. “She’ll be a handful if she’s awake.”
The figure was almost at the edge of the trees as Orion raised a reeking rag to my face. Whatever pungent liquid dripped from it would surely knock me out and make me pliable.
Something wild snapped inside of me.
My spine stiffened against the rock, two stubborn beings locked together. In the distance, a light rushed toward the clearing.
“The gods see what you’re doing,” I screamed, gaze slashing to the sky. Let the stars be witnesses to my anguish. “ May the wind carry your worthless souls for eternity, so you will find no peace in any lifetime .”
No sooner had the curse words escaped me that my body began to burn.
A tremor slashed through the air, shaking the shadows.
All the misery, all the grief, all the disappointment blistered into raging anger.
And power .
The wind screamed right alongside me, hissing through the trees.
My insides unstitch themselves as a great surge of power coursed through me. The well which had been dry and dormant spilled over.
My entire being ignited.
True Protectorate blue tendrils shot out of me. They raced toward the masked figures, hunting them down.
The tendrils caught them in their unstoppable hold and flooded their bodies, until blue light shone from behind the mask in soundless screams.
Then they turned to ash, just like the one before had. Their masks plunked on the ground just as unceremoniously.
The well within me closed back up, as if it had never opened. It left an empty coldness behind.
As the light receded back into me, I slumped against the rock, spent beyond coherent thought. Orion’s hand was the only thing keeping me upright.
It seemed my powers still couldn’t bear to kill him.
“You still have magic,” Orion whispered. Even in my half-waking state, I heard the fear in his words.
I licked my lips, struggling to raise my head.
But raise it I did.
Let him see what he was doing.
Let him see me .
“You carried me on your shoulders,” I murmured, meeting his stare once more.
For a moment, not even a breath, he hesitated.
His brown eyes warmed and widened with worry, slashing from his hand to my neck, as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing.
But the moment vanished as fast as it appeared.
Orion blinked and he was once again a beast.
His hold on me tightened, hard enough to press against my airway this time. “Shut up.”
That was the thing about guilt–it always ate at you.
“You shook my father’s hand,” I went on, barely able to speak as his fingers squeezed and squeezed. As if shutting me up would change the truth. “I was there when your babies spoke their first words. I carried them in my arms and played with their little fingers.”
“Shut up!”
Just as my vision began to darken, a shadow swooped down on Orion.
His hand shook, long enough for me to catch another desperate breath, as he swung his other hand at a raven.
Not just any raven–the crazy one I’d screamed at my first day in the crater.
It clawed its sharp talons at Orion’s eyes, beak scraping his head.
No matter how fast he moved, the raven flew out of his reach and attacked him again.
Using the distraction, I kicked at Orion with all my remaining energy.
It only angered him more.
His grip on my neck tightened too hard, too fast.
My hands flew to his wrist, nails digging into miserable flesh, the last flail of survival. But he wouldn’t budge.
I couldn’t die like this.
Not before I took my revenge.
Out of nowhere, a dagger flashed through the air and embedded itself into the rock next to my head.
Orion’s howl seared into me.
His grasp loosened.