Chapter 7
seven
I’d seen sorcerers before. On my way through the fae realm with Rune to get to the prince, I’d seen plenty. They were all women—or at least I’d only noticed women—and they had big noses, claws for fingernails, and fangs like a vampire, except theirs came up from their lower jaws.
A sorcerer—worse than mermaids, Rune said. We stay away from them at all costs.
And now she was right there, looking at me, smiling.
She wore a dark grey dress with a hood over her grayish hair, and slowly, she reached a clawed hand toward the fence gate to push it open.
Once again, a bloody battle went on in my mind. My mind demanded I move, turn around and run away back where I came from, yet my limbs refused to obey.
“Stealing my property, little thief? Let me see you…”
The sorcerer’s voice was dark, scratchy, a fucking nightmare on its own. She took a step forward, and my body jerked back— finally —and the dog in front of me barked.
Or more like roared, like a fucking lion.
Every inch of my skin rose in goose bumps until I realized that he was roaring at her, at the sorcerer, not me.
I turned around and ran.
There was no time to reach for another piece of dried meat, and no time to fill something with water for later.
There was no space in my mind for anything at all except run, run, run, get away from this creature no matter what it took.
I didn’t make it all the way here only to wither away while a sorcerer used my life’s energy for her spells, damn it.
I wasn’t going to rot in a fucking cage.
So, I ran.
Laughter behind me—just like in the fucking movies, or maybe I made it up myself.
I passed through the garden and jumped over the fence, my body perfectly capable of taking me forward—and fast. The food I’d eaten had already made such a big difference, and I actually saw where I was going, was able to coordinate my movements so much better.
I wasn’t the only one.
At first, when I heard the footsteps behind me, I thought it was the sorcerer, but then he caught up with me, ran to my side, and ahead.
The dog.
The dog was running together with me, a couple feet ahead. He was running from the fucking sorcerer who’d kept him caged for God knew how long, and his step didn’t falter.
Mine didn’t, either.
Branches tore at my arms as I ran, half-blind from my hair and the leaves. Not sure how long we kept going until I heard the sorcerers—screaming or chanting or laughing—and it wasn’t just one by the sound of it. There were more, and they were close. Far too close.
As I ran, I looked for a place to hide, a place that looked safe, but the woods all looked the same. Trees blurred past, snarling roots and thorns catching at my jacket, but the dog who still ran ahead dodged with such precision I had trouble believing my own eyes.
Nowhere to go.
The sorcerers were right behind me, and I had no doubt that the dog would be long gone by the time they captured me. Thank God. At least one of us would survive this place, and the dog already had a better chance of getting out of Mysthaven anyway, so I wasn’t even mad.
No, I was just terrified.
And then the dog came to a halt abruptly just ten feet away from me.
I tried, too, when the trees just ended in a straight line, and I suddenly found myself at the edge of a cliff.
But I couldn’t stop. The space between the edge and the last row of trees was very narrow, and I already had a lot of momentum, and the ground beneath my feet was suddenly slippery , so I couldn’t stop moving.
The scream stuck in my throat. I pushed myself back, but I was still going to fall off the cliff, when…
Something grabbed me from behind by the edge of the velvet jacket and pulled me to the side violently. I did a full circle before I fell on the ground on all fours, to see the dog by my side with the jacket still locked between his jaws.
Fucking hell, did that just happen?!
He saved my life. The edge of cliff was just there, right behind me, and if the dog hadn’t pulled me to the side, I’d have fallen.
“ Fuck ,” I choked, shaking from head to toe. “Thank you, thank you, little guy. Thank you…”
The dog let go of my jacket and bared his teeth as he stepped forward, looking at the trees, at the darkness between them—at the sound of footsteps approaching, and those voices as well. The laughter or chanting or whatever it was they were doing.
The sorcerers were so, so close.
My heart thundered in my chest. My legs nearly gave out when I pushed myself to my feet, still hopeful, still trying to find a way to survive— anything at all.
Except there was nothing there. No safe place.
Nobody would even hear me if I screamed at the top of my lungs.
Ahead of me were only trees, and behind, possibly thirty feet below the edge of the cliff, there was only cracked earth and sun-bleached stone—a barren riverbed if I had to guess, a mile wide, and trees continued on its other side, too.
That’s it. That’s all I could see around me.
And I thought, maybe if I jumped, the fall wouldn’t be fatal. Maybe, if I wrapped my arms around my head, I could make it with just a couple broken bones.
But then how would I run?
A growl that vibrated throughout me as if the sound was coming from deep within me, not the dog who was still baring his teeth at the trees.
No, not the trees.
The sorcerers were already here.
Every instinct in my body screamed at me at the same time.
Big dark eyes, sharp claws, fangs, dark clothes—they were almost the same, or they looked the same at first glance.
But one was taller, and one had hair a walnut brown, and one had large breasts that she’d pushed up almost to her chin with a tight corset around her waist—but the one in the middle held my attention the most. Greasy grey hair, dark eyes like endless pits, a smile that could make the devil himself turn the other way …
She took a step forward, coming out of the tree line, mouth still twisted in a cruel smile.
“End of the line, girl,” she said, her voice low, curling like smoke around my ears. I backed closer to the ledge, and the dog stepped back, too, snarling.
“You thought you could steal from me and walk away?” Another step.
“Well, now you did all of us a favor,” said the one with the corset, waving a clawed finger around, her other hand around her hips, her smile even more terrifying because she looked happy. Purely happy to be there.
“Get her, Eurith,” said the sorcerer with the brown hair. “Let’s get on with it—get her.”
The dog growled again. The sorcerer raised a brow.
“Don’t give me that. You belong to me and you know it. Be a good girl and go back to your cage. Don’t make me make you.”
Good girl. The dog was a she .
And she was growling louder than before, lowering her head toward the ground, waiting…
The sorcerer growled, too. Just like the dog, she growled and bared her teeth, yellow and crooked and two of them missing.
My God, the sight of her was almost as bad as the monkey monsters that almost killed me when I first came to Verenthia.
“W-we don’t want trouble,” I said—and it was silly, I know. These women here had not followed us so we could talk or so that they could make up their minds to let us go—they wouldn’t. That was as clear as the blue sky over us.
The one with the corset laughed—and that’s where the sound had come from. She was the one who’d laughed while chasing us. I hadn’t made it up .
“Get them, Eurith! Move!” said the other, and she moved, too—shot forward with those hands raised at us, and then the one who’d caged the dog began to whisper words that made no sense to me at all.
I knew it was over. I knew I was never going to make it out of the clutches of those sorcerers again, but I still planned to run. I still plan to turn to the side and try to make it back into the forest and disappear into thin air, somewhere where they couldn’t find me.
Except I never got the chance.
The dog moved before I’d taken the second step.
She jumped—not at Eurith the sorcerer, but at me.
She jumped in the air far too high, and she slammed onto me with both her front paws.
Her claws were sharp and long and curved, and at least three of them cut through the jacket and the skin of my arm that I’d raised to try to protect myself from her.
She was too heavy, too strong, and when she slammed onto me, she pushed me back.
A step, two—then nothing.
The dog I just saved threw me right off the cliff’s edge.
I was too stunned to scream. Too stunned to do anything but try to grab thin air, and the dog fell off the edge with me.
Whether it was accidental or not didn’t matter—her eyes locked on mine, and she was trying to run on air with as much energy as I was trying to hold on while I could still see her.
Why-why-why?! I shouted at her in my head. I was trying to save you—why would you do this to me?!
Of course, the words didn’t come.
Instead, the stinging on my arm where the dog scratched me intensified, and something else inside me clicked—the warmth , that energy that burned under my skin, that gathered in my hands like golden lights. The energy that was real because Rune had witnessed it, too.
The energy I hadn’t once thought to call for while those sorcerers had backed me against the edge of the cliff.
Too late now.
The last thing I remembered before my mind went blank was the dog falling with me, and the faces of the sorcerers screaming in fury from the edge of the cliff.
Logic said I should be dead. A fall that high would have broken every single bone in my body. I’d passed out before making impact, thank God, but the fall should have killed me.
Instead, I was still alive. Breathing. Thinking. Able to push myself to open my eyes, even though they felt welded shut right now.
I was conscious, and I was not dead.