CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE #2
I opened my mouth to tell the girls to run, but the moment I tried to speak, he pointed at me and mumbled a guttural sound that sent a glowing orb of light shooting at me so fast there was no time to react.
It wedged between my lips and wrapped around the back of my head, gagging me in an instant, cutting off both my warning and any chance I had to wield the Siren’s Song against him.
The more I struggled to pry it free, the larger it grew, threatening to snap my jaw if I dared to touch it again.
My frantic gaze shifted to the sea and all the water I couldn’t use against him, thanks to my curse. It might indirectly be the death of me, after all.
“I know who you are and the power you wield, girl,” he said as he walked toward me, a malicious smile slicing across his scarred face. “There is nothing you can do to change your fate now that I’ve silenced you.”
Another bolt of magic whipped out from his hand and wound around my neck, slowly choking off both my freedom and my air.
I fell to my knees, gasping as my vision blurred.
Desperate for air and a plan to escape my dire circumstances, I barely noticed the technicolor flickering in my periphery.
I dared a glance to my right to find an iridescent slash rippling as it grew into a six-foot hole in the fabric of our universe.
A portal. Fucking perfect.
“Time to go now,” he said as he bent down to face me. Grabbing my chin, he lifted my face to the moonlight to assess me as my eyes watered. “Such a pretty thing, even like this. It’s a shame we can’t have more time together.”
“I have time,” a deep, commanding voice called from somewhere behind the druid.
He shot to his feet, leaving just enough space for me to peer past his legs at a dark silhouette in the distance.
Yael stepped out of the shadows as though he were made of them and walked toward us at a casual pace, but even with my narrowing vision, I could see the darkness lurking in the depths of his cold stare and the danger it boasted.
“You seem to have something of mine there,” he said as he continued closer, gesturing to me.
“Something very important to me—and I’d like it back. Now.”
The druid yanked my leash, forcing me to my feet at his side. “It doesn’t look like she’s yours,” he replied as two large males stepped through the portal he’d conjured. From the way they immediately flanked us, I knew he’d summoned them.
Yael didn’t even flinch at their arrival. “Oh, I assure you, she is very much mine.”
The druid pulled me in tight to his side and cupped the back of my neck in territorial fashion. “I found her first,” he argued. “The bounty is mine.”
Something menacing flashed in Yael’s expression before a length of kelp shot out of the water and sliced through the magical tether imprisoning me.
I collapsed to the ground and tried to scramble away, but the druid’s hand snatched the back of my shirt and hauled me up.
I tried to speak, tried to force the Siren’s Song, but no words passed my lips—they were crowded out by my hungry breaths.
“How sweet,” the druid taunted. “The flower fairy came to save you.” He trapped my wrists in one hand and pulled me against his body while his other palm pressed against my stomach to use me as a shield against further attack.
His lips were at my ear as he laughed, a low, threatening sound that made every cell in my body scream for me to escape. “Too bad he can’t.”
The two thugs that had joined us stepped forward in unison, smiling at the thought of tearing Yael into pieces; and given their ogre-esque sizes, I was pretty sure that was possible.
I tried once again to use my power to help the situation, but my voice came out in incoherent rasps and squeaks that achieved nothing.
Instead, I looked on as the duo closed in on him.
All the while, Yael just stood still, staring at me as though death were not approaching.
The druid’s fingers flexed against the exposed skin of my abdomen in anticipation of the impending bloodbath.
Yael’s eyes tracked the subtle movement and narrowed to menacing slits before something in the air shifted.
The shadows he’d emerged from drifted toward him in a swirling vortex of night as he stretched his hands out wide.
His would-be assailants didn’t slow as the darkness continued to grow, until Yael stood amid an ominous wall of obsidian that seemed to swallow everything around it—but not him.
Instead, it seemed to obey him, wending through his fingers and up his arms like a snake.
“Last chance,” he said in a voice so low and foreboding I hardly recognized it at all. His eyes, blacker than midnight, drifted to the hand pinning me to the druid before returning to his face.
In response, the lackeys lunged at him in unison from both sides.
A strangled cry escaped my throat as they descended, blocking him from sight with their massive frames.
But those massive frames were soon flying through the air, impaled upon a javelin of shadows.
They crashed through the portal and disappeared from sight.
The druid released his hold on me and reached his free hand toward Yael as an aura of red, angry magic began to swirl around it.
But before he could release his retaliatory assault, a whip of inky smoke cracked through the air, severing that hand from his arm.
Screams rent the night as he staggered back, clutching the blackened, amputated limb that smoldered with residual magic, and I took that moment of distraction to stumble away from him.
As I put distance between us, Yael strode over to the druid, his wall of shadowy death magic trailing behind him.
He kicked the druid onto his back and pinned his wounded arm under his boot, stepping down with his full weight. “Tell me about the bounty.” The druid grunted and groaned but said nothing in response. “How did you hear about it?”
“Everyone knows about it,” he ground out through gritted teeth.
“Who put it on her?”
“Fuck you—”
A strip of shadow wrapped around his throat and squeezed so tightly his eyes bulged in their sockets.
“Tell. Me.” Nothing but garbled noises escaped him as Yael leaned in closer, placing his ear next to the druid’s mouth.
His lips tensed with frustration; then he pulled away.
With an eerie grace that made me want to run, Yael rose slowly to hover above the druid.
“I understand this wasn’t personal,” he said in a cruel voice that didn’t sound like that mattered one bit, “but you fucked with something you shouldn’t have—and there’s a price to pay for that. ”
Yael flicked his wrist, and the collar of black encircling the druid’s neck sliced through flesh and bone in one clean motion.
His head rolled down the rocks into the ocean, and I watched in horror as the tide quickly washed it away.
The dismembered corpse then floated up into the air on a cloud of black and drifted out over the ocean.
With a sharp snap of his arm, Yael launched the remains far out to sea.
And then, with the druid gone, he turned his attention to me.
The black abyss I found staring back had me retreating a step. “Yael…?”
With a jerk, his body went rigid and his hands balled into tight fists at his sides as those jet-black eyes narrowed, then slammed shut. When they reopened, swirls of forest danced in irises filled with fear. “Myra,” he rasped, as though he were the one in pain.
“Yes?”
His jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth so tightly I didn't know how he could possibly reply. But he did, and I held my breath as he leaned forward and uttered a single word that terrified me more than anything else had that night—or ever.
“Run.”