3. Ava
AVA
Ava froze as the sounds of approaching footsteps increased.
“I’m going to burn you alive when I catch you!” The all-too-familiar threats she’d come to expect from Talos echoed through the forest.
But if that was Talos blundering through the forest and snarling curses like a sailor…who was lying on top of her? Pressing her down into the leaves, into the damp and moldy-smelling soil?
Her heartbeat raced faster as a million potential new dangers darted through her thoughts. Brigands, mercenaries, monsters of an ilk she’d not yet encountered…
Leaves crunched near their hiding place.
The hand pressed more tightly against her mouth in an unspoken warning to remain silent. The overwhelming scent of musk and something woodsy caused her nostrils to flare.
She had no intention of alerting Talos to her presence, so she refrained from trying to bite that mysterious hand again. However, she couldn’t help but wonder if her new captor was an even greater threat than the one she was trying to escape from.
Ava willed her breathing to slow, straining her eyes to see in the blackness of their hiding place. With her hands and the magical bindings smashed between her body and the one lying on top of her, no light touched her eyes.
All was dark and impenetrable and endless.
Her fingers twitched against her will, her fingertips brushing against rough fabric and stiff leather, and a firm chest. One of her fingers pressed against something cold and smooth and slightly curved… A buckle? Or perhaps the curve of a dagger’s hilt.
The thought made her stomach tighten with dread.
Beyond the immediate darkness surrounding her, the night had fallen eerily silent, but she knew Talos was still out there somewhere. Lurking. Watching. Searching.
Her breathing quickened despite her best attempts to remain calm. He could be anywhere, preparing to blast them with a violent burst of fire magic…
A sudden flurry of crackling leaves and snapping twigs was the only warning they had. The fellow on top of her grunted in pain and rolled sideways, dragging her with him.
For a moment they changed positions—her on top—but then he flung her away and set her free. She rolled twice through the ferns before she managed to crawl to her knees and push up to see what was happening.
Two dark shadows grappled with one another in the darkness. She lifted her hands and cast a halo of blue light over them—over Talos in his dark-blue tunic and the stranger dressed in scarlet and brown leathers.
The colors of Haldor.
Her attacker was human? But what was he doing in the middle of the dark elf forest, at least fifty miles from the border? And why would he come to her aid?
“You’ve stolen my captive,” Talos snarled as he ducked and delivered a savage blow to the human’s midsection.
But at the last moment, the man twisted and spun, deflecting the worst of the blow. “She isn’t yours to claim.”
“I claimed her anyway.” Talos spat to one side and then wiped at a trickle of blood leaking from the corner of his mouth, his gaze skittering toward the place where Ava hunkered.
Her lips parted, gut clenching at his audacity to claim her in this way.
But before she could respond, Talos continued with his tirade. “I’ll ransom her in exchange for safe passage out of this forsaken forest. She’s going to get me out of this mess, one way or another.”
Ava jerked her head up, heat flooding her cheeks as her stomach clenched. “I’ll do nothing of the sort.”
She struggled to her feet, legs trembling. Her body pitched sideways, and she leaned against the rough bark of a tree to steady herself. She tried to make a run for it, but Talos and the human staggered into her path, driving her back against the tree again.
Talos and the human continued to engage in close combat—punching, ducking, grabbing at one another as they crashed side to side, snapping small branches off the trees and trampling the undergrowth.
Every time Talos tried to lift his hand to summon his magic, the human deftly thumped his arm back down to his side or against his own chest. And if Talos tried to use his magic in those compromising positions…he’d risk putting a cauterized hole in his own chest.
Whoever this human was, he knew what he was doing. How to defend himself against magic.
She hesitated.
She should run, pitch herself headlong into the forest and not look back.
But she couldn’t shake a frustrating sense of obligation. This man was risking himself to fight her enemy: could she really just run away and leave him to face Talos alone?
Growling under her breath, she darted forward as Talos drew back a fist, which glowed blue with an imminent blow of magic. She smashed into him, head ducked to protect her face. She drove her thin shoulder into the tender area around his stomach. She felt his muffled “oof” as he staggered backward.
A hand grabbed her by the hair, and she shrieked, trying to punch his thighs with her elbows, her hands uselessly bound. Pain lanced across her scalp as he yanked. Flames bite him, he was going to scalp her.
She dropped her head and bit him in the thigh as hard as she could, using the only weapon she had.
Her own teeth.
He cursed and released his grip on her hair to shove her away and free himself. But at the same moment, the human dove toward them, tackling Talos more successfully than Ava. As the two males tumbled, someone caught her on the side of the head with a knee or elbow.
Pain and bright lights speckled Ava’s vision as she face-planted against the forest floor. She clawed her way back to her knees, spitting out a mouthful of brittle, foul-tasting leaves.
“Run!” a voice bellowed, the r rolling from the human’s thick Haldorian accent. “Run, lass!”
She tried to get to her feet, but everything spun around her. Nothing came into focus, the forest a blur of shadows and stabbing speckles of hot white light.
Her head still thundered from the painful blow. It vaguely occurred to her that she’d been knocked senseless before she tipped sideways and collapsed into a prickly bush.
Thorns snatched at her clothing as she fell, scratching her face and exposed arms, but she rolled free of the thornbush and bit out a pained, “Flames!”
She took a ragged breath, blinking wildly to try to clear her vision and come out on top of her reeling senses. Somehow, in spite of the pain and dizziness, she needed to find the strength to do as she was told. Get off the ground. Find her footing.
Run.
But as she turned to face the darkness of the ancient forest, something froze her in place. That feeling that she wasn’t alone. That they weren’t alone. That something else lurked out there, watching and waiting.
Something otherly and wrong.
Something worse than even Talos and his anger and hatred.
Her breath caught in the back of her throat, her chest tightening as she held that breath and strained to listen, to see. What was it, this dark and horrifying thing hiding just beyond the scope of her senses? And why did it feel…familiar somehow? As if she knew who it was? What it was?
As if it knew her.
Something pressed against her temple and forced its way deeper, deeper into her thoughts, into her mind…
“Run, you fool!” The human’s angry voice tore through her ears and brought her back to her senses.
She spun from the horrifying darkness to face Talos and the human.
They were a mere two yards away, Talos grasping toward her with one hand.
The blue heat of his building magic illuminated the forest around them, glimmering over rough tree bark, the smooth curve of ferns, the sharp angles of jutting branches and thorns.
He meant to kill her.
She read it in his eyes, in his angry, spiteful gaze. Whatever plans he originally had for her withered away as he formed a fireball in his free hand.
She took a step backward, a cry latched in the back of her throat.
The human grappled for Talos’s arm, trying to wrench it to the side, to deflect the trajectory of the magic about to hurl straight at Ava. Blue fire flickered on the stranger’s face, dancing over a spattering of freckles, enhancing the broad angle of his nose, deepening the hollows of his eyes.
Something sprang to life in his eyes, in those two dark hollows—a spark of bright red and orange flames. Her chest tightened, and she took a step backward, confused by the contrasting clash of blue and orange fire.
By the flames…
The human threw back his head with a roar. The sound that ripped from his throat was inhuman, monstrous, echoing in the forest like incessant peels of thunder.
Talos yelped, wiggled free, and flung himself to the side.
She too flung herself to the side, toward a broad oak tree to her left. She reached up, caught a low-hanging branch in her bound hands, and swung herself behind the safety of the trees just as one of Talos’s firebombs hurtled past her.
The heat of it blistered the side of her cheek and filled her nostrils with the stench of burning hair.
Ducking behind the oak, she swatted at her hair to make sure that she wasn’t on fire. Talos bellowed something unintelligible, and Ava peered around the trunk to watch the dark elf thrust another ball of fire toward the human.
Was he even human?
Two massive wings ripped free of the stranger’s back, shredding through the low-hanging branches of the surrounding trees.
One of those wings knocked Talos clean off his feet and sent him hurtling into the shadows of the forest. He shrieked as he skidded past Ava and vanished into the darkness.
The human—the creature—stalked after him, ripping a branch from a tree and swinging it in front of him like a club. He swung it wildly, and Ava ducked to avoid being bludgeoned or decapitated.
Branches and leaves showered down on her as she tried to wrap her bound arms over the back of her head to protect herself.
“Please…” she choked out.
But the human stomped past her, his boot sinking into a pile of leaves mere inches from her face. Then he was gone, leaving her to wonder if anything she had just witnessed was real. How hard had she been hit on the head? Was she hallucinating?
Ava picked herself up, staring into the darkness of the Shadewood. Talos loosed a bloodcurdling curse. The forest exploded in angry blue sparks as the dark elf released his magic yet again. She caught glimpses of hurtling shadows, sweeping wings, flailing limbs.
Then darkness until another fireburst exploded.
An inhuman howl washed over her, causing goose bumps to prickle across her skin and ice to race down her spine.
“Go,” she said for her own benefit. “Go, go…”
With one last confused glance over her shoulder, she put her back to the battle taking place and ran for her life. She’d rather face the danger she didn’t know than face the creature bearing down on Talos.
He’d brought this on himself, and she wasn’t going to stay around to see how it turned out for him. Hopefully, the man with the wings would kill him, and by the time he was finished, Ava needed to be as far away as possible.
She didn’t know what direction she ran. There was no trail to follow, no light to guide her other than the glow from her fracturing bonds. The farther she got from Talos, the weaker the magic pulled.
She wriggled her wrists as she crashed between two tall, spindly saplings, reveling when her wrists moved more freely.
“Come on!”
All she needed was one good tug…
She realized her mistake the moment the magical chains popped and dissipated into blue sparkles. As the sparks stung her bare arms, Ava skidded to a halt and gasped as darkness closed in around her.
She’d broken the magic and left herself alone in the forest with no light.
Painful breaths exploded from her lungs as she snapped her fingers and tried to summon a spark of her own magic. Just a small, meager flame to light her way…
But her magic ignored her, cowering in the corner of her mind. Weak and useless.
Ava stretched out both hands and stumbled forward, completely blind. Was this what life was like for the prince she served? The one she had tried and failed to heal? How did he live in this endless void and not go mad?
She could feel her sanity slipping away from her with every step she took deeper into the void.
One wrong step and she’d careen down another ravine or walk face-first into another nameless horror. Danger lurked all around her, behind every tree and shadow. She longed to drop to her knees and curl into a ball on the ground, waiting for death to come for her.
But she had to get out of this forest and go home to her brother, to Peregrin.
She couldn’t die in the Shadewood because he needed her.
Peregrin.
He’d already lost both his parents…their parents…and he couldn’t lose her too. He needed her, so she kept running, hands held in front of her face to push away branches and vines. Her feet stumbled through the undergrowth, thorns ripping at her skirts, shredding the stockings covering her legs.
A roar shook the very foundations of the forest.
Ava screamed and quickened her pace, grasping at a thick tangle of branches in front of her. Behind her, branches snapped like breaking bones. The roar sounded again, but closer this time.
The monster was coming after her now.
Talos must be dead. She never thought she’d be sorry for that fact, but his demise meant she would be next. She pushed her way deeper into the branches until she found the rough trunk of the tree.
Climb.
She lifted a boot, found something to brace it against, and reached over her head to find another branch. Hand over hand, she wiggled up the side of the tree, higher into the branches.
As she climbed, moonlight streaked through the leaves surrounding her. She forced herself to go higher still, so high she grew dizzy at the thought of the ground falling away beneath her.
Her head pounded. Her hands ached, damp with blood, and her legs shook so badly she feared she would fall at any moment.
Another roar ripped the silence. Oh flames, he was directly below her.
She froze, wrapping her arms around the trunk of the tree. If she was quiet, maybe he would continue on, deeper into the forest in his search for her.
One, two, three…
She worked up the nerve to open her eyes and squint at the shadows below her. Two blazing red eyes glared up at her, glittering like two flames in a pit of darkness.
A scream broiled in her chest but caught before it clawed its way out of her mouth.