Chapter 1 #3
“They’re here,” I breathed.
The fog began to move eerily, swirling in patterns that had nothing to do with wind.
“Vitoria—”
“I know.” Her voice was tight with effort. “The circle’s failing. I can’t—”
The first arrow whistled past my ear.
“Down!” Kat shouted.
I lunged for the next stone, magic bleeding from my fingertips as I tried to carve faster, drawing from the flasks of water at my hips.
Three runestones to go. But my hands were shaking now, and Silas’s fury rattled through my bones like thunder.
It took everything I had to hold him back and keep weaving, while forcing the fog to remain impenetrable.
“Syn, we have to go,” Vitoria said, and I could hear the fear she was trying to hide. “The circle’s about to—”
“Let me do one more,” I said desperately, grabbing the next stone. “Just let me—”
The hunters closed in, someone shouting orders I couldn’t quite make out, beasts snarling, jaws gnashing. And then I felt it—the exact moment Vitoria’s control snapped.
“Ruptura!” she screamed.
The spell circle exploded. Magic erupted outward in a shockwave that sent me sprawling, the incomplete runestones scattering into the darkness, ruining any hope of strengthening our wards. We could have kept the hunters out of our home with the strength promised beneath a Blood Moon.
I rolled to my feet, pulling my hood forward to shadow my face completely. Somewhere in the chaos, someone was shouting commands. Boots thundered past me. A sword rang out, hitting against stone.
And then hands seized me from behind.
Strong hands. Confident. One arm locked around my waist, pinning my arms to my sides, while the other pressed something cold and sharp to my throat.
Twice in one day was some kind of record.
“Gotcha, little witch,” a deep voice said against my ear, and my blood turned to ice.
I knew that voice. Everyone in the city knew that voice.
The Ripper.
The hunter who’d killed more witches than plague and famine combined. The one they whispered about in the Crook, the ghost story that turned out to be real. He’d been gone for two years, and half the city had hoped he was dead.
But he was here. With his fucking hands on me. And I could feel the deadly calm in the way he moved, the practiced ease of someone who’d done this a thousand times before.
“Easy now,” he murmured, and there was something almost gentle in his tone that made it infinitely more terrifying. “No sudden movements.”
My heart raced, but my mind was already working. His arm was across my chest, his knife at my throat, but he was holding me close enough that—
My fingers found the hilt of his second blade.
He carried two. Every hunter did. And he’d made the mistake of thinking I was just another terrified witch.
I absolutely fucking wasn’t.
In one fluid motion, I yanked his knife from its sheath and drove my elbow back into his ribs, hard enough to loosen his grip. The blade at my throat wavered for just an instant.
Long enough.
I spun, bringing his knife up between us, the tip stopping just short of his throat. In the thick fog, I could make out the shape, but not his features. Tall. Broad shoulders.
“Clever little witch,” he said. “But not clever enough.”
His hand shot out to reclaim his weapon, but before he could reach me, another hand emerged from the fog—dark, strong fingers that locked around his wrist and yanked him backward into the mist.
“Run,” a voice with a soothing accent commanded from the darkness. Male. Unfamiliar.
I didn’t wait to see who my mysterious savior was, nor did I voice my fear of what might’ve been conjured in that damn circle.
I ran.
Behind me, I heard the Ripper curse amidst the billowing fog, heard the sounds of a brief struggle, and then his voice calling out: “Find her! Find all of them!”
But I was already deeper in the wood, crashing through gnarled undergrowth that tore at my cloak, following paths I’d memorized during years of midnight escapes. Silas found me quickly, his fury a constant vibration in my bones.
The sounds of pursuit faded, but just as I thought we might have escaped, a scream split the night.
High. Desperate. Familiar.
Kat.
I stumbled, nearly falling as the sound cut through me like a blade. She was screaming, pleading for help that wouldn’t come. That couldn’t come.
But it could.
My feet stopped. Through the skeletal black trees and thick fog, I could scarcely make out the glow of torches. Hunters circling back. Racing toward that scream.
Another cry tore through the darkness, wordless and raw.
I knew what they’d do to her. What they did to all witches they caught breaking ridiculous laws. Questions asked with hot iron and rope. Mercy that looked like a blade drawn quickly across the throat if you were lucky.
Because some of us had escaped, Kat wasn’t going to be lucky.
Silas’s presence pulsed through our bond, urgent, insistent. Not a sound, but a feeling that hit me like a fist: Run. Keep moving. Now.
I took a step forward instead. Back toward the screams.
But what could I do? I barely knew Kat. She was Vitoria’s friend, someone I’d shared a meal with twice, maybe three times. Someone who’d smiled at me and offered bread once. An earth witch with dirt under her fingernails and flowers that bloomed in her wake.
Someone who was screaming.
Another scream, closer now. Or maybe the fog just carried it better. I heard the word through it this time: “Please.”
My hands were shaking. I could go back. Could use the fog as cover, create enough chaos to—
Silas’s panic crashed through me like a wave. I felt his desperation, his anger, the way he was somewhere nearby fighting every instinct to stay hidden because coming to me would mean revealing himself to the hunters. He was trusting me to run. To survive.
Kat screamed again, and this time it broke into sobbing. Begging. The kind of sound that hollows you out from the inside. I stood frozen between one breath and the next, every muscle coiled to spring back toward her voice. To do something. Anything.
But the torches were spreading out now, forming a net. They’d catch me in minutes. They’d have us both. And then Kat’s death would mean nothing, and neither would mine.
Self-preservation forced me to turn. I ran into the darkness of the Bloodwood, my heart hammering one truth over and over: there was nowhere left to hide the witches.