Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
HAZEL
I gasped and recoiled. I thought I’d escaped their notice or been forgotten, but I hadn’t. Not at all. Around me, branches swayed and trembled as the trees shared my horror.
Jonas grinned and started in my direction, followed by two other guards.
“She knows nothing,” Cibran grated out, his voice rising. “Just a girl who needed a ride to town.”
“Maybe so,” Vedast said with a shrug that jostled the blade in Cibran's shoulder and made him cry out in pain. “You don’t care if you bleed for the cause, but you’ll care if she does.
I’m sure you’ll want to talk once she feels my sword—or once we have her spread out on the ground beneath one of us.
” He bit his apple with a loud crunch. “Or all of us.”
As the men hooted, I abandoned my satchel and shawl, lurched to my feet, and ran.
Or at least I tried to run, but my ankle was stiff and swollen and agonizing. The underbrush was thick and full of twigs and thorns that pulled at my clothing and hair with every staggering step.
Laughter reached my ears from where I'd left my things. “Oh, come now, little mouse—no need to run,” Jonas called.
I heard swords cutting through the brush, coming from different directions behind me, as if they'd split up to surround me. I bit my lip to keep from screaming at the pain in my ankle and forced myself to hobble faster.
“We’re fine men who protect pretty little mice like you.” Jonas’s tone sounded like he was smiling, which stoked rage in my chest to replace my fear. “You’ll simply tire yourself out before the fun even begins.”
With my ankle injured, I couldn’t outrun all three of them, but if I could find somewhere to hide…
“Little mouse,” Jonas called again. More laughter and grunts came from behind me as their swords cut through branches and brambles, clearing paths that were converging on me.
Ahead, I spotted a dark line through the trees. Thank the Goddess, it looked like a ravine that might offer escape or a hiding place. I veered in that direction as my pursuers closed in.
The tingling in my hands became a steady burning sensation. My vision tunneled. The sounds of the forest and the guards faded until all I heard was my own ragged breathing and the desperate pleas that tumbled from my lips.
“Help me,” I whispered to the forest. “Please, protect your daughter.”
Ahead of me, the underbrush parted as the forest made a path.
You cannot use your magic like this. My mother’s remembered voice in my head was as sharp and cold as a slap. This is dangerous. This will be your doom.
What would you have me do? I wanted to scream at her memory. These men will hurt me.
Better that than what they’ll do once they know you carry magic in your blood…
It was always so easy for her to order me to hide my magic. She’d have bound my magic or stripped it from me if she’d had the power to do so, or the coin to pay someone to do it for her.
Instead, she’d simply threatened and punished me, and used guilt as a weapon until I gave in and kept my gifts hidden from the world.
But my mother wasn’t here now being chased through the forest by a band of rapacious, murderous guards. I was, and I didn’t want to be caught by these men.
I staggered down the path toward the ravine, every step pure agony, and whispered more pleas to the trees.
Behind me, the guards were cursing now, all traces of mocking laughter gone. I stole a single glance over my shoulder.
The forest had herded the three men together and trapped them in a circle of thick brush and thorny brambles. They were hacking at their prison with their swords, but for every branch or vine they cut, two more took its place.
Without meaning to, I locked gazes with Jonas. His face twisted in fury. “This is black magic,” he snarled. “The little mouse is a witch.” His gaze went to something behind me. “Get her, sir!”
As I spun around, a blur of movement came from my right. I dodged away as Lord Vedast’s grasping fingers brushed my breast. He grinned at me as if this were a delightful game.
Vedast grabbed a handful of the front of my dress and ripped. The threadbare fabric tore down the front as I wrenched myself back toward the edge of the ravine, revealing my tattered chemise and my right breast.
“Hello, little witch,” he said mockingly. Rather than pull his sword from its scabbard, he drew a half-eaten apple from one pocket and a set of manacles from the other. “Your choice. Come sweetly, or be dragged by the hair.”
“Where’s Cibran?” I gasped, taking a step back while trying to hold my torn dress together with one hand.
Vedast gestured at the spray of crimson across his uniformed chest that continued down the arm he was using to dangle the manacles.
“Sadly, your farmer friend won't be able to greet you when you return, little mouse. But I’m sure he’d advise you not to fight me. He tried, and it ended poorly for him.”
Bile surged into my mouth. I swallowed hard to keep my meager breakfast down.
Cibran must have known the futility of fighting, but he’d done so anyway.
Perhaps to take his secrets to his grave, and perhaps because a beheading or stab to the heart was a quicker death than the agony he would have experienced in a dungeon.
Perhaps to spare himself the torment of witnessing what these men planned to do to me. Possibly all three.
Vedast glanced at the others, still cursing and hacking at the branches and thorny vines around them, and then turned back to me. “Release my men and come along now, little mouse. I promise to make your end quick once we've finished with you. And you might even enjoy what we do.”
His smile had all the confidence of a man who knew he could do as he pleased because the crest on his chest meant he wasn’t subject to any law but his own.
He stepped closer, forcing me back until my heels were mere inches from the edge of the rocky ravine. “Given you're a witch, an afternoon’s pleasures and a quick death by my sword is a far better offer than you’d get from anyone else.”
That he thought anything about his threats would lead to pleasure was simply further proof of what a monster he was.
“You would be brave to take a witch by force,” I said softly. “Perhaps you’re not fond of keeping your cock in good working order?”
His smirk grew as he dangled the manacles in front of my nose. They smelled strongly of enchantments. “That is why I carry these, little mouse,” he said. “Your magics cannot wither me once these are locked on your wrists.”
“Goddess,” I breathed. Not witch irons. I started to retreat again, but I had nowhere to go with my back to the ravine.
I groped for something—anything—to defend myself as he snapped one of the manacles around my left wrist. The agony in my ankle disappeared as the enchantments triggered, burning like a thousand white-hot needles jabbing into my skin.
I screamed as I’d never screamed before in my life.
Nothing had hurt so badly as this. Not the death of my parents, not my worst beating by my cousins, not the day our landlord had turned me out of my childhood home with nothing but the clothes on my back and what I could carry in my trembling arms.
Branches rustled beside me, and a sturdy stick about two feet long and as thick as my wrist shoved itself into my free hand.
Thank you, Goddess.
As Lord Vedast lunged for me, I used every ounce of my desperation and his momentum to drive the stick’s broken end into his side with all the force I could muster. Hot blood gushed over my fingers and splattered my dress.
Vedast grunted, let go of the manacles, and punched me in the face.
Pain exploded through my jaw and my head snapped back so hard stars burst behind my eyes. My vision went dark.
I felt myself rising, as if I'd been picked up or shoved, and then I was falling backward into empty air.
Please, I tried to whisper, but the word never reached my tongue.
Through the fog in my head, I felt rough, scraping impacts all over my body—my arms, my legs, my back, my head—as branches bent and bounced and swayed, attempting to slow my fall while keeping my plummeting body away from the sharp rocks that lined the ravine.
The impact of hitting the mossy stone at the bottom knocked the wind out of me. I lay still, my battered body blessedly numb.
A chorus of angry voices drifted down from above, echoing in the ravine. “Lord Vedast, your wound—” someone began.
“I’ll live,” Vedast snapped. He sounded breathless and in pain, though I was too dazed or too close to death to enjoy it much. “We’ll take the weapons we found and go directly to Coldspell, to a healer sympathetic to the king. It’s only a short ride.”
“Should we carry up the witch’s body to be burned?” another of the guards asked.
“Let her rot where she fell,” Vedast spat. “Some creature will eat her and scatter her bones. There will be no decent burial for the likes of her.”
“Then we should at least fetch your manacles—”
“I don't give a damn about those manacles,” Vedast shouted, then grunted as if yelling had hurt. “I’m bleeding, you idiot!”
Finally, their voices faded as the men headed back to their horses and left me to my fate. The forest fell quiet, the only sounds the wind in the leaves and a few birds.
I didn’t open my eyes. I couldn’t. My eyelids were much too heavy.
Maybe I was dying. My body felt like a bruised and broken wreck, but the pain was distant. That was a mercy, at least. And I lay in the forest’s embrace, where my magic made me feel most at home. That was a mercy too.
One of the few sensations that registered in my clouded mind was the weight of the enchanted manacle circling my wrist. The pain was little more than a throbbing, burning ache now.
I didn’t want to die with a witch’s irons binding me, but I couldn’t move.
And even if I could, I had no key with which to free myself.
If it weren’t for these irons, I might not have minded so much that this ravine would be my place of final repose.
Hot tears—unbidden and unwanted—slid from under my lids. They trickled down my temples and into my hair.
Gradually, through my numbness and grief, I became aware the forest had fallen silent. No bird song, no rustling of little animals in the underbrush, not even leaves fluttering in the breeze. Had I lost my sense of hearing in my last moments?
No, a soft sound reached my ears from somewhere nearby—a gentle susurration of something large and heavy sliding across mossy stone.
The quiet movement was the very last sound I heard before I faded away.