And just when I convince myself he’s staying, he breaks away, turns his back to me, and jogs back toward Nigh. I close my eyes, tears trickling down my cheeks, and hope that the press of his lips will be embedded in my skin forever.
The tears are still clinging to my eyelashes when a rageful cry bellows from the trees.
Lightning
Shadowthorn
“You thought you could run from me!?”
The fury in Alphonse’s voice is more volatile than the snarl of any demon I’ve ever heard. He thunders out from the shadows atop his blindingly white stallion like a bolt of lightning sparking in the middle of night. When I look up, I’m surprised to see that Dimitri is still within sight, having started his trek back to Nigh, but not having made it very far. He watches Alphonse and a small crew of Crusaders barrel by, only glancing my way once they’ve past him.
Their horses whinny to a stop just a few paces away from me.
Dimitri jogs up to us.
Alphonse’s dark hair is wind-tossed from the hard ride. He runs his hand over his dark locks, eyeing us all, and paying extra attention to my aunt, then my uncle.
Disgust gnarls his lips. “I should’ve known the type of company you’d keep, cousin. Fugitives and more mages? Predictable. Tell me, do your friends realize that you’ve doomed them?”
“I-I made them come. With my magic,” I blurt, frantically having remembered Dimitri’s plan. My eyes find his now, full of apology and sorrow, but I blink away before I can feel sorry for him. He’s the one breaking my heart, I remind myself. “They are innocent,” I tell Alphonse. “Whatever you have planned for me, just spare them.”
He snorts. “You must think me a fool if you truly expected me to believe such a thing.”
“It’s true, General,” Dimitri says, staggering closer to the man. “I tried fighting away her suggestions, but she was too powerful. Only once we made it in the Shadowthorn, once she stopped giving me commands, was I able to break away. I was trying to flee her presence in hopes that the distance might return to me my freewill.”
“Is that so?” Alphonse raises an eyebrow at Silver and Güthric. “And you two? Why are you not fleeing?”
My mind scrambles for a rational excuse, but I know too little about magic to think up one.
Silver answers for me, her spine as straight as a rim rod. “We came of our own accord. We have no plans of joining you in the Capital.”
“Kill Qaeus,” Güthric replies in support.
A touch of wicked amusement plays at Alphonse’s lips. “What? Just the five of you? An entire legion of Crusaders couldn’t take him down, and you think because you have a mage with you that you’ll be able to finish what the humans started?”
Imryll strides forward. “That is enough. I will hear no more talk of the mages. We are druids, you foolish boy, and we will be treated with the respect we deserve.”
Alphonse braces himself with a mocking chortle that comes in one wave after another, the laughter deepening into his belly until he is rocking with it.
“Respect? For you?” He gestures to the grey burlap draping over her naked flesh, a robe that’s even more unflattering on her than it was on the Spirit Keep. “Never in my life have I bowed to a peasant, and I don’t intent to start now.”
“Oh,” Imryll says, wickedness laced in the silkiness of her voice. “That can be arranged.”
She beckons to the underbrush of the Shadowthorn, to the tarnished leaves and the blackened branches. Vines creep along the forest floor like spider legs.
Alphonse shrieks with horror. His horse rears, tossing him to the ground. The other horses do the same, launching their riders before bolting back toward Nigh. The vines grab onto the Crusaders; they twist around Alphonse’s ankles, his shrieks frantic and shrill. They wrap around his legs, dropping him to his knees with a thud. At the same time, more vines climb up his sides until they can reach his wrists. They lock him in a vise and tug his hands to the ground.
With the grace of a black swan, Imryll glides over to the kneeling Alphonse. Alphonse tries recoiling as she bends down to look him in the eyes.
Imryll smirks. “There, now you can say you’ve knelt before a druid.”
He growls, a vicious, ugly thing.
Imryll straightens. When she speaks, she addresses the Crusaders as much as she does him. “The choice is simple. You will return to your castle and proclaim us dead. No one will come after us, and you will leave with your lives.”
“You can’t threaten to kill them!” Kalli interjects. “These are Arcathainian people. They’re Crusaders. They will be treated with the same respect you demand.”
Slow and lethal, Imryll pivots to watch her, a slender brow raised. “You will remember that I requested said respect and was denied. Therefore, respect is forfeit here.” Her gaze pierces back to Alphonse. “If you do not agree to these terms, I will summon the roots from the earth, they will spear your hearts, and I will leave your bodies for the demons to pick apart. Do you understand?”
“You can’t—” Kalli cries.
Adrien shushes her, reaching for her arm but she pulls it away.
“Just who do you think you are? I don’t care if you’re a druid; I don’t care if I’m one. You will not kill the people of Arcathain senselessly.”
“I will if I must.”
Kalli balks. “You’re just as bad as the demons!”
The two of them continue on like this, their voices carrying in the clearing. My ears twitch for any sign of danger, but it’s difficult to hear anything over their bickering.
Finally, after my nails have started digging so deeply into my palms that they’ve started to draw blood, I turn to them both, a chastisement on my lips.
But a blanket of black folds over me, something heavy, amorphous, crushing my chest. My feet leave the ground as I’m thrown through the air, a ragdoll floating and gasping in a sea of black. I crash to the ground with a whooshing breath of wind. I strain for air, but I can’t find it, not immediately anyway.
“Halira!”
The scream is too distorted, too buried beneath my confusion and pain, for me to recognize it for anything more than something being yelled in the chaos.
Finally, I gasp, the air returning to my lungs. The day returns too, or at least the grey hues of it that the Shadowthorn permits through the trees. But as the demon rises from my chest, releasing my arms so that I might grasp for a weapon—a rock, a stick, a handful of dirt to be thrown at the beast to distract it long enough to scramble away—the creature unhinges its fetid, dripping jaw and sinks its angry teeth into my side.
Pain lances through me, searing blades of bright red iron puncturing my stomach. White flashes before me, blinding and agonizing, and I arch. I scream.
Another demon barrels over me. It slams into the first one, the two of them crashing somewhere in the trees beside me, but I’m too busy writhing to see where they’ve landed. My gut screams, the demon’s claws freshly ripped out of me, and allowing a new heat to pour into the wounds as hot as liquid metal.
As I arch anew, more demons leap over me from the shadows. I brace myself to be teared apart, but they bound beyond me.