“For me?” she sputtered as if that idea were preposterous.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t for me,” I countered, circling her and Melaina as I scanned the area for invaders. “If I wanted to do anything for my own benefit, I would’ve taken the damn things off days ago! Do you realize how inconvenient it is for your hands to be bound together all day long?”
She slapped stern fists to her hips as she turned to follow my progress with a scowl. “So what the hell else can you do that you haven’t told us about?”
I gave her a quick grin. “All kinds of things.”
But before I could even begin to list them, the caw of a raven echoed overhead.
I looked up, forgetting everything else. “They’re coming,” I announced and pointed. “From that direction.”
“Oh, Jesus. Here we go again,” Melaina muttered. “You and your melodramatic obsession with thinking we’re always in danger.”
“Because you are always in danger,” I argued, squinting through the trees. “There.” I pointed. “Hear that? Horses. Someone’s coming.”
“Probably other travelers, you moron.”
Lord have mercy. Melaina had to be the most stubborn woman ever created. “If it were other travelers, why are they coming through the forest and not down the damn roadway that’s literally on the other side of those trees?”
The first rider appeared from between the branches and leaves, running pell-mell toward us with a raised ax. Then more emerged, seeming to bleed straight from the woods before they fully formed before us. And more emerged behind them.
And more.
And more.
All of them brandished weapons and rushed forward in attack mode.
“Graykey scum!” one of them shouted, making their intent obvious.
“Holy shit!” Melaina cried from somewhere behind me. “There are dozens of them!”
“Yeah. I didn’t count on there being quite this many.” Shit. I backed toward Quilla, holding out my hand to block her from the oncoming riders. “We probably should’ve run.”
When I glanced over at her, my gaze was full of apology. I hadn’t kept her safe. I had failed.
But all she did was lift her sword, prepared to engage. “Too late for that now.”
“Quilla,” her aunt warned. “It’s never too late to run.”
Except it was. The leader of the pack had already reached us and was leaping from his saddle with a war cry. He landed heavily, battle-ax still raised before he pushed upright to charge.
Directly at my mate.
Somehow, he knew she was the marked one. Not good.
I rushed to intercept, catching the attacker by surprise and slashing him through the middle so that he folded in on himself and damn near melted to the ground. He’d been so intent on her, it was like he hadn’t even noticed me.
The next wave of three riders noticed me, though. They came straight for me, swords raised. Two remained mounted, while the third leaped off his saddle to confront me on foot. The first blade swung toward my head. I met it with my own, blocking the death blow, and while our blades were still interlocked, I kicked out, planting the heel of my boot in the chest of the pursuer rushing forward on foot, knocking him to the side and straight into the path of the third man who was swinging a chain mace at me. He caught his comrade instead, causing the man to cry out and topple over.
Twisting my sword to break free of the blade linked with mine, I stepped to the side with a suddenness that caused the rider to lose his balance and tumble off his mount. I slashed him in the back on his way down to help him land harder.
With a snap of my wrist, I activated the shield I had magically hidden in my leather cuffs, and a latticed network of electric strips immediately sprang out over the back of my forearm. I lifted the crackling shield of pure lightning just as a chain mace ball full of spikes swung at my head. It hit the shield instead, and the electric lines seemed to grip the metal ball and follow the chain down to the hilt where it electrocuted the hand of the man holding it. He screamed and flew back away from me, blood pouring from his ears while black soot covered his face.
A feminine gasp followed and alarming distress spiked through my love mark, telling me Quilla was engaging with her own assailants. I swung around in time to see her fling her dagger at one man charging her. It flipped through the air before flashing past his face, missing him by a hair. She grappled in her pocket for another blade, but I was faster, pulling up my own and whipping it out. It stuck into the center of his back, causing him to fall face-first into the dirt before her.
She looked my way with wide eyes, and I nodded, reminding her of our first encounter by calling, “Don’t forget: the body has more surface area to hit than the head.”
Quilla rolled her eyes, but I swear a grin was about to follow. Or it would have if horror hadn’t filled her face as she gaped at something behind me.
Realizing I was about to be ambushed, I ducked and heard the swoosh of air above me as a sword swung at the area where my head had just been. So I kicked out behind me, catching some unlucky bastard right between the legs. He cried out in pain and was doubling over by the time I swung around to face him. Figuring he was already suffering enough, I merely used the hilt of my sword to knock him over the head and render him unconscious. As he slumped to the earth, I thrust my sword forward and stabbed another man through the chest.
But another wave of men was approaching, and I knew there was no way to defeat them all.
I lifted my sword anyway, ready to die a soldier’s death.
In battle.
But just before they reached us, a row of hedge bushes appeared in front of me, their bushy leaves and thick branches nearly eight feet high and completely obscuring the small army from view.
“What the hell?” I heard one of the riders shout. “Where’d they go?”
I turned to find Melaina poised in a strike stance, arms lifted toward the hedgerow, knees slightly bent, and face full of concentration as she’d used her magic of disguise to cover us.
Except the wall was only an illusion. If the men only tried to walk through the hedge, they would meet no resistance whatsoever. I swung back, preparing for them to realize nothing actually stood between them and us.
But instead, the caw of a raven filled their air as it dive-bombed our attackers.
Holly.
The unicorn raven landed on the ground in front of us, transforming as she went so that she morphed and grew, shedding her feathers for scales and growing enormous. She landed with such a massive thud on the ground that the earth shook. A great roar emerged from her lungs as she spread her wings, the wind produced from the move totally blowing away the glamoured hedgerow Melaina had just made.
Not that hiding us mattered anymore. The riders who were attacking didn’t seem to care about us with Holly—transformed into a giant dragon—looming before them. She reached out her talons and caught one man by the waist, plucking him from his horse and flinging him to the side. He flew about twenty feet before crashing into the side of a boulder and slumping limply to the ground.
Then Holly tucked in her neck as if inhaling, only to breathe out a stream of fire.
“Holy shit.”
She sprayed the ground in front of our enemies, making a wall of flames separate us from them. They screamed as if she were burning them alive—which she totally wasn’t—and they wheeled around on their horses, fleeing in all directions.