Briar immediately bristled.“Delilah!”
Without a second thought, she sprinted off into the mushroom forest.Seaweed immediately followed on her heels.It was all Kieran and Sebastian could do to scramble after her, trying not to slip on the mossy rocks or into the babbling brook at their feet.Any lingering pain in Kieran’s body vanished as adrenaline shot through him.The climb was uphill, and Kieran felt sweat immediately wet his brow and the back of his neck, even with the cool chill on the wind.
Seconds later, they burst through a copse of towering mushrooms into a clearing.Here, the brook widened into a large pool, the rocks having dammed it.The water was opaque, icy pale blue like snowmelt.A small waterfall poured into it.Even from thisdistance, Kieran could feel a magical charge coming off it like heat from a flame.
It would have been a beautiful sight if it weren’t for the massive iron chains that had been hammered into the rocks.They wrapped around a small, elderly woman who was probably only five feet tall.Her face was smeared with dirt, and her hair was in tangles.The chains pinned her against the rocks, and everywhere they touched her was raw and red from her struggling to escape.
“Verbena?”Kieran gasped.
Her eyes blinked open weakly.She barely seemed strong enough to lift her head.
“You,” she whispered, voice small.“You must run—it’s not safe here.This pool is full of the vein’s raw magic, which will twist the mind and body without the scepter to control it—”
“Not now, Verbena,” a low voice said.“Give us a moment to speak before you start making demands.”
Elias Barclay stepped out from the mushrooms, holding a chain in his hand.At the sight of him, Seaweed bared her teeth and growled.Six mercenaries flanked him.He was dressed in a nice suit, and Kieran might have laughed at how absurd that choice was for a magic forest if he weren’t so horrified by the scene in front of him.The chain in Elias’s hand was attached to a pair of handcuffs made of a strange material—wood, Kieran realized.
“Hawthorn,” Sebastian said, as if reading Kieran’s mind.“To block magic.”
Elias pulled the chain, dragging another figure into the light.As soon as the glow from the mushrooms illuminated knotted brown curls, Briar let out a sharp gasp.
“Delilah!”she cried.
Delilah looked up to reveal a fresh black eye that had left one side of her face swollen and bruised.Tracks of dried blood went from her nose to her lip, which was split.Her dress was torn and mud-stained.Her wrists too appeared red and raw.
She croaked, voice hoarse and pained,“Briar.”
Instantly, Briar jumped for her before Kieran could think to stop her.She leapt over the rocks in Delilah’s direction, eyes burning with twin blue flames as her magic awoke and unfurled in her chest, sparking at her fingertips.The mercenaries on either side readied weapons.
As Briar lifted her hand to fire off a spell, Elias yanked Delilah closer to him, a knife seeming to appear from nowhere as he pressed it to her neck.
“Not a step closer,” he told Briar pleasantly, as if this were little more than a joke to him, “or this goes in her throat.”
Briar skidded to a halt, her eyes rounded.Delilah tried her best to pull away from the knife’s kiss.It nicked her skin, a small droplet of ruby-red blood dripping from the wound onto the collar of her dress.
Briar froze.She growled a curse, then added, “Fine!Damn it, what do youwant,Elias?”
Elias smirked.“Ah—there we go.Cutting to the chase.That’s what I like about you Pelumbras—no dillydallying.”
Elias reached into a bag at his hip and withdrew the Crown.Still holding the knife to Delilah’s throat, he waved it in the air, grinning.
“Our deal still stands,” he said, his eyes moving from Briar to Kieran.“You give me the Hilt and the Stave; I give you yourfriend back.Then we can all go home, no fuss.”His gaze fell on Sebastian.“I’ll even forgive your breaking your contract, Sebastian.Consider it an act of goodwill.”
“And if we don’t take your deal?”Briar cut in, her focus still solely on Delilah.
Elias exhaled a laugh, tapping the knife against Delilah’s throat.“Well, your friend here won’t be walking away.Or…any of you, really.With all the money I’m about to get with this magic, I can make any sort of investigation disappear before it starts.Klaus might be a pain in my neck, but then again, he hasn’t broken a curse in nearly a year.His limelight is fading—and will go dark the second I take his chance at a panacea away.So really, I have nothing to lose, unlike all of you.So tell me: Do we have a deal?”
Kieran’s heart thrummed.He stared across the clearing into Delilah’s bloodshot eyes, seeing the way she was fighting not to shake.He’d never seen her so scared; she was always the one to put on a confident face for everyone else.Now, though, there was nothing but raw terror in her eyes.
“I should mention,” Elias said, tapping the wooden cuffs around Delilah’s wrists, “that all of us are wearing hawthorn protection, so your magic won’t be able to touch us.I suspect that will put you at something of a disadvantage, no?”
Kieran ground his teeth, feeling magic burn in his chest.It wouldn’t help him here, not with the hawthorn.Any spell he cast would turn into nothing but sparks the second it got close to Elias and the mercenaries.It simply wouldn’t work.
But he had an idea of what would.
Kieran exhaled, letting his body relax.He put on his besttimid, nervous voice—the one he’d always used as a child with his mother.“I guess you’re right—this was a bad idea from the start.I’m not willing to risk our lives for a panacea.I accept your deal.”
“What?”Briar said, jaw agape.While Kieran dropped his pack and unzipped it, she started, “You can’t—but we agreed—”
