“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” How was this my luck?How?
The woman—obviously a Celestial—smiled again and took another step toward me. “Welcome home...”She paused. Beamed.
And, as I opened my mouth to shoot a snarky retort, she shocked thehellout of me.
“Adelaide.”My name, myfullname, sounded like a purr as it rolled off her lips.
45
Run
Darragh and Jaxon returned to escort me out of Lamex. I saw them for only a moment, staring at me in repulsion, before Byron pulled a burlap sack over my head.
“Take her into the forest,” Byron instructed as he tied a rope around my hands.
“How far?” Jaxon asked.
Byron tugged at my arms when I reached for the sack, attempting to free my mouth. “You’ll leave that on if you want to stayconcious—conscious,” he hissed before saying to the men, “One day’s walk. Be sure she doesn’t know how to return to Lamex.”
“And if she looses ‘er power?”
“Do what you must to ensure she doesn’t.”
For twenty-four hours, we walked. Jaxon, again, held my bound hands. Darragh kept a sword pressed to my back. Neither spoke, and their tension seemed palpable.
“This should be far enough,” Darragh said after the long stretch of silence.
The sound of his voice startled me.
“Ach.” Jaxon, mistaking my flinch for an attempt to flee, jerked on the rope. “No, ye don’. Ye’ll be free to go soon, mind, but we’ll no’ have you followin’ us through the forest.”
The rope around my wrists tightened with a painful snap. My knuckles scraped against hard tree bark.
“Ye’ll have to untie yerself,” Jaxon said. “Or simply use yer power and burn the rope away. But know ye’ll be noticed, and hunted, if ye destroy the forest.”
They left me tied to a branch of that birch tree.
And, as my wretched flame never appeared when I most needed its help, it took more than an hour of fiddling to undo the knot.
I was left with a three-day ration of food and water. Nothing else. No weapons to hunt with, no additional clothing. Not even a pair of boots.
Thus, I walked.
I had no destination in mind; merely the notion that moving was preferable to standing still.
And I was hunted.
Even when I delved deep into the forest, where the thicket of barren trees barred the sun from casting its light upon the ground, soldiers relentlessly pursued me.
* * *
I layflat on my belly, hidden beneath a bush, while two women roamed the clearing.
“Byron’s a fool,” one said as she knelt to inspect the ground. Looking for my footprints, no doubt.
Fortunately, my bare feet left shallow impressions that were quite easy to cover up.
“He fears Seruf,” the other woman commented. “And did not want to bring her wrath upon his people.” Her fingers cast a luminous glow in the dark wood. She was a hybrid—an Illuminator.
