“Really, kitten, it’s as if you didn’t just spend the last week with the two of us.” He held out his hands, grabbing for the wrapped-up spawn. “Come on now, hand it over. No use getting attached.”
Amma shook her head, holding the bundle tighter to her chest. There was a muffled child’s cry, and Amma gasped at the sound.
“Enough of this,” Damien grumbled, turning away from her. “I’m sick of this wretched village, Xander; open the portal so we can get out of here.”
Xander scoffed, then reached into a pocket with one hand, revealing the translocation stone. As he held it up, the other remained out, waiting for the child.
“Amma, hand over the relic.”
She swallowed hard. “But it’s not a relic.”
Xander rolled his eyes. “Is your pet being purposefully dense, or did she hit her head in that temple?”
“Amma.” Damien injected threat into his tone in place of words he didn’t really want to say.
“No, I changed my mind.” She took a step back, knocking into the fallen log, voice shaking like a thin branch in a storm. “We can’t do this. Damien, tell him we can’t do this.”
He couldn’t look at her, the sway of her presence almost overwhelming as it was. “We don’t have time for this—they’ll be out looking for that thing. Xander, open the bloody portal.”
“I adore it when you’re so domineering.” Xander dropped the stone, and the ground split where it fell just before him, the smell of brimstone filling the air as the ruddy darkness of the Accursed Wastes opened beneath their feet.
Amma’s pathetic voice cracked, and Damien practically felt it splintering into his own chest, “But, Damien, please.”
“Sanguinisui, hand what you’ve got over to Xander now.”
Amma’s body snapped to attention. Compelled, she marched toward Xander, hands no longer possessive around the squirming bundle as she held it out.
The blood mage’s dark eyes lit up as he hopped over the portal. “So, that’s how your talisman works? Dark gods, that is nice!”
Amma deposited the swaddled thing into Xander’s eager hands. Dazed, she wavered when the order was carried out, and Damien took her by the elbow, jerking her back so she wouldn’t do anything stupid in her post-enthralled state.
Xander was much less gentle with the spawn, predictably, pulling at the turquoise blanket to reveal its hidden face, but Damien wasn’t going to give him the chance to express the shock he was about to have. Without heeding the bundle or consequences, Damien kicked Xander squarely in the stomach.
The idiot had already positioned himself perfectly before the raised earth at the edge of the portal, and it barely took any effort to send him back where he belonged. He swung his arms, shocked with not one but two surprises right after one another, and fell backward.
The blanket unfurled as Xander tried fruitlessly to stay aloft, and Kaz was only caught in it a moment, wings flapping to be free and fly up and away from Xander’s snatching hands as he fell. But it was no use, it had happened too quickly, and Xander hadn’t even thought to use arcana to keep himself upright. The portal swallowed him, just as it was meant to do, and in a shock of white hair and a tumult of curses, Xander was gone, nothing left but the vague smell of burnt cinnamon and the echo of a betrayed voice.
Amma took off in the same instant for a copse of thick foliage. “Oh, I’m so sorry!” she cried, lifting the actual infant from where he had been stashed. Ruddy faced and beginning to bawl again, she held him close. “I know, I know, we didn’t mean to leave you for so long, but it’s all right now.”
As she bounced the baby gently, she looked to Damien. She had been convincing, red still rimming her eyes from forcing out tears, but she smiled at him. He returned the grin momentarily then snatched up the swaddle from where it fell. Half of it had been burnt away, trapped in the portal as it closed up. “Well, that’s one problem solved. Now for the second.”
They meandered through the forest toward the town more slowly. Xander would appear back at his tower in the Accursed Wastes, and he didn’t have a direct way to return to Durendreg, so they’d bought themselves days. Slower was also preferable as the village itself was still likely in the midst of chaos, though Damien expected the shadow imps were all banished with Xander’s expulsion. Kaz was even trudging along beside them with a newfound lightness.
“You justkickedhim,” Amma was saying to Damien, but her voice was syrupy sweet as she poked at the baby in his arms, somehow his turn to carry once again. The child had taken to waving clumsily, and every time Amma waved back, it let out a high-pitched squeal of delight. Annoying, yes, but perhaps Amma was not completely incorrect when she called itadorableas well. “You didn’t use magic or anything, just your boot. And then he was gone, just like that! Bye, bye, Xander!” She waved again, and the baby waved back.
“I couldn’t call up arcana without him realizing something was amiss. You were quite convincing as well.” Damien readjusted the infant. “I don’t think I can ever trust your tears again.”
“It wasn’t all an act. I was a little afraid you might change your mind,” she said, chuckling as the baby bit down on the strap of Damien’s armor.
“You were?” He slowed, turning to her. Pretending to argue about handing the spawn over, then tricking Xander with a swaddled Kaz and sending him through his own portal had been a joint plan, and a good one, no reason to second guess.
The amusement at the spawn crawled away from Amma’s face. “Um, well, things in the tower were…tense, and you didn’t really want to send Xander away, did you?”
Damien’s brow pinched. Injuring Xander was actually great fun—he would have done that regardless—though hehadhoped the blood mage could be reasoned with instead. Despite how ambitious that goal was, and how their sparring session proved it might have been impossible, Damien was willing to prolong being in Xander’s presence in exchange for his help in perfecting a spell to remove the talisman from her. As it stood, all of Damien’s translations and notes from the Lux Codex still needed quite a lot of work, and unlike Xander, Damien was unwilling to test out hastily crafted magic on living beings—least of all on Amma.
Amma, who walked beside him, smiling for the first time in too long. Amma with her golden hair and her blue eyes and her gentle voice and a touch that had thwarted all the horribleness in the temple. That—that hadn’t been magic, though he’d seen her do a bit of that as well. That had been something else.
Something he had no business thinking about.
