His grip around her steadied with one arm, and he brushed a hand up along the side of her face, tipping her head up to him. “Never again, Amma,” he said. “I’m sorry. Never again. I promise.”
She drew in a ragged breath, blinking tears out of her eyes, fists loosening. The arcana was finally gone but had left her feeling betrayed by her own body. “What if I’d done it?”
His dark brows knit while fingers eased hair back from her temples. “What if you’d stabbed me? Well, I was already prepared—I gave you the command, and I am wearing a bit of armor. My skin does mend itself fairly well too, if you remember.” The corner of his mouth twitched up. “Also, you know, I am significantly stronger than you and well practiced at this point in fending off your advances.”
She grunted, reminded that she was safer, even here in The Wilds with a blood mage, than how she had felt, roused from her fear by the amusement in his voice and curious choice of words. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Damien looked alarmed for a moment, then he grinned. With just one arm around her middle, he lifted her, and her eyes went wide, feet suddenly off the ground. “I could just toss you over there if I really needed to.”
She wiped at her eyes. “You wouldn’t.”
The soft forest floor was back under her boots, but he didn’t release her. “No, probably not even to save myself from impalement, as pathetic as that is.”
They lingered in the moment, Amma finally regaining herself but watching Damien begin to squirm.
“Ah, your dagger,” he said, gently pushing her away as he knelt to retrieve the blade. Handing it off, he went to back up, but knocked into the tree. Uncomfortably, he stood there, trapped before her, face falling stony once more. “And you do have my word that I will not use that Chthonic one again.”
Amma took her dagger in two hands, hating it for a moment, but knowing the blame did not belong to the weapon. It was her own fault, the fact she wasn’t strong enough, regardless of whether he compelled her with magic.
She nodded, head down, and they continued into the Innomina Wildwood.
CHAPTER 20
NO, WELL, MAYBE, PROBABLY, YES, DEFINITELY
Amma expected to wake exhausted and confused in the Innomina Wildwood, but instead she felt renewed, like she had shed a weighty skin and could move freely for perhaps the first time in her life. That attraction returned too, the one that lured her deeper into the wood the day before. The night had been cool despite the protected hollow at the base of a massive tree she and Damien had slept in, closer to one another but not nearly as close as she would have liked, but the morning was balmy and pungent, and Amma was eager to venture further in.
With no real direction as they went, Amma simply kept her eyes peeled, careful not to touch anything too beautiful or sharp though she longed to run fingers over the green and gold world around her. Damien had taken to keeping half a step behind, and she naturally took the lead, chasing glimmers of light that broke across the thick underbrush, listening to the calls of birds and chittering creatures as if they were directions in Key. When vines hanging from branches swung in unfelt breezes, she followed in kind, and when the flowers ahead were not blossoming under the afternoon sun, she turned to find another way.
Then she put out her hand and placed it on Damien’s arm, stopping abruptly. The bird calls had quieted, and the leaves no longer rustled. In the eerie silence, she peered ahead, instinct telling her to look up, but she saw nothing despite her skin pebbling with goosebumps.
Beside her, Damien shifted, and Amma turned. A set of yellow eyes stared out from the shadows suspended in the thick, leafy cover above them. Amma’s stomach clenched, the two caught in its unmoving gaze. It was difficult to tell, especially with its entire body obscured, but whatever was there, was big.
A sound broke into the quiet hanging in the air, small, but distinct. Kaz came tromping through the low ferns from behind them, head down, face smeared with gore and the limp body of something reptilian in hand. The imp was chewing, and gleefully at that, completely oblivious. At least he would be slightly amused in the moment before he died.
“Kaz,” Damien said in a low rumble, “hold still.”
Even with his great batwing ears, the imp didn’t hear, still twenty paces off, trudging loudly and chewing even louder.
“Kaz,” he repeated, and the imp finally looked up, watery eyes huge, unaware, but only for a moment.
Either from the looks they were giving him or the intense aura that had settled on their patch of the wildwood, Kaz sensed the danger then. He froze, foot hovering over the ground in his next step forward, wings pulled in, tail stiff, but all a moment too late.
The shadow in the canopy burst like a dense fog had been blown away, the leaves brightening as a form sprung off a thick branch. Muscled and long, the creature was covered in black fur, run through with russet stripes like dagger slashes. It moved impossibly fast for such a huge thing, clawed paws leading its pounce downward. Its elongated jaw was not unlike a horse’s with a flat bridge of a snout, but its fangs were entirely feline.
Damien had his dagger out, slicing down his arm as he called up a spell, but the creature would be on Kaz in a second, and the imp would be ripped in two. Amma slapped a hand onto the nearest tree without thinking, knowing only that Kaz had to be anywhere but exactly where he stood. There was heat under her palm and a yank in her chest that nearly pulled her off her feet.
The ground beneath Kaz split, knocking the imp forward. A thick root burst upward from the forest floor, catapulting Kaz right toward Amma to land squarely in her arms. The massive, muscled creature alighted the ground gracefully, as if it hadn’t been intending to swallow Kaz whole, but then it yowled as Damien’s blood blades carved over its shoulder.
The animal, so like a cat but larger than a horse, dug claws into the wet ground, a pool of shadows growing up from its talons as it sunk its head low and disappeared into a cloud of blackness. Only its eyes glimmered, narrowing, and then a spray of vile, orange liquid shot out at them. Amma clutched Kaz to her chest, jumping away as Damien did the same, and in the place where they stood, the orange-covered ferns burnt into nothing, the earth bubbling and melting into darkness, and a stench like acid.
Damien was cutting into himself again, the word coming out too calm, “Run.”
Amma squeezed Kaz, and the imp didn’t even try to escape, long clawed arms wrapped about her neck. She bolted, legs pumping hard as she sprang over a fallen log and slid against the wet earth when she landed. There was a screech behind her and the feel of arcana lighting up the forest, and Amma came to a stop.
What was she doing? Running away to leave Damien to fight off that monstrous beast alone? When she had a crossbow?
She whirled back around, Kaz clinging tightly to her, and grabbed for the weapon strapped to her back. Damien had called up a spell, or at least she thought he had as there were even more shadows descending on the place they had been. She gripped the end of her crossbow, but it was no use, there wasn’t even a target to try and focus on. A blur of movement in the illusory darkness told her something was inside, but she couldn’t decipher if it were man or beast.
