Stepping through the thick vines, Damien scanned the ruins below. Four enemies, one still unseen, six potential allies, depending which way the witches would be swayed, and Amma hidden. Kaz was included in that number, still disguised as a monkey at the base of the tree, watching with big eyes.
The elven mage saw Damien first, pointing with the flameless hand, not releasing the spell. He’d learned something, at least. “Bloodthorne!”
“Hello,” he drawled, waving with a play at amicability as he slowly took the bent pieces of bark that served as steps down along the trunk to meet them.
“Where is she?” spat the knight, sword raised.
“Who?” Damien clasped his hands behind his back, and tried to stand as unmenacingly as possible, difficult at his height and with his natural demeanor, eyes sweeping over the lot, catching Fior’s leery glance as the man stepped into the ruins. That was one ally tipping away from him already.
“The Lady Avington,” the knight called as if they’d all forgotten. “You absconded with her nearly a moon ago from Brineberth.”
Damien shrugged. “No, no, I never absconded with anyone fromBrineberth—in fact, I’ve never even been there. But howdidyou find me out here in The Wilds?”
“What’s going on, blood mage?” Kalani’s smooth voice was not as accusatory as her words could have been. She cocked a brow, standing tall and jutting her chin out.
“A misunderstanding,” he said, echoing Amma’s words, though he wanted to say it was idiocy and blind loyalty that led to the current, annoying situation. He paced a few steps around the edge of the ruins as casually as possible. The three of them shifted right along with his movements but still held their attacks. Arcana was heavy in the air.
“He’s a criminal and a kidnapper,” the priestess, Pippa, said, voice only shaking a little. “Whatever he’s told you is undoubtedly a lie.”
Damien felt the witches turn toward him, some expectant, some critical. Apparently banishing the greatest evil he’d ever come into contact with as a favor wasn’t enough to gain their full trust, nor was their opportunity to spend uninterrupted time with the supposed abductee. He groaned, focusing on Kalani and squeezing a fist around the noxscura to keep it at bay. “Again, things are not entirely as they appear. These…fineadventurers have been sold a bill of goods from a questionably righteous Marquis and have been following me, the how of which I am very interested in, if I might say again.”
“We had help,” the knight announced with a stark laugh.
“Help?”
Pippa made a face at the knight, and the mage cleared his throat. “Your help,” the elf clarified. “You left a trail of infernal arcana easy enough to follow for someone with my adept skills.” It was then Damien realized he wasn’t holding his book, but it was hanging from a chain on his belt instead, the weight of which threw him slightly off kilter.
Damien sniffed. The ring in the forest that had resulted from his…tantrumwas bad enough, but this was something else entirely. He’d made himself trackable? And by these idiots? Basest beasts, what was happening to him? He rolled the arcana in his fingers just for comfort, just to know it was there and he still commanded it.
“We have no evidence of misdeeds here,” Kalani finally said, reasonable as she tended to be, brows knitting as she looked at Damien. “In fact, just the opposite, albeit shrouded away. Why don’t we let the evidence speak for itself?”
She wanted to bring Amma out, and as much as the Righteous Sentries were total fools, they were all ready to attack, as were the witches, and he didn’t want to pull Amma into the center of that.
“Safety,” he said.
“Or imprisonment?” Kalani frowned at him. Too reasonable. Damn it.
The arcana in Damien’s hand flared. He was not imprisoning Amma, and he had come to abhor the idea, but it was an incredibly difficult thing to argue. Especially since he actually sort of was. Heartbeat speeding up, his nerves weren’t letting him think straight. A well-aimed spell would blind the three Sentries, all bunched up so close, and Amma had only asked they not die—she said nothing about maiming them. He could follow up with a few broken bones, maybe slice off a limb or two if only to slow future pursuit. And it might be fun to make them choose which they would be forced to lose.
The three stood there, poised to strike still, but holding back. That was out of character as well, especially for the biggest bastard in full plate. He glared at them each in turn, but when he got to Pippa, saw that her eyes were just darting back to him. She’d been glancing up at the hut—the hut where Amma was hidden.
Damien wheeled around, raising a fist full of arcana. There on the top step stood a shadow brandishing a weapon. Before he could react, the vines in the hut’s doorway were swept away, and Amma stood there with her crossbow raised, tip of its arrow an inch from the sneaky one’s nose. The Righteous Sentries’ thief threw up her hands, and she jerked backward. Amma advanced on her to keep the weapon—the thief’s own stolen weapon—at an unmissable distance.
“That’s my girl,” Damien murmured, satisfaction running like arcana through his veins as he closed his fist around his magic again. After seeing how steady Amma held the weapon, he’d kill every last person in the whole of The Wilds just for a brief moment alone with her.
“He’s enthralling her!” called out the priestess, and a ball of white light burst forth from the symbol she wore, straight at Damien. Enveloping himself in arcane smoke, there were other flashes before everything went dark. The mage’s fire, Kalani’s spell, the glint off the knight’s sword, and even a gust of infernal fire from Kaz scurrying up to him.
Damien dismissed the shield quickly, needing to see the aftermath, but the knight was standing before him. Impossibly fast, he brought his blade down on Damien, arcana crackling behind it. He ducked away, but his blood was spilled from a painful gash that should never have been able to cut so deeply, let alone land.
But then blood was exactly what Damien needed. He swept a hand down the burning slice and actualized blades to throw at the armored man, carving into the plate and knocking his heavy form back onto his ass.
The mage was next, far off but calling up more fire. Kaz shifted course to take the brunt of his spell, but when the imp hurled himself at the elf, the priestess intervened with a fire of her own. White hot and full of divinity, Kaz was knocked to the ground, skidding into one of the ruin’s broken columns so that it crumbled around him.
Damien’s anger flared as a searing and foreign pain ran up his arm. He called up a strangling darkness around the two casters. Hemming them in with shadows, hearing them both cry out, seeing the fear in their eyes before it was blotted out—it was utterly delightful. Darkness squeezed them from both sides, and they gasped, the mage scrambling for his book and the priestess for her symbol, but he trapped their arms, crushing them, bending them just enough to the point of breaking.
But no—death wasn’t what Amma wanted.
“Damn it.” Damien called back the shadows, and the two collapsed. From the corner of his eye, there was a glint of metal, and the knight was almost right on top of him again, ready to cleave him in two. He moved to raise his arm and call up his own arcane sword, but an agonizing pulse through his shoulder blinded him with pain.
