“She bit me!” The knight’s booming voice was in Amma’s ear, the one who had so brutally maimed Damien with his arcane sword. No wonder the squeeze on Amma’s arms was so painful she thought her shoulders would pop as he shook her. “We’re trying to help you, damn it—calm down.”
How is this helping?she attempted to scream, but it only came out as a muffled warble against the gag.
“It’s not her fault, Barrett.” The wavering voice of Pippa, the priestess, sounded from Amma’s left as the woman stepped out from the darkness of the trees. “Remember, she’s enthralled.”
Amma screamed soundlessly against the linens. The hands that were holding her finally fell away, but her wrists were already bound at her back, and she stumbled forward. She tugged at the rope, but the knot was too good, and she sneered at how proud the smaller woman looked.
Desperate to explain, Amma’s words were nonsensical and muted, eyes darting from the priestess who had her hands out as if pleading, to the mage who had wandered toward them paying little attention, instead looking through his book with a conjured light in his other hand. Panicked and frantic, Amma fought against her binds and shouted noiselessly until her throat burned.
“Hurry up, El,” said the smaller woman, winding her hand at the mage. “You were supposed to be ready to translocate us as soon as we got her.”
“Well, I prepared this suppression spell for Bloodthorne, but he’s not here, so I don’t know what to do with it.”
Barrett was massaging the hand Amma bit. “Oh, who cares? Just use it on her—Xander probably thinks we’re already in Brineberth by now.”
Amma froze. Brineberth? Xander? How in the Abyss the two had anything to do with one another, she had no idea, but she was not willing to find out. She turned and fled as fast as her feet could take her.
“Hey!” The voice of the knight followed after, and then so did solid footfalls on the forest floor. A blast of arcana crashed into her back, knocking her to her knees, and she felt every muscle, including ones she didn’t know she had, seize up. It wasn’t pain, but it was close, the thing that flooded through her, like liquid metal filling up her veins, and she knew that even if she hadn’t just expelled so much magic into that tree, she wouldn’t even be able to make a seed crack open then.
“Stop trying to run off, we’re the good guys!” Amma was lifted as if she weighed nothing, and Barrett hoisted her over his shoulder. When she slammed down onto her stomach, the breath was knocked from her and stars burst in her eyes, but she did hear him mumble, “stupid bitch,” which didn’t just keep her conscious but invigorated a new rage inside her.
Amma’s sluggish limbs kicked, but Barrett trapped her legs too. Though her vision was wobbly, a golden glow appeared in the darkness, rushing past her upturned head, and then there was a thunk in the leaves.
“What’s this?” Pippa picked up the figure that the soil-skinned fae, Rea, had given Amma, the sparkle of the goo inside reflecting in the priestess’s eyes. “Oh, Xander will want that.”
Amma groaned, sucking in a deep breath through her nose, the gag too tight against her mouth and the knight’s shoulder digging into her stomach, head upside down as she hung over his back. Those fae, Rea and Tertius, had been right: she hadn’t kept ahold of that for long at all.
Tears sprung to Amma’s eyes as she continued to try and scream, but even the minuscule sounds she was making were dying away, devolving from threats to pleas.Don’t do this, she tried to beg them,Please, don’t take me away.
But even if they could hear her, they never would have listened.
“Hey, this is nice,” Barrett’s voice sounded as his hand moved over her thigh, and then a pressure against her leg was removed. Her silver dagger—by Sestoth, why hadn’t she thought to grab that when she had the chance? “Here, Kori, have it.”
“Here we go,” the mage, announced, and there was a scramble behind her, a flash of light, and suddenly the whole world flipped upside down.
Amma’s vision sharpened at the following brightness. It was still night, but the glow of the moons undisturbed by tree limbs was like daytime compared to where they had been. Dropped back down onto her feet, Amma staggered. The land laid out before her was flat and windswept, spotted with thickets of heather and a few copses of twisting trees, but the moor stretched mostly empty, far into the dark distance.
At Amma’s back there was a sound, a low rumble that came and went, and she turned into the briny breeze behind the lot of them. She had never been to this place, but she knew the smell of the ocean and that Brineberth March ran all along Eiren’s westernmost border, separating Faebarrow from the sea. Before her the moor continued on, but it ran into a cliff, beyond, the ocean, and just on its edge, a building.
With a rough shove, Amma was pushed toward the stony keep one hundred paces away. It was a blocky thing, older too, made up of solid, militaristic walls and lacking all the pomp and size that a marquis’s castle should have had. She tried to ask where they were, but her voice was once again a quiet muffle against the linen that was wedged into her mouth.
“Oh, you think we should remove that?” Pippa asked, carefully walking up beside her.
“No.” Barrett gave Amma another shove so that she continued along the dirt roadway that carved across the moor. “She’s a biter.”
“Well, she looks like a captive,” the smaller woman, Kori, said.
“According to Pippa, she’s enthralled—that’s not our fault.” El, the mage, flipped through his book as they went. “I don’t really have anything to get rid of that, but you’d think that suppression spell would help, huh?”
The priestess shrugged. “Maybe we can reason with her. Kori, could you please?”
The smallest woman reached up as they continued along and undid the knot against the back of Amma’s head.
Amma spat out the excess ball of linen that had been choking her, taking a huge breath, mouth dry and throat burning.
“Sorry about all this,” Pippa said, a gentle hand touching her shoulder. “But it’s for your own good.”
Amma’s nostrils flared, and she flashed angry eyes at the priestess, trying to form words, but they came out in an unintelligible growl.
