Kaz was bounding toward him, wings flapping as he ran to clear more distance. “Master, they took her!”
Damien’s heart dropped into his gut, the blood draining out of him. He already knew, in truth, he knew when Xander said it, but Kaz would not lie, not about this. But as his own spell continued to crawl away, not finding her, it did identify a lingering, infernal arcana, the fizzling out and burning off of a spell so like Xander’s translocation.
He honed in on the sense, following it. “Who the fuck took her?”
Kaz hustled to keep up. “Those Righteous Sentries. I only found them when they were stepping into a portal with her.”
Damien stopped suddenly, stomach lurching.Don’t follow me, she’d said, and her eyes had been so angry, so…disappointed. He’d hurt her, he knew that—he’d been hurting her since they met—but this was different. This had cut her to the quick, and she’d finally walked away from him. Perhaps she had seen her chance and chosen not to turn back.
“Did she…” Damien swallowed hard, the spell to chase after Xander’s magic wavering. He stared out into the darkness ahead of him, seeing her walk off again, wishing he’d had the courage to beg her to stay. “Did she go willingly?”
Kaz had the tip of his tail in his clawed hands, worrying it. His big eyes held the answer, and he gulped. “No,” he groaned, all gravel and relent. “They tied her up and carried her off. She looked very, very angry.”
Damien blew out a relieved breath—shehadn’twanted to leave him after all, thank all the basest beasts—but then caught himself: the only thing he really knew for certain was that she didn’t want to go with them to Brineberth becauseof course. But regardless of if she wanted Damien, she would want to be in Brineberth even less, and he wouldn’t leave her there. He pushed off the tree, following the last dregs of his arcana.
When he found the place the translocation spell had been cast, he noted how the fallen leaves had been disturbed, signs of a struggle that made his insides twist, and then the burnt spot where the stone had been dropped to rip open the plane. He pressed a hand to the soil, feeling as it continued to thrum. Even better than Xander’s previous spells, this one was so clean, so good, and had nearly erased itself already, but had also been exceptionally powerful.
He focused his arcana into the remnants of the spell, trying to read it. He knew they went to Brineberth, west of Faebarrow, but he had no idea where the fae had thrown them—Damien had seen to making Amma too angry to request anything specific.
The blood dripping from his arm pooled into the earth, and then it was found, the memory of five presences, four of which he cast off for the familiar one, the warm one that made his heart ache, grabbing on before it could slip away. Eyes closed, he could see her, and then there was a sense of distance, a vague impression of the miles between them, before the ghost of her was gone.
He glanced up at the moons, their shapes broken by the branches of the trees. They were closer together than last he’d seen them, but he could still orient himself, and headed in the direction the spell had pointed him. He strode through the forest, direction unwavering, and Kaz followed. It didn’t matter how long it took, he would find her, and he would make it so Marquis Cedric Caldor could never do this again.
When Damien broke through the trees, he spied a fire burning lowly beside a rocky outcropping with sleeping bodies about it and a small contingency of horses. He strode up to them, ignoring the voices as the watchman for the group called to wake the others. A bow string was pulled taut, but Damien swiped an arm through the air blindly, and he heard the weapon. Someone ran at him, but he called up a shadow at his back, hearing the surprised cry and thunk against it. Choosing the sleekest and sturdiest looking horse, he threw himself atop it, Kaz clamoring up its haunches just in time for Damien to dig in his heels and speed off.
The animal thundered across the open field, foregoing the roads to drive forward as westerly as possible. He should have been feeling weary, but he’d been renewed with purpose. There would be no stopping until the horse refused, and then he would find another, but his stomach twisted at the thought of how long this would ultimately take. He needed to aid his journey with arcana if he would ever get to Amma in time. But then arcana and Amma aided him instead.
CHAPTER 31
A EULOGY FOR ALLEGED CHIVALRY
Unlike Roman, Gilead wasn’t stupid. The mage had every opportunity to learn what Cedric truly was, to hear the vile threats he made, and had still always shown him loyalty, so there was no use in Amma pleading her case to him. Instead she screamed, she kicked, she scratched, but she was still dragged up a wide flight of stairs and then a second, winding one where she was tossed into a tiny room. Gilead didn’t bother attempting to remove any enthrallment spell from her, he only assured Roman that with time she would calm, and a guard should be posted outside her door, for her own safety.
With a promise that, “Marquis Caldor will deal with you when he comes back,” and then a shouted half-prayer as he left, Amma finally found herself alone.
She paced the small chamber, only a simple, stuffed mattress on the floor, wash basin without water, and a chamber pot inside. The place was unswept and had none of the modern amenities of even the taverns she had stayed in on the road. It certainly wasn’t fit for the future wife of a marquis, a thought that made her gag, but should have been questionable to the others. But none of the men had even blinked when she had been dragged back out into the dining hall and upstairs except to comment that whatever infernal spell she was under had turned her into a feral animal.
The keep was old, serving as some sort of barracks for a small contingency of soldiers and mages, though the lack of arcane lights and running water suggested the place had been disused for quite a while previously. There also didn’t seem to be much around beyond the walls to support the keep, no village for commerce in sight, not even a single farm to produce food.
And there were no women. She wondered how long the men had been here without families or outside contact, and why in the Abyss Cedric thought this was the right place for her. Whatever the reason, she needed to flee.
There was only one, small window in the room, but she couldn’t have fit through it if she tried, a narrow slit in the stone good only for peering out and shooting toward the sea. Even if she’d managed to get her shoulders and hips through, it was a very long way down the side of the keep, the wall, and the cliff to the rocky shore below where the waves broke endlessly under the moonlight.
Her weapons were gone, magic drained and suppressed, and there was nothing else in the room to use. She hadn’t even been given any utensils with the bowl of food left for her, not that she could stomach to look at it. Her fingers clenched, surrounded by stone, linen, and clay.Clay.
Amma fell to her knees on the lumpy mattress and upended her hip pouch. The broken shard of pottery she’d gotten from the square in Faebarrow when that artisan had been dragged away fell out, thick and sharp at its corner, but also a slip of soft blackness that made her heart shoot up into her throat.
Amma lifted the feather, holding it like a sacred thing in two hands. She ran a thumb up its length, the shine to it iridescent in Ero and Lo’s light. Elderpass felt like so long ago, when Damien was still harsh and when Amma was still plotting to get away from him. It was laughable when he’d handed it over, telling her it would bring him to her if she got lost.
Why would I want you to find me if I ran away?she had asked.
I’m sure there aresomethings in this world worse than I am.Damien had been wrong then—it was not some things, it was all of them.
She grabbed the piece of pottery and felt for its sharpest edge, bringing it to her forearm, then stopped. Damien said she would need to spill her blood, but she couldn’t risk anyone else seeing the cut. She remembered then the light when the talisman had gone inside her, how it had glowed red before receding under her skin. She tugged her tunic down and didn’t hesitate, aiming just to the left of her sternum, gritting her teeth, and digging in.
Crimson bloomed on her skin, and she inhaled sharply at the pain. How Damien cut into himself so stoically, she had no idea. She dropped the piece of pottery back into her bag and took the feather to her chest, covering it with her hand. Her heartbeat thumped hard under her palm, the blood warm, the feather soft. Amma was all out of magic herself, expelled and stifled, and her body exhausted. She wavered, and then lay backward, hand still snug up against her heart.
But Damien had told her she didn’t need to do arcana, she only needed to want him. And, by all the gods and arcane things in all the planes, dark ones included, she did want him, so the magic came on its own.
