There was another crack, but this one came without pain, and then another, loudly echoing into the room. Cedric halted the yanking he’d been doing to her clothes, looking up with knit brows. A rumbling beneath them wiped the vile pleasure from his features, followed by a long and low creak like the groan of branches in a coming storm.
As Cedric sat back, Amma pulled herself right over the footboard, slamming into the floor. Ignoring the pain, she tried to scramble back farther, never enough room between herself and the marquis, and came up against the chest of drawers. The bed was no longer a static piece of furniture, though Amma could barely believe her eyes. It was shuddering, stiff and odd as the layer of lacquer over it cracked, and the bed shook itself out.
Cedric realized slower than Amma, his confusion twisting into horror as he raced clumsily backward into one of the posts. It squirmed behind him, and he shrieked, flailing off the bed’s edge. Behind Amma, there was more shaking, the chest moving against her back like a great beast of an animal taking breath-like pulses. She shifted off of it, crawling to the room’s corner as the desk too began to groan and move.
The overwhelming creak of the sturdy, wooden furniture overtook Cedric’s shouting as it came to life around them, each piece rising up, taking heavy, wide steps on the paws their legs had been carved into. The chest of drawers moved itself in front of the door before Cedric could bolt for it, its top drawer lunging out at him, backing him toward the far wall where a small side table jabbed him in the back.
Amma watched wide-eyed as the bed doubled itself over, and angled its headboard posts forward. Their fang-like points twisted, resin shedding off of them to leave the dark wood naked, jagged, and sharp, and even without eyes, the bed found Cedric. The marquis should have called up his arcana, he should have at least tried to run, he could have even begged Amma to make it stop, as useless as that would have been, but instead he stood in awe of his luxuries turning on him. The bed struck out then with one rapid movement, and the spiked post impaled him squarely in the chest.
A wet, gurgly, unbecoming cry dribbled out of Cedric’s mouth with a sputter of deeply crimson blood. His features were drawn back, still in shock, as shaking hands pawed at the liathau post penetrating him just under his ribs, too wide a wound to be healed as it affixed him right to the stone wall.
Amma slapped a hand over her mouth, pushing her back into the opposing wall, a shudder running through her. Under her other hand, there was slight movement, but she wasn’t afraid, the desk nudging her thigh gently. Warmth thrummed through her palm, the liathau telling her it was still there, and that she had given it life to protect her. Her arms shook, her knees weak, but she never blinked—she couldn’t look away, just in case. She had to see it, she had to know.
Cedric Caldor had always been so sure he could never be felled, and then there he was, run through, not by a sword, barely by arcana, but by his own possessions. His eyes had gone glassy, not really finding her, just searching the room with a sluggish haze.
Just die, she thought, watching an arm grasp weakly at the air, desperate for saving.
The bed pulled itself back, blood flooding out of Cedric’s massive chest wound as he wailed pathetically, and the post thrust forward once more, pinning him to the wall as his body fell completely lax.
A weak laugh broke out into the silence. Amma was surprised to hear it come in her own voice from behind her hand, but then another followed, and it feltright. Not because it was funny, the sight of a dead man, slumped over the weapon that had taken him, a pool of blood and gore growing beneath his feet, but because it was a relief.
Though they still shook, Amma’s hands came to her clothes, straightening her tunic and nervously touching every part of her. She was still whole, as whole as she had ever been, and she was alive.
And Cedric Caldor, Marquis of Brineberth, occupier, tormentor, villain, was dead.
CHAPTER 34
THE ILLUSION OF SAFETY
The magic of the shapeshifting spell was waning, and fast, as Damien honed in on his target. He wanted to swoop in one of the narrow windows, shrouded by the shadows on the keep’s far side, but the shift wouldn’t hold, and at this rate, he would fall hundreds of feet out of the sky not as a bird, but simply as a man. He may have been more than just a man, but blood mages didn’t have wings, and the solidness of the ground was a terribly good equalizer no matter what barreled toward it.
Damien dove down short of the keep, aiming for one of the very few clusters of trees amongst the moors. The branches came at him fast, and he was about as well versed at being a bird as a bird was at being a human, so when he tried to brake, he just slammed into a thick crisscrossing of branches. It struck him then nearly as solidly as the tree’s limbs that he should probably put his talons out and beat his wings backward. Erratically flapping and clinging onto a thin branch, he finally came to stillness in the tree.
Beak open, he let out a breath, and then all at once, his form shifted back into that of a full-grown man. The twig that had sufficiently supported a hollow-boned raven gave up completely, sending him straight to the ground.
Rolling onto his back with a groan, Damien glared up at the broken branches he’d hit on the way down. “I don’t know what Amma sees in you,” he muttered up to the tree that couldn’t hold his weight, and once he remembered how human limbs worked, pulled himself to his feet.
Farther from the keep than he would have liked, Damien peered out from the clustered copse. There was no cover out on the moor, not that Damien envied an opportunity to skulk about. No, for this, he wanted to call up every dark and demented force he knew, tear fissures into the infernal plane and welcome evil to serve at his whim, burn the place to little more than a smoldering pile of ash, and personally slit every throat he came across save for Cedric Caldor who he would mount alive on a pike and watch leisurely bleed out as he begged for his life. Then he would sweep Amma into his arms and profess…well, he would figure out exactly what he’d say later.
But it might not matter, even if he could come up with the perfect words, if Amma saw him bury his dagger into every being complicit in her capture. Surely she would suggest that at least some of them didn’t deserve it, and since he only knew the face of the marquis, he would, however unfortunately, have to leave the rest alive.
Because hedidcare, and hedidfeel, and he was going to bloody well prove it to her.
Along the dirt pathway, a young man in a soldier’s garb was strolling away from the keep, carrying a large bowl. There was no one else about, and he veered off the path and into the thick brush. Infernal arcana still tingled intensely in Damien, the shifting feather and Kaz’s heart invigorating rather than draining him. He could disguise himself as this man, but he had to get rid of him first. But not kill him.Fuck.
Trickery it was then.
Damien hid himself completely within the copse, feeling like an idiot—blood mage, son of a demon,hiding behind a tree, but it was necessary—and then whistled, high and sharp. He waited, but no footsteps came nearer. Damien chanced a look around the trunk, the man fifty or so paces off and standing near a well but looking about curiously.
Damien whistled again, higher, sharper. The guard took a step toward the darkened copse of trees, blanketed in shadows with the sun now completely risen, but stopped. Damien pressed his lips into a thin frown, annoyed and prepared to whistle again when the man began toward the trees. Wonderful, he was finally coming, and would make this easy, proving himself a moron already since he hadn’t even unsheathed his weapon.
Damien pulled himself back behind the tree completely to wait. Any moment now, the soldier would stick his head in, and Damien would catch him about the neck and restrict his breathing until he stopped kicking. Whether he survived or not afterward was between the soldier and his gods.
The footfalls came to a stop, but the figure never made an appearance, and Damien almost poked his head out again when he heard movement just beside his hiding place. There was a shuffling, and then the sound of leaking water and a very satisfied sigh.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Damien stepped away from the stream of piss landing an inch from his boot, and the young man stumbled back from the hulking, black-cloaked blood mage before him. He might have screamed, might have even pulled out his sword, if there weren’t a root right behind his feet, but instead the guard tripped, landed flat on his back, and then failed to move at all.
Damien waited a moment, nudged the fallen man’s leg, and realized the dumb kid had knocked himself out. “Well, suppose I’ll take that one for free.”
