He would cage her.
He would break her.
He would never allow her to leave unless he was imprisoned himself, because he was his father’s son, in the end.
Damien pulled his gaze away from Amma to look back at the way they’d come. The rocky mountainside climbed up from the horizon beyond the now-unseen city. It was thick with trees, the kind that didn’t lose their needles in the cold—Amma would know exactly what kind of pines they were—and he felt in them hidden eyes, watching and waiting for him to become his worst incarnation. He snarled at them and refused.
There was a yowl over the windswept plain, Quaz atop a small boulder, paws in the air, Vanders perched on his head. Damien and Amma went quickly to the imp to see he hadidentified not much besides a rock. It was nice, he supposed, as far as rocks went, as wide across as two carts and only about as tall as his knee, but it would have been nicer if it were marked with, perhaps, a sigil suggesting it were a gateway to evil unknown.
“Underneath.” Amma put a foot up on its edge and shoved with no avail. “We need to move it.”
“Shadows could break through, but it will be loud when it cracks. We could also—”
“No,” said Amma. “You can’t use your magic or It will feel you too soon.”
“You are probably correct, but—what are you doing?”
Amma had her eyes closed, hands pressed together.
“I do not think invoking that goddess—”
“Shh.” Her brow furrowed for a moment. “I’m trying to hear the trees.”
Damien glanced about. There was only one, and it was quite far off. “Should we move closer?”
“No. Quiet.”
Wind blew, and Quaz crept to the rock’s edge with a trill. A groaning came up from the ground, and Amma extended an arm. A length of greenery shot upward from the grasses, knocking into her hand so hard she was thrown backward.
Amma squealed, catching herself and taking the vine in two hands. Its green coloring shifted to a rich brown as it solidified, the top thickening into a bulb and shooting tiny, pink buds off of it, and Amma’s face grew into utter delight. “I did it! Holy Sestoth, I actually made one again!”
Damien admired the staff, slightly taller than she was, a twisting branch of earthy darkness that looped over itself at the crown. It was covered in delicate, pink leaves so obviously those of a liathau, but the core in its bulbous top, visible through small knots in the wood, held something—something also obvious, butthat Damien couldn’t possibly believe.
He put a hand out to it, and as he waved, the silvery strings running at the staff’s core followed. “H-how?”
“So, there’s this place the witches taught me about. Well, it’s only sorta a place, but it’s calledhessach, and I think that’s where these things are from.” Amma tossed the staff from one hand to the other. “I only made one once before in the Innomina Wildwood, but it wasn’t as pretty as this one is.”
“Amma, that’s filled with noxscura.”
“What, really?” She pulled the top of it close to her face, and he almost grabbed it away. It wouldn’t spill out, she hadmadethe damn thing, but, dark gods, that in and of itself was…well, it was sort of terrifying, but it also made him want to throw her down on that stone and claim her once and for all.
Damien shook that thought reluctantly from his head. “Because of the talisman?” he said mostly to himself.
Amma waggled her brows but shrugged. “Maybe. Let’s put it to use.”
With a force he was not expecting, Amma slammed the pointed end of the staff at an angle where the stone met the ground. She grunted, baring her teeth, and then grabbed its knobby top and leapt.
Damien laughed as she pulled herself off the ground, the staff bowing under her weight, a growl emanating from her throat ferociously. “Amma, a lever’s a brilliant idea, but—”
There was a shifting beneath Damien’s boots that made him jump away from the stone. From the deadened earth, the dried-out ivy snaking beneath the grasses bloomed into life, running through with its original deep purple color, and it curled about the base of the boulder. Slow and steady, the vines squeezed, and the boulder was lifted from Amma’s fulcrum. She dropped back to the earth, and the rock continued to slide, Quaz and Vanders atop it and prancing along its edge with huge eyes, until it hadbeen completely moved to a new spot.
He sighed, hands on his hips. “When am I going to accept I have no idea what you’re capable of?”
Amma blew out a long breath, tongue lolling out. “Whoo, Damien, I don’t know if I could have taken it if it’d been much bigger.”
He cleared his throat, tucking the memory of her words away for the off chance he did survive all of this and found himself alone. “Yes, well, look at you, still conscious and everything.”
But neither of them could bask in her success for long. Left behind in the space where the rock had been was a cavern cut out of the earth and steps leading downward. They listened for a moment but heard nothing over the whipping winds on the plain around them.
