But Damien was not Cedric, and he was not doing this to her. It was Delphine.
Amma swallowed, finding her softest voice as she fell still. “Please, Damien, I know you’re in there.”
He blinked, violet gaze falling to hers. The darkness that had been crawling its way through his veins halted as he looked her over with a sort of wonder. Then she was pulled to him, grip still painfully tight, and Damien pressed a hard and desperate kiss to her lips.
Amma didn’t know what to do, but it was natural to kiss him back now, to want him even in a moment that could have been her last. And then she was falling.
Amma shrieked, but she slammed into the ground and toppled over herself. Rolling away from the ledge and Damien, she came to a dizzying stop on her stomach, the wind knocked out of her lungs. She felt for her dagger, fingers clawing at the ground, but there was only rock and dirt and pain. Gasping for breath, arcana sparked in her chest, reaching out again for anything left alive in the corpse-filled cavern.
Through strands of hair that had fallen in her face and the stars bursting behind her eyes, Amma could just see Damien standing at the edge of the cliff. Her voice wouldn’t come to scream for him to stop, lungs refusing to fill, but arcana pulsed through her stronger than it ever had. She had no strength to speak, to stand, to run for him, but her magic persisted and struck out for life.
And there it was. Amma couldn’t see it, but she could feel the flora, and it was listening to her. A carpet of dark, fuzzy greenery crept up from between the cracks in the ledge. Damien’s figure stood with his back to her, a black mist emanating all around him as Delphine continued to cast, and his head tipped downward as moss crawled up his boots and clung on.
But it wasn’t enough.
The wyvern swooped downward out of sight, and Damien stepped off the ledge. A scream husked painfully up Amma’s throat, but then it died as the wyvern pulled back up, Damien on its back just behind Delphine. Face lax, veins dark, he sat rigidly behind her, and the woman grinned as the beast swooped back the way they had come.
Amma pulled herself to her feet. She ran, away from the king and Kaspar and Gilead, away from the magic and the task to be done, away from E’nloc. She sped back through the arch and into the catacombs, darkness swallowing the wyvern. How could she catch them?
Amma slammed a hand onto a skull buried in the cavernwall. Arcana flooded away from her and called to the moss. It seeped out of every crack, blooming in the darkness with a luminescence that brought the cave to life with light. In its push to come to the surface, the moss dislodged bones and cracked through stalactites, breaking free and carving through the air. The wyvern rolled away from the cavern’s dropping daggers, dodging as bones burst forth from the walls.
Delphine tore herself around, eyeing Amma’s figure in the newly-lit space. The wyvern turned with a cry, wings pulling in as it dove. Amma’s fingers were firmly planted on the skull at her side, willing the moss to dislodge anything it could and knock the woman out of the sky. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t give up the connection she had and allow Delphine to get away, even as the terrifying creature sped toward her.
A pall of darkness shot up in front of Amma, shadows solidifying between her and where the wyvern would be. There was another screech, and she heard the beast’s wings beat as it was so close, but she felt nothing through the wall of shadows.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Delphine’s voice roared. “Sleep!” With a crackle of arcana in the air, the shadow began to disperse. Damien’s figure had slumped forward onto Delphine’s back, eyes closed. The wyvern’s talons broke through the last of the darkness, coming down on Amma.
Hands grabbed her. Wrenched out of harm’s way at a speed she was sure was impossible, the wyvern landed just where she had been, breaking through the wall of skulls, shattered bones dusting the air.
Delphine cackled, and the wyvern pulled back up, Damien still immobilized. Amma thrashed in the place she’d ended up, hidden in shadows yards away. The creature swooped yet again for the cavern’s exit, and with no more obstacles, made quick work of flying between the remaining stalactites.
Tears sprung to Amma’s eyes as the moss’s light died aroundher, the wyvern’s tail disappearing into the darkness, Damien gone with it. She was screaming after him, throat raw on pleas that he wake up, but she was trapped. How—howwould she get to him now?
She flailed once more, and the arms released her. She fell to the ground hard and choked on a sob, the sounds of chanting filling up the cave in the wake of her screams. All at once, the weakness came. The arcana had sapped her, and she fought the exhaustion, trying to scuff up to her feet to run after where the wyvern had gone but only falling back to the ground on hands and knees. “No,” she muttered, disgusted with the fragility in her voice. She was unable to stand, so she clawed at the rock, trying and failing to use her arcana—for what, she had no idea. “Please,” she whispered, “please, come back.”
“He’s gone.”
Even in Amma’s weakness, she lifted her head, boots stepping into her clouded vision.
“And you won’t catch him, not like that.”
The voice was familiar, and Amma focused, glare traveling up thin legs, a trim torso, and landing on that smarmy, fucking smirk. “Xander?”
“At your disservice, baroness.”
Amma’s mind was filled with too many thoughts to think them all at once, so she didn’t bother with a single one, rage flooding her instead of rationale. “You did this,” she growled, ire giving her the strength to push up to her feet and take a wild swing at Xander’s jaw.
A shadow no bigger than her fist appeared, separating the blood mage’s disgustingly-punchable face from her all-too-eager fist. Her hand sunk into it, skin taken by a shock of cold before it went numb, but she continued to push, ice jolting down her arm until she could take no more and collapsed again onto her knees.
“Really,” Xander scoffed. “After Isavedyou?”
The mess of thoughts slammed against one another in Amma’s head. “You held me back,” she croaked, “I could have—”
“You most certainly couldnothave.Ican’t even stop Delphine,obviously. Your moldy, little trick was a surprise, to be sure, but what were you planning to do? Knock thembothout of the air? Bloodthorne was being enthralled—do you think he would have had enough sense to protect himself from the detritus you were flinging so haphazardly into the air?” He snorted out a single laugh. “Now, wait here and get yourself together for darkness’s sake.”
Amma glanced up through strands of loose, sweat-drenched hair, and aberrant forms surrounded her. Shadow imps. Beyond, Xander was walking back into the depth of the catacombs. If she were lucky, E’nloc would swallow him whole like It would have done her if Damien—she pressed a hand to her chest, squeezing her eyes shut. Oh, gods, he’d almost thrown her in.
There was a tap to her knee, and through cloudy eyes, Quaz was climbing up onto her lap, carrying her dagger in his mouth.
