For the second time in almost twice as many days, Reeve lay atop a woman. It was his best record and also probably his worst. Celeste groaned, and he attempted to ask after her wellbeing but sucked in a lungful of dust. She too coughed from beneath him, but he knew from the protective spell she’d flung that neither had been hit. Crawling off of her in the rubble to feel about for Sid and give them light, he tried to clear his throat as a breeze swept past his face that felt eerily similar to the spell Celeste had conjured.
But without light, he could do nothing, so he called out and followed Sid’s answer. Somewhere behind him there was shuffling against the wall and a whispered voice. When his hand finally found the hilt, the weapon jumped to life, and he spun, illuminating where Celeste stood.
A shadow blocked her, in its center an orange glow so similar to the strange life the fire in the forge had. And then it was gone, but the terror in Celeste’s eyes remained as she stared through where it had been. Plastered against the battered bricks, the woman’s fingers dug into the crumbling mortar, shoulders drawn upward and mouth hanging open.
Then she coughed, grabbing for the pendant that hung from her neck, her head darting about like a bird again, searching for the shadow. With no sign of it in what was left of the smithy, she dug into the pack hanging from her shoulder. She pulled the still-intact jar out and sighed.
Reeve sucked a breath between his teeth as he stood—at least she had tucked the apotrope away before he’d thrown them both to the ground. But that had probably been wise, in the end, by the looks of what was left of the smithy. Piles of stone that had once been the flue had dented the walls, the platform to the forge was cracked down its middle, and a streak of moonlit sky was visible through what had once been a roof.
“Do you…do you think anyone heard?” asked Celeste in a whisper that suggested if she kept her voice low now that would somehow reverse the cacophony of the blast.
“Maybe not if the foxes are loud enough.”
“We need to go,” she said, pushing off the wall and immediately losing her balance.
Reeve offered her a steady arm, and she grabbed on, her only option to keep from tumbling over.
“I’m all right,” she insisted, pushing away from him and limping toward the ruined entry.
“You don’t look all right,” said Reeve, hurrying after and sheathing Sid. They were dropped into darkness again, but there was light beyond the smithy, both moons bright in the clear sky.
Celeste was glancing up and down the empty road, and then she turned for the way opposite of Briarwyke. “We completely lost him, didn’t we?” She hobbled toward the woods.
“It seems so. Where are you going?”
“Back to the temple.” For being injured, she was moving quickly.
Reeve peered into the forested outskirts of the village. The temple was due north but through heavy woods. “You’re going to have a very hard time going that way. The road will be easier.”
“What if someone sees us?” Celeste maneuvered herself around a thorny bush and then tripped right into an oak.
That was typical of evil, always wanting to skulk about in the dark, yet there was no devious cast to her voice, only fear.
“Then we explain,” said Reeve even as he hurried after her and offered his arm again.
She pushed herself back to standing and hobbled forward without his help, dodging between the trees and using them for leverage. “That’s not a good idea.”
Rarely were Reeve’s ideas deemed good, so he was unsurprised, and had to focus on keeping up. He took a slightly different path between trees set wider apart, gracelessly snapping twigs as he went. He might have lost her had she not been such a pale figure in the dark. “Well, then I suppose we will suffer through the woods and hope we are not gored to death by an infernal boar before finding the temple.”
“There aren’t infernal boar out here,” she hissed, tripping once again with a yelp.
Reeve pushed between two narrowly growing trees, offering his arm so aggressively it barely counted as chivalry. “According to Father Benjamin’s illustrations in that field guide you left me, a tear in the planes occurred during a new moon two hundred and twenty years ago right in the center of this town, and a whole pack came through from the Abyss. They’ve been breeding ever since.”
She had come to a stop, taking deep breaths against a tree, and looked up from under her lashes at him. There was perhaps anger there but mostly resignation. She mumbled gratitude as she took the elbow he again offered, and the two continued deeper in.
The forest was thick and dark, filled with nighttime noises. They frightened something large that skittered through the brush, but Celeste barely reacted to the disturbance, all that fear she had before gone. “He collected the arcana from the forge just like with the lamps, didn’t he?” she finally asked, voice quiet and distraught. “I’m afraid it’s making him stronger.”
“If you hadn’t disrupted all of my blows, I could have destroyed him.”
“I was using arcana to herd him toward you. Why were you even swinging?”
“I’m a knight,” said Reeve as if it were plain. “I stab things.”
“But theurn,” she said, shaking her bag and then stumbling before taking his elbow in both hands.
“I told you I don’t know what to do with that thing.”
Celeste huffed, her hands tightening on his arm, and though it was in annoyance, he didn’t really mind—at least she was holding on. She squinted into the darkness. “Well, we’re going to have to figure it out.”
