“I don’t rat on my employers.”
Jax moved his head a fraction too far in my direction. His word choice made it simple for someone like Noth to put it together.
“Oh, Pumpkin! If you wanted to spice up our love life with a third, you just had to tell me. I would have preferred a female, but he will do. You didn’t have to pay him.”
The bridge slammed down, clearing the path for our escape right into the setting sun. I gritted my teeth until I thought they would shatter. Noth made it a joke, but his eyes blazed a hellish red.
It was enough of an opening that Jax pressed the paper with the witch’s sigil to Noth’s chest. As my magic crawled all over him, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. As fast as it invaded his body, it pulled from mine. Not in the controlled way of expending magic, but a haywire feedback cycle that stiffened my limbs and fired pain through my blood just like it did him. The spell rebounded on me tenfold.
“Counter the sigil, Maggie!”
My arms moved just enough to draw the counter on my own chest and the magic released both of us. I staggered back and Noth did too, like a string tied us together. What the absolute fuck? My admittedly limited magic had never acted that way before. Rue never bound herself to another person’s magic, even her mentor.
But Jax took full advantage of the pause. Withruthless efficiency, he ran Noth through with his own night terror sword.
I screamed as Noth’s knees hit the dirt, with what had to be black blood leaking from his mouth.
“Wait,” I yelled at Jax, my hand wavering like it would take all of this back and the human froze.
“Your concern is touching, Pumpkin, but playtime is over. That one hurt.”
Pain did something special to Noth’s face and I had to keep my purpose steady. The Calix’s vines wrapped around him, pushing out the sword, filling the hole it left. It was then I realized the black wasn’t his blood leaking from his mouth. His shadows came out to play. Noth’s body began to distort and grow.
“Run,” I said to Jax.
To his credit, Jax backed up to shield and defend me.
“You said he was an Elf. What kind of freak is he?” the soldier said.
My heart broke a little watching Noth flinch at the words. Shadows flickered stronger around him.
I kept the details of the job scarce because I needed Jax to believe he could do this. Hells, I needed to believe it. Fighting a Nightmare Walker would have ended the conversation before it started, no matter what gold I offered him.
Noth’s claws splayed in the dirt, forming a skirt of deadly tentacles around his hulking, boiling form that remained too agitated to settle into one creature. The sungasped its last warm rays over the horizon and sunk down into a twilight only lit by Noth’s many ruby eyes. They all blinked in a ripple, all trained on me. He would really kill me this time. Part of me accepted it and the other part wept that I had destroyed what we might have been together.
Watching him fight Jax like a fierce warrior and not the prima donna he pretended to be, I realized Noth’s every action hid something deeper. My revenge wavered in front of me. My anger propelled me this far, but I never asked him the most important question of all - why? Rue would have tanned my hide for not remembering the most basic tenet of witchcraft. When everything had its equal and proportional price, you got good at understanding consequences. I never pressed Noth about what happened in Rue’s cottage and now I would never know.
This was my fault. I placed myself in front of Jax, despite his protests and faced Noth head-on. I would die first with the hope Jax would get away.
Dust filled the darkening air as the Nightmare clawed the ground with its many limbs. High-pitched, inarticulate fury fueled the Nightmare’s cries. I braced for death until the creature came crashing to my feet and rolled over onto what I assumed was its back. Staring at me with a tongues-lolling expression of bliss, I felt a tentacle wrap around my ankle. I didn’t dare pull away. Those limbs reached up to lick my neck.
Was that my heart thundering in my chest?
Wait, the ground shook too. I glanced over the bridge and found a band of Elves rushing through the dark straight toward us. Their flaxen hair streamed out like glowing pennants behind them as if they collected the last of the luminescence in the world to light their way. Even their horses shone with an otherworldly radiance. Had Jax called them? Betrayal choked me in a fit of pure irony.
I expected them to stop, perhaps rein in and display themselves with the nonchalant grace I watched Noth produce without thinking. Instead, all three of them plowed their mounts into Noth, producing a tangle of limbs, swords, eyes, screams and terror. All the breath left my lungs as Noth fought the Elves in earnest. No hesitation. No mercy. He made the scuffle with Jax into a playground slap fight.
I summoned my magic and drew a rune on the closest horse. Its whinny became a tinny whine as I shrunk it down to palm size. The Elf I took it from barely glanced my way, but still lost his head for his inattention. His glow faded as his corn silk hair unfolded over the cold ground. Noth’s salamander scuttled over to snap it up in his jaws.
I should have been screaming, but from everything Noth told us, his people didn’t deserve him. More importantly, my magic actually worked when I called it!
The Elves fought in a graceful dance, sliding swords and daggers against Noth’s limbs. A hail of blows camefrom all angles. These fighters matched Noth’s blurring speed and furious sword work and there were two of them left.
I flipped through my mental grimoire of spells Rue taught me and they were all local cures, hearth and home type stuff. I only knew the size spell so she could pack more supplies into her herb boxes.
“We have to help him,” I said to Jax.
He reared his head back. “I thought you wanted me to kill him?”
