Amelia.
If you’d told me before this that Amelia would come for me—risk herself, save me, when she had nothing to gain—I’d have laughed in your face.
But now, hearing her sharp, infuriating voice again, a bloom of joy cracked open in my chest.
“This is not the time for you to play, kid! Get out! You have no business here!” Winifred barked from my right as the man beside me crumpled to the ground with a thud.
I could imagine her smiling as she shot back, “You definitely made it my business when you kidnapped someone frommylibrary and lockedusup inmylibrary.” Her voice grew closer with each step. “No one messes with me and my brother or my library and gets away with it.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Winifred’s voice hitched; I could only imagine the horror etched into his face as he looked at the fallen body. “Is that—you stabbed my cousin?”
Amelia faked a gasp. “Oh, you’re about to sacrifice a whole human over nothing, yet you’re red because I nipped your cousin a tiny bit? I’m allowed to play too, you know.”
His tone darkened to a growl. “Get out of here if you don’t want me to make you regret it.”
She sighed theatrically. “Boring old man.” I heard the scuff of her shoes as if she was turning to actually leave.
“What?” I muttered, hoping she was just being her usual annoying self.
“Oh, wait.” Another shuffle of feet. “If I’m going to leave, I have to take that girl with me.”
“This is your last warning,” Winifred snarled.
I couldn’t see her, but I was half-sure she shrugged. “Oh well,” she said lightly, and started coming closer.
Heavier footsteps pounded the ground, which I easily assumed belonged to the men as they moved, probably trying to stop her.
“Can you fight?” Winifred asked.
“Yes.” She paused. “And my brother can. Oh, look at him behind you!”
The next sounds were fists meeting flesh, grunts echoing through the cold night. Amelia’s voice rose sharp and vicious as she fought. I’d never imagined she could take down men, never once pictured her as someone who could fight, but now I heard her cracking bones alongside her brother. I couldn’t even process the shock of it.
She cursed them out with every hit, her words as sharp as her blows. No knife pierced skin though, only the sound of fists breaking ribs, of bodies slamming to earth.
The air turned impossibly colder, wind whipping through the clearing as thunder rumbled far above.
Right. The moon.
Was she angry? That her plan had been disrupted?
As the grunts and the clash of fists went on in the background, a hand grazed my cheek. Fingers caught the edge of the blindfold and yanked it off.
Light spilled back into my world, and I squinted against it, my lashes sticking together with tears. When my eyes finally adjusted, Amelia’s face swam into focus above me, strands of her hair dangling so close they brushed my forehead.
Her dark hair hung loose and wild, glinting like black silk against the pale silver glow, nearly tangling with my lashes when I blinked. Her forehead was streaked with dried blood, smeared across her cheekbones like war paint. I was sure it wasn’t from this fight.
Had they attacked her in the library?
“Your hair’s getting into my eyes,” I croaked, my voice coming out jagged and crusty.
Her lips tilted into a smile. “You’re welcome.” She unsheathed a knife and began sawing through the ropes binding me. “As much as I’d like to know what you’d taste like roasted, I’m not about to lose to Winifred. Not after they swallowed my library in smoke and knocked us unconscious in a locked room.”
I huffed out a sound that could have been a laugh if my throat wasn’t shredded. “My bad for thinking you’re doing this out of the goodness of your heart.”
“There’s no goodness in my heart if it’s not benefiting me,” she replied dryly, the rope around my torso loosening under her blade with each pull.
“And how is saving me right now benefiting you?”
