“Oh sure, no problem,” she bit out, even as she pushed magic into the poor, beleaguered air elemental, urging it to pour on speed.It did a non-physical version of panting, attenuating, fraying at the edges.It could and did feed on the magic she gave it, but it had also been stretched beyond its usual capabilities.“We can’t expect the elemental to hold the carriage together.It can’t move something that’s fundamentally not aerodynamic anymore.”
As if to confirm it, the carriage shuddered, made a loud, alarming cracking noise, and lurched to an angle, dragging along the rocky dirt road.
“Lost a wheel,” Cillian said, as ever, calmly documenting the ongoing calamity of this escape.
“You don’t say,” she growled.
The carriage shuddered anew as something thudded onto the already torn roof and a taloned paw swiped through the rent, narrowly missing his nose.“Hunter on the roof,” Cillian said, leaning back.
“Iknow.”
“Sorry.”
She knew this was how Cillian handled stress, by making everything an academic problem.Unfortunately, she was deeply worried that this particular problem had no solution, that they were, in a word, fucked.“I think the hunters won’t kill us,” she said, then involuntarily squeaked as the talons groped for her.“They’ll have been told to take us alive.”
The hunter wedged its fanged muzzle through the rent, getting its narrow snout through far enough for one side-set eye to spot her.It kind of grinned, reaching for her, but couldn’t quite maneuver with its head and paw constricted by the jagged opening.Black blood dripped to the floor from where it had cut itself.
“Though it seems they don’t mind causing a little damage.”Cillian batted at the paw with a heavy book, succeeding in knocking it aside, but only for the moment.“So much for the pen being mightier than the sword.”
Alise couldn’t laugh—she was too afraid for him.Cillian was a scholar, not a warrior.He shouldn’t need to be thinking about swords and fighting off hunters.“I’ll get out,” she told him on impulse.“It’s me they want.They’ll let you go.”
His usually soft black eyes flashed hard.“Absolutely not.”
“You can keep going,” she persisted, feeling desperate.“I’ll pump up the elemental and you can go get help.”
“What happened to us never parting again?”
“Temporary measure!The world needs to know about your findings.”
He shook his head and hit the groping paw harder with the book in his anger.“Han and Iliana know what I know.I’m not leaving you, Alise.We’re not doing this again.”
She started to fire back, thinking up something mean enough to change his mind, and instead burst into tears.What a wreck she was.Cillian cursed, ducked the flailing talons and snapping fangs and dove to her side of the carriage.“You’re exhausted,” he said, holding her close.“And you’re almost out of magic.Take mine already.”
“And do what?”she sobbed out.“The carriage can’t go faster.I don’t have a hunter-melting blade.My magic won’t—”
“Wait!”Cillian pushed her down on the bench, out of the way of the hunter, who seemed to be oozing more of its long body through the rent in the carriage roof.Then he crawled across the floor—disgusting with the oily black hunter blood—and dug his bags out of the under-seat compartment.“I know it’s gotta be here somewhere.”
“I don’t think there’s anything in your books that will help us right—” She gasped as he held up the gleaming slice of moonsilver.
He wasn’t agile or elegant, but one didn’t need to be with the right moonsilver implement.Alise held her breath, hoping this was a standard model hunter and not one of the newly enchanted resistant varieties.Cillian lurched, missing the first time when the uneven carriage movement threw him off balance, but he recovered quickly and plunged the slim piece of silver into the side of the hunter’s neck.
The hunter emitted a thin gurgling scream, thrashed, then dissolved, pouring through the rent in a nauseating stream of stinking black goo.Cillian exclaimed in horror and snatched up the books on the floor of the carriage before they could be contaminated and Alise went from her previous hysterical sobbing, which had been followed by gagging, to giggling at her lover’s sense of priorities.
Upon reflection, probably the giggling was no less hysterical than the sobbing had been.Cillian began chanting the freezing spell, which he’d memorized, of course.He ignored her attempts to interrupt.The howling outside abruptly ceased.She couldn’t even stop Cillian from leaping out of the carriage with his slim little weapon.She should be helping, but she just… couldn’t.
She felt ragged and utterly worn out.Cillian was right: she was about out of magic.In truth, she was about out of everything.Resilience.Courage.The will to keep going.Part of her wondered if she should have just stayed at House Elal.That had been at least an accommodation of some kind.No one was getting hurt.
No one but her—and she could actually take that better.Why did no one warn you in life that having the people you care about get hurt is far more painful than anything you experience yourself?She looked down at her goo-spattered self and despaired.She couldn’t imagine ever being clean again, and it seemed symbolic of her guilt, the blood and suffering of others that she’d been tainted with and would forever carry with her.
Cillian came back into the carriage, radiant with triumph, even spinning his silver blade between his fingers—as he’d gotten Jadren to teach him to do.The trick looked oddly insouciant on her serious and scholarly love.He was also liberally spattered with the oily black gore.If anything, far more so than she was.
He took one look at her, shook his head, and said, “Stop that.”
She frowned.“I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but…” He sat beside her, dangling the gory blade between his spread knees.“I know that look on your face.You’re blaming yourself and you need to stop it.”
“If I hadn’t—”
