With Ty’s arm around her waist, they fled the room. As they ran through the hallway, Ena caught a brief glimpse of the girls in the sitting room, still peacefully asleep on the floor. They flew down the stairs into the cellar, then erupted out of the door and into the night.
Worrying less about keeping to the shadows, they moved as quickly as they could back through the village the way they had come.
Once they hit the sand past the village, they started running. They tore over the dunes they had crossed coming here, their energy renewed with adrenaline. Ena’s mind whirled, trying frantically to process everything she’d seen in spite of her fear.
They were all thoroughly out of breath by the time they reached the cliff above which they’d tethered their horses. Ena struggled to scramble up it, sliding down several times, until Ty, already at the top, offered a hand to pull her up. Steig and Turner quickly mounted their horses as Ty turned to Ena, reaching for her to place her on the horse, but she backed away.
“I’m not going any further with you until you tell me what in the Underworld is going on. Tell me why you all want the amulet.”
“I’m not leaving you, Ena, but we can’t talk about this here. Get on the horse,” Ty said, his tone brooking no argument.
“No!” Ena erupted. She was far too confused, too afraid. Her plan had fallen apart, again, and she didn’t have the amulet. There was no way she could get it from them now. But she needed to know what they wanted to do with it. Something was horribly wrong here. She needed to knownow.
“Leave her, Ty. We need to go now!” Steig said, his horse stamping around, sensing his impatience.
“No!” Ty growled at him. “I said I’m not leaving her. She saw something back there when she put on the amulet. We need her.” He turned to Ena once more and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Ena, I promise I’ll tell you everything, but we need to get to safety first.”
Just then, they heard a commotion coming down the beach. Voices. Shouting. Ena saw torchlights coming over one of the dunes in the distance approaching them.
“Fuck!” Ty said. He pulled the amulet from his pocket and handed it to Steig. “Take this and go. Both of you. Now!”
Steig didn’t hesitate—he shoved the amulet into his own pocket and spurred his horse instantly into a gallop.
Turner glanced back at them, his face filled with unease, but then he, too, took off after Steig.
Ty moved to lift Ena onto the horse once more. She didn’t fight this time, and once she was seated, he climbed up behind her.
The sounds of pursuit were getting closer, but it wasn’t just the pursuers on the beach anymore. Ena turned to see several witches emerging from the woods around them. Then she heard a deep male voice speak.
{Spiritus}
She felt the air leave her lungs in one fell swoop. She couldn’t breathe. She bent forward on the horse, panic setting in. She couldn’tbreathe.
“Ena!” Ty shouted, his voice filled with fear.
{Aqus} another voice said, and the horse collapsed underneath them, water sprouting from its nose and mouth as if it were drowning.
Ty leapt from the horse, removing his dagger. “Let her go right fucking now,” he said, his voice more menacing and dark than she’d ever heard it as he approached the male witch who had her under his spell.
“What did you do to my family?!” the male witch screamed.
Quicker than she could blink, Ty threw his dagger at the man. It struck him in the shoulder, causing him to fall to his knees and breaking his concentration on her. She felt her lungs fill with blessed air once more.
Ty removed the ax from his back as another female witch threw out her hands. The ground around them began to shake as the roots of the nearby trees grew and stretched like vines, reaching for Ty’s feet.
As they touched him, they turned to dust.
“He’s a daemon!” one of the other witches shouted.
{Aeris} another one spoke, and the leaves began to swirl around them as the wind picked up into a fierce tempest. Ena could barely see in the dark as branches and rocks hit her face, scratching her, bruising her.
“Ty!” she yelled. She couldn’t see him anymore, but she could hear the sounds of a fight. Grunting and yelling. Someone screamed in pain.
She ran blindly toward where she’d seen him last, but a gust of wind threw her back. She felt a sharp pain at the back of her head and the cold earth on her cheek before everything went black.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Enaslowlyopenedhereyes to reveal a strange room. Her head was throbbing and her throat was dry. Looking around, she saw that the room she was in was small, almost the size of a closet. It held a simple table and chair, and the walls were bare. There was no fireplace, so it was cold, and as she raised herself up to sitting, she realized she was laying on a small, hard bed. There were no windows in the room, but light seeped in under the doorframe, and she could tell that it was daytime.
