“We don’t want any trouble,” Ragnar responded. Keeping my body hidden by the carriage, I peered around the corner to find my uncle standing off against three men in black cloaks. A glint of silver in the hand of the middle man caught my eye. A knife.
Not a friendly visit, then.
The amaranth still lingering on my tongue burned in anticipation, my fingers fluttering at my side.
“Fancy carriage like this, with a personal driver and everything. Who do we have here, Sawyer?” The man in the middle whistled and nudged the one to his right. “Think we found ourselves a challenger?”
Swallowing, I quietly reached up to the door of the box and cracked it open. “Larson?” I whispered.
Something heavy fell against the door, and it took all my restraint to hold in a scream.
Larson’s head leaned into the wood, four brutal claw marks weeping blood down the front of his face. One had cut through his nose, flaying it in half, his cheeks a mangled mess of flesh and fat.
I shut the door and pressed my back into the side of the carriage, forcing down bile and letting out a shaky breath. It looked like an animal had ripped through his head.Shifters. These men must be Shifters, either from Drakorum or the capital—nobody else could leave marks like that.
My eyes caught on something at the edge of the trees—a tail. Similar to the one I’d seen crawling on the ground before. Was it a Shifter? Someone working with these men?
“Gentlemen,” my uncle stated evenly, drawing my attention back to the scene. “Challengers are protected under Veridian law until midnight on the start of the Decemvirate, which is not for another twenty-seven hours. Should word get back to the architects of your interference, you could be held in contempt of?—”
“Of course, we had to go and pick a talker,” the one to the right said with a scratchy scoff. “Enough of this.”
My jaw dropped as the man threw his cloak and lunged, transforming mid-air into a roaring snow leopard.
One hundred pounds of dense muscle, sharp claws, and white fur soared for my uncle, its knifelike teeth bared at his throat. I sucked in a breath and lurched out from the side of the carriage, an incantation on my lips, when suddenly—my uncle disappeared.
“I tried to handle this with diplomacy, yet here we are.” Ragnar tutted from the treeline behind the remaining two men, rolling up the sleeves of his button down shirt.
“He’s a filthy Strider,” one of the men spat.
“Not a Strider, no.” My uncle’s lips curled upward. “An Alchemist.”
In the blink of an eye, he flicked his wrist and a dark purple shimmer fell over their bodies. Ragnar’s lips moved soundlessly. The two men howled in agony, collapsing to the ground as everywhere the wolfsbane powder touched burned their flesh to ash. One of them shifted, his hunched body elongating and thinning until yellow and black scales of a serpent shone under the moonlight. Dark spots dotted its skin from the burns as it hissed and raised its head, coiling to strike.
“I don’t want to kill you, Shifter,” Ragnar warned, pressing a finger to his tongue.
The snake struck.
“Incendar.”
Before it could sink its fangs into my uncle, the tail of the serpent caught fire, blazing a trail up its long body, consuming it inch by inch until it was nothing but ash and burnt scales falling to the forest floor.
My eyes were glued on the remaining man, and I almost didn’t hear Ragnar’s cry.
“Rose!”
A growl erupted behind me. I whirled to find myself face-to-face with the snow leopard, mouth ajar and teeth glinting.
I bit down on the amaranth still clinging to my tongue and threw up my hands, muttering, “Aegesis nova!”
The sensation of air being ripped from my lungs and pulled taut as a bowstring fell across my skin as the snow leopard leapt toward me. He instantly slammed into an invisible barrier, and I watched in both horror and morbid fascination as my spell took its effect.
Chunks of flesh tore themselves from his shoulder,as if caught in the snare of his own sharp jaws. He yowled and collapsed to the ground, blood oozing from the wound as he struggled to find his footing.
I panted from the exertion of such a strong spell. Turning back to my uncle, I searched for the third man, only to find the coward had disappeared—sprinting off into the darkness, not even sparing a look for hiscompanion. Blood rushed in my ears as I scanned the darkness for Ragnar.
And then I saw him.
My stomach plunged to my feet.
