Zev lurked in the night,unseen and unheard in the cover of the bushes. He kept his eyes fixed on Dyna’s form straight ahead. She sat with four of the others around the campfire, conversing idly over their evening meal. After some time, she motioned having to relieve herself and went into the woods.
Dyna hummed to herself as she made her way into an open glade, stopping to forage for plants.
The bushes rustled as men appeared from the shadows. The same men that had followed them in Hydell, and others they had called.
Dyna gasped and spun around as they fully circled her.
“I told you it was her,” a dwarf said. “Mighty prize for such a pretty thing. The others have rewards on their heads as well.”
“Aye, but this one is nearly worth all of them combined,” said a familiar voice.
A large burly man ambled out of the trees. He carried with him a large ax, the rest of him wrapped in leather armor. Four long, jagged scars ran down half his face through one eye, leaving it milky white. Zev bit back a growl once he recognized the poacher they met in the Port of Azure.
“Do you remember me, little minnow?”
Dyna’s eyes widened. “Draven…”
A leer played on his mouth as his men took out their blades. “You’re a hard one to track down, lass, but I always get my catch. Come quietly now.Don’t make me cut that pretty neck. Not until you pay back every cent you swindled from me.”
Zev was reminded that Jophiel mentioned Draven had attempted to enter Hermon several times to capture a Celestial of his own. When that failed, he came after her.
“No, please,” Dyna whimpered, slowly backing away. Her quick shallow breaths clouded in the brisk night.
“Tie her, Galen.”
A young man with Draven’s features stepped forward with a ring of rope and a sneer. “That half-breed of yours isn’t around, is he? This will teach you not to wander into the woods alone.”
“Alone?” Dyna’s frightened expression changed from terror to cold indifference. “Who said I was alone?”
Zev prowled out of the night behind her with a rumbling snarl. The men stiffened and he heard the wild beating of their hearts. He focused on the poacher. That was his target.
“I’m afraid you’ve got it all wrong.” She smiled sharply as Lucenna, Klyde, and Rawn appeared from the forest next. “I’m not the one being hunted here.”
Dyna slashed at Galen’s stomach with her blade and twisted around, whipping out her sword in time to parry Draven’s ax. But the force of the man’s weight bent her legs, and her arms shook with the effort to hold him off. Zev leaped over her head and took down the large poacher. He tore out Draven’s neck and blood gushed free. A fight broke out all around him, screams and clashes of magic and blades filling the forest.
It was over before it started.
“This wasn’t a very fair fight, was it?” Dyna said, wiping her knife. Zev’s heart sank to see her sweet face now harsh and cold as she studied the bodies at her feet.
Galen stumbled away, holding his bleeding stomach.
“What about that one?” Lucenna crossed her arms. “He’s getting away.”
“Let him go,” Klyde said, sheathing his weapons. “He will bleed out by morning?—”
Dyna flicked up her knife and threw it at Galen’s retreating back. They froze, watching it spin through the air. Rawn whipped out his bow andreleased a shot. The arrow hit the knife, and both whipped past the young man, missing his neck by inches. Galen fled into the trees, out of sight.
She scowled. “Why did you do that? You’re letting him get away.”
They all stared at her mutely in shock, and perhaps a little dismay. Zev would have been the first to attack an enemy without mercy, but to witness it from Dyna, he didn’t know how to react.
Noticing their stares, she frowned. “What?”
“You tried to kill him…” Lucenna said.
“He was running away. Why give him the chance to inform others of our whereabouts?” Dyna shot back. “Klyde said so himself. Galen will die anyway. I’m merely ensuring he does not become a problem later.”
“It’s one thing to defend yourself, lass, but stabbing a fleeing man in the back is generally frowned upon,” Klyde said uneasily.
