Pain exploded in the back of my head, popping black spots in my vision. I heard athudon the ground behind me. Whatever she threw at me was much bigger and heavier than a twig. An object struck my back. My shin. My elbow. I stumbled, pitching forward when a rock cracked my shoulder. I felt the bruise forming beneath my tunic.
Head pointed down, I saw them come. Dozens upon dozens of dryads raced over tree roots, shot out of the bush, scrambled up the trunks with their natural weapons. I held the child close, the poor thing waking to screams—mine.
Stone and wood rained down on me, biting agony in my flesh wherever they struck. “Stop! You’ll hurt the baby!”
“Agh!” My pants slipped down my hip bone, suddenly carrying new weight. The dryad scrambled up my body like I was the oak tree that birthed her. Launching at my face, the hit from her tiny fist snapped my neck nearly all the way around. “Evil girl. Human thief! Give us our child.”
I would say something for the terrible day this abandoned child was having. At least in the midst of it all, he found the fiercest protectors in Olympia. Too bad they would not have him.
I picked up the pace and burst out of the bush onto the path. Tiny brown and green adversaries dropped from the tree everywhere I looked. The path was clear no more.
“Help! Someone help!” Dull pain didn’t pound my nail bed. No tingling sprouted up my arms and legs, and my eyes remained as ordinary as the rest. I was drunk on adrenaline and pain, but I wasn’t scared.
The goddess’spetwould not intervene, and I had not a single shred of power, weapons, or fighting ability to save us. But hundreds of people in that damn blasted academy did. Someone had to come.
They leaped on me from above and below. “You will water the forest with your blood—” I swatted blindly and sent her shrieking. Nymphs yanked my hair, crawled under my tunic, rained blows on my back, and—
I screamed as teeth pierced my skin. “Help!” The academy steps appeared through a break in the trees. “We’re over here!”
The dryads yanked, pulled, and piled on me—trying to bring me down with sheer numbers. I was a bucking steer being roped and lashed into submission. After this night, I wouldn’t need the ability to talk to them to know how it felt.
“We’re almost there,” I gasped. “Almost—”
A flash moved out of the corner of my eye. I barely got out a cry before she smashed the rock over my head, exploding agony in my temple. I staggered and crashed into a tree, nearly dropping the baby. My skull split a seam, pouring blood down my face.
The child started crying in earnest.
“Give him to us.”
“He needs us.”
“He is ours.”
“Cruel girl.”
I heard the fear in their pain—the tears and suffering. I was taking a child from his mothers, and in their eyes that’s all they knew.
Dryads rushed over my body to the babe, tugging on the coat to get him out of my loosening grip.
Come on, Aella, go. Go!Pushing off the tree, I bolted—surprising half a dozen dryads into falling off.Five feet. Four. Three feet. Two—
A cry bellowed overhead, heralding a sharp snap. A brown streak fell into my path, and I was flying. My legs soared over my head—upending me and the child, and both of us screaming the whole way.
I crashed flat on my back, wind evacuating my lungs. The mental shout to keep running came too late.
Nymphs swarmed me. Pinning down my legs, wrenching my arms off the babe, holding my head and shoulders down. They crowed their victory as they finally claimed their charge.
“Kill the thieving bitch!” That was a word they stole off the wind. “She will never harm our child again.”
A waddling little tree stump stomped down my chest... hefting a stone.
“No,” I croaked. The baby’s cries faded as they carried him back into the woods. “Don’t...”
Stepping on my neck, she cracked the stone on my face. Blood spurted from my ruined nose. She thought nothing of the blood, or stepping on the broken appendage. Screams ripped from my throat.
She hefted the stone again, bringing it down on my skull.
“Enough!”