Chapter 19
Farther and farther,I’m dragged off the city streets. The bright sunlight of the day is dimmed. A silhouette appears before me—horns and sharp angles, gossamer wings that stretch unnaturally out from his back.
That creature I saw with Aria.
“Keep holding, she’s still awake,” a man snarls.
I blink slowly and fight every instinct to inhale gulps of air. My lungs are revolting. I’ll have to breathe soon. Hopefully, if they think I’ve passed out, they’ll remove the rag.
As naturally as I can manage, I finally shut my eyes and allow my body to go heavy. Eldas had said there were enemies. Why didn’t I listen? Why didn’t I take it more seriously?
The movement stops as I hear shouting in the distance. It’s garbled, frantic words. The darkness behind my eyelids is quickly becoming more than pretend. I will pass out soon.
Yet, right when I think I’m about to lose my battle for consciousness, the rag is removed. I fight every urge to gasp in fresh air, instead inhaling slowly so I don’t alert my assailants.
“Go and throw them off the trail.” My eyes are still closed, but I can recognize the horned man by voice alone. “I’ll hide her.”
“You don’t have any ritumancy prepared,” another voice hisses, so low that I can barely hear the words. Ritumancy was the wild magic of the…fae?
Is it Aria? I think the speaker is a woman…but I can’t be sure. There’s more movement. Are there three, or four people here now?
My heart thunders in my chest. I want to call for help—for Eldas. He walked through the Fade itself and found me when I had tried to run away. I don’t know how the Fade works, but he’ll come if I call, right? I doubt it…there’s no way he’d hear me. He thinks I’m still safely tucked away in his castle.
Yet the thought sparks an idea.
Rinni has to have looked back and noticed I’m gone. The commotion I hear rising in the distance must be her leading knights to me. I just have to hold on and put up enough of a fight that they can’t take me too far away.
I can do that much, can’t I?
Two hands grab me, hoisting me up. I hear the buzzing of mighty wings. My stomach sinks as I’m suddenly weightless.
Are we flying?
I crack open my eyes and see the blurred flapping of the horned man’s dragonfly wings. He’s going to fly away with me, I realize. I take a deep breath and think of the square in Capton. I used my magic to turn what human hands made back into the natural world. I turned iron into trees. I turned stone into moss. I can do something to save myself.
It’s now or never. I open my eyes wide and look up at the face of the horned man. He has yet to notice I’m not as incapacitated as he thought. I’m surprised at how human his face looks, despite his wings and horns. But I don’t allow myself to get distracted.
I reach for the beaded necklace around his neck and curl my fist in it. He looks down, nearly dropping me. A hiss and a curse escape him.
Transform, I command, change intovines, tree branches, anything! The beads shudder, nearly coming alive. He jostles me in his arms, straining his neck away. I try and focus on my magic, but I slip from his grasp.
The necklace breaks and I fall back to the ground, landing with a hard thud. Luckily, I wasn’t too high up yet. But I was high enough that the impact steals the wind from me.
He lands next to me, stalking over with a snarl. “How dare you, human.”
I don’t even waste my breath on engaging. My magic might still be too ineloquent for me to command at whim. But I know something else that will heed me.
Bringing my fingers to my lips, I let out a shrill whistle. “Hook, come!” I shout. The horned man lunges for me as I see the air beside him shimmer. Hook bounds from between the shadows. “Hook!”
My wolf lets out what sounds almost like a roar rather than a growl and charges toward the horned man. My attacker barely has a chance to react before Hook is upon him. Hook sinks his teeth into the man’s wings and he lets out a scream of agony.
I scoot away until my back hits one of the dingy walls of the buildings. “Hook,” I call weakly. The beast has become nothing but rage and teeth. Hook rips one of the man’s wings clean off. “Hook, stop!” I push myself onto my feet.
He attacked me. He tried to kidnap me. And yet, just like with Luke, I can’t bring myself to see him maimed by Hook’s vicious attacks.
“Hook—”
“There!” Rinni’s voice echoes over mine. She’s at the entrance of the alley. Soldiers pour in around her, rushing toward us. The man has been brought to the ground. Hook’s jaw is clamped over his knee and the wolf refuses to let go.