CHAPTER SEVENTEEN（Untitled）Naomi

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Naomi

My heart skitters in my chest as I run. I’m supposed to hide, but I can’t go far from Wranth without the tether snapping me right to him in the middle of the fight. Even if I don’t get attacked by the kelpie when I appear directly in front of it, me popping up would distract Wranth. So I stop right inside the trees and turn.

Zephyr’s holding her own against the puke-green horse thing she fights, so my gaze flicks past her to…

Oh, god. My hand covers my mouth.

The kelpie lunges toward Wranth, huge and unstoppable.

Wranth stops it.

It’s several times Wranth’s size and weight. He’d be totally outmatched if he were human.

But he’s not human. He’s an orc.

And he’s fucking magnificent .

God, the way he moves! The power in his shoulders and back. He fights like a man possessed, striking the larger fae again and again.

A loud call from overhead, one that fills me with instinctive dread. The evil birds are back, and there are more of them than ever!

“Shit!”

I grab my necklace and try to teleport, thinking of the village I visited before, the one Wranth told me so much about. I don’t want to leave him and the others behind, but I’m no fighter, and maybe I can get help.

Instead of sharp pain, a dull ache flashes through my body, but it doesn’t matter that my burnout is getting better, because my magic still doesn’t work.

“Shit.”

As the first couple of birds dive toward me, I dart behind a tree trunk to avoid them, so glad I changed into my sneakers back at the bookstore. But more wait on the other side. There are at least fifty birds in the air. It doesn’t matter how fast I am—I can’t avoid them.

More dive, horrible beaks open, eyes blazing red.

One jabs into my other arm, and I force my lips closed to keep in my whimper. Wranth fights with everything he’s got. The last thing he needs is a distraction.

I bat away another of the nasty birds, its red talons scraping across the back of my hand. Then I duck around the tree again, playing another round of keep away, which puts me right back in the sights of more of the birds.

Wranth roars, and I take a second to see him strike a powerful blow to the kelpie’s neck.

Another flash of pain on my upper arm. Dammit! These things are everywhere .

It’s too many. I can’t keep away from their attacks, and I’m starting to get kind of woozy. My muscles feel leaden, moving my arms as hard as lifting too-heavy dumbbells at the gym. My knees wobble, threatening to give out. A spurt of fear shoots through me, because I know in my bones…

If I fall down with these birds attacking, I’ll never get back up.

No. Fuck that. I lock my knees and squint, fighting off the darkness hazing the edges of my vision.

Wranth calls my name, voice frantic, but I can’t even see him through the cloud of beating wings.

A smoky shape leaps from the tree overhead, plowing through the mass of birds. Before it even reaches the ground, the ones closest to me go quiet, hanging in place in the air instead of diving to attack.

“Shadow!”

The cat stands, a bird trapped in his mouth, his green eyes bright with triumph.

I immediately feel better, the world snapping back into clarity around me, my body strong again.

“Don’t kill it!” Wranth yells as he parries a kick from the kelpie.

Shadow growls.

The kelpie bursts past Wranth, two tons of muscle and menace.

Wranth runs, but he runs away from me.

“Ha!” the kelpie cries out. “Run, you coward! The human is mine now.”

No. That’s not what’s happening at all. I bite my lip to hide my grin.

Wranth bellows my name a split second before he winks out of sight. I duck, and he goes sailing over me to crash into the kelpie, the impact driving his sword deep.

It gives one last gargled neigh, then collapses.

“Are you all right?” Wranth spins toward me as I stand.

“Yes, thanks to you.” I beam at him. “That was brilliant!”

“We were fifteen feet apart.” He gives a shrug like it’s nothing, but I can tell he’s pleased by my praise. “It was simple math that the tether would get me to you more quickly.”

Shadow gives another growl, and Wranth pulls out a small leather pouch.

Shadow drops the black bird into the bag and says, “If I wanted to kill it, it would be dead already, orc.”

“I wasn’t certain if you knew the trick to defeating them,” Wranth growls.

I raise my hand. “I sure don’t know it, but I want to.” Because anything that can stop that horrible lethargy is knowledge worth having.

“If you kill an individual bird, it does nothing to stop the sluagh at the heart of the flock.” Wranth clamps the top of the bag closed and looks at me. “But if you trap one, it incapacitates them all.”

“Not all.” I point to where another group of the birds spiral towards the ground.

“That’s a different sluagh.” Wranth ties the top of the bag closed and shoves it into my hands. “Keep hold of this one to keep it trapped. If you drop it, the rest of its flock will be free to attack.”

“But it’s in a bag!”

“Magic has its own logic.” He gives a shrug. “It only seems to work if someone holds the trapped bird.”

“Put it in my saddlebag.” Zephyr trots over. “That’ll count as me holding it.”

“Got it.” I shove it into the closest pack and close the top. Then I trace a finger around the vicious bite on her shoulder. “Are you okay?”

“I’m better than okay.” She brandishes her horn, which is covered in green blood. “I’m victorious. And I’ll heal quickly—that’s part of unicorn magic.”

An angry shriek jerks all of our attention toward the river.

While one cloud of birds hangs over my head, wings flapping in eerie unison, the other flock reaches the river bank, near where the two defeated kelpies lie still. Instead of settling on the ground, the birds fly closer and closer together. They should hit each other, but instead they…

“What the hell?” I breathe.

The birds touch and freaking meld , joining together in a mass of wings that forms into a humanoid figure wrapped in a tattered black cloak with a heavy hood. Red eyes blaze from a dark-gray face, the surface of which seethes with the constant motion of a hundred fluttering wings.

“Oh, god,” I say. “Why is it doing that?”

“It’s the soul stealer’s victims,” Wranth growls, his hand tightening on his sword hilt until his knuckles go light green, and his entire body thrums with tension. “Each wants to get away, yet each remains trapped.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.” The words come out muffled by the hand pressed to my mouth. They keep calling these things soul stealers, but it’s hard to comprehend what that really means until you see one like this. “So all those birds…”

“Each of the birds but one are victims trapped in eternal torment,” Zephyr says.

For once, Shadow sounds deadly serious. “It’s a fate worse than death.”

“You would think so, cat sith,” the soul stealer says, speaking with a chorus of voices. “So few of your kind find their immortality with the sluagh.”

“You can’t catch us.” Shadow smiles, but there’s no humor in it.

“Immortality? Humph.” Zephyr stomps. “What you offer is no such thing.”

“I am over five-hundred years old.” It offers its own smile, one filled with too many triangular red teeth. “I remember a time before Alarria, before we were sent here to—”

Wranth startles. “To what?”

“Never you mind, orc.” The air of malice surrounding it grows more intense, and the chorus of voices it speaks with grows more discordant. “Now, give me the witch. Her soul is sweet, and I am so very, very hungry.”

I gasp, my fingers flying to my forearms. “You’re the one who bit me back at the standing stone!”

“You’ll be mine, little witch.” Its red eyes bore into me. “Your soul will feed me forever.”

“Oh, hell no.” I shake my head, my skin crawling.

Wranth growls and steps in between us. “You will never touch her again. Do you not see we’ve already defeated your allies?”

The sluagh casts a dismissive look over the kelpies, whose bodies are slowly dissolving into the water. “These mean nothing.”

“Perhaps so.” Shadow sounds and looks perfectly bored, in that way cats have, and only the twitch of his tail tip gives him away. “But I’ve trapped the other sluagh, and you’ll be next.”

“Idle threats. Trapping a sluagh is not the same as killing it.”

“Not idle.” Shadow stands. “You dare to trespass on cat sith lands. Know there are consequences.” He lets out a keening cry.

The trees all around us stir, and a dozen shadowy shapes launch through the air, one after the other, each catching in their mouths one of the birds flying in place above my head. Crunch, crunch, crunch! They land, their strong jaws finishing off the birds, who tumble from smiling cat mouths to disappear before they even touch the ground.

I give a happy cry and clap my hands. “Cat sith!”

They slink into the trees, climbing quickly, and repeat the process until no more birds remain.

“Wranth.” Zephyr glances at the pack hanging from her back.

He’s already at her side as the saddlebag bulges, swelling from within. He flings it open and plunges his sword forward, spearing the shrunken, pale-gray thing waiting within. Its vacant white eyes are as empty as its toothless mouth as it gives one last weak cry, then crumbles to dust.

“How’s that for immortality?” Wranth’s deep voice is a triumphant rumble, his face wearing a fierce grin.

Smiles echo all around as the panthers flank us, Shadow’s the largest of all.

“You will never touch my bride again.” Wranth steps forward. “This I vow.”

The soul stealer snaps its teeth, its red gaze sliding past him to land on me with palpable menace. “You are wrong. I will have her.”

Wranth lunges, his sword a silver streak whistling through the air.

The sluagh leaps upward, breaking apart into a flock of birds that flaps up into the air with angry shrieks.

Before I can fully process everything that’s happened, Wranth stands before me, sword sheathed, big hands gentle as they ghost over my arms. “You’re hurt.”