by Katie Cross
Lucey appeared off to the right with a delighted giggle. She waved to the Defenders with an impish, girly hand.
“Over here,” she sang.
The Defenders growled. Isadora pulled Alessio through a cluster of trees and into deeper shadows. His incantation was beginning to wear away. His legs appeared to run by themselves as he dodged spindly trees and low scrub. Murky water splashed at their feet. An orange cloud charged them from the amassing Defenders, racing toward them with ruthless speed.
“Run!” Isadora hissed. “We can’t breathe that in.”
The ground dampened, sucking their feet like a living thing and slowing them until the mist overtook them, clogging their throats. Isadora coughed. Alessio wheezed, a hand on his chest. Drawing in air felt like breathing through a small hole. Her head spun. Alessio stumbled.
Isadora slowed, studying the burbling water, barren trees, and broken sky. They wouldn’t be able to outrun the Defenders, and the trees were too skinny and naked for refuge. They should escape along the edge of the marsh, where the ground was still firm, and they could make better time. But the Defenders would be able to catch them there—certainly now that they could hardly breathe.
Dread made her stomach heavy as she glanced at the burbling bog.
Only one thing for it.
She grabbed Alessio’s arm and yanked him into the freezing lake. The slimy water splashed her face as she sank. It squelched along her back, oozing in a flood against her skin. She grimaced. Alessio heaved. Isadora pulled them farther in, behind a moldering log, until the icy water lapped at their necks. After a moment’s hesitation, she leaned back, covering her hair with the same muck. Tears filled her eyes at the stench.
“Over there,” someone shouted in Ilese.
Isadora slapped mud on her cheeks and forehead and indicated for Alessio to do the same. Faces smeared with the foul muck, they stilled behind a floating log, submerged to their jaws. Something brushed against her leg. Alessio’s jaw tightened as he pressed his teeth together to keep them from chattering. The vile bath sapped all her heat, leaving her to tremble.
A twig broke.
Isadora froze.
Defenders whispered only ten paces away, hovering near the edge of the swampy waters. The invisibility spells had completely faded now—a good thing. The Defenders wouldn’t be able to feel the magic.
Alessio silently fought the urge to retch again. She put a hand on his shoulder, ready to dunk him if she had to. Her powers remained tied within, as if locked in a chest deep inside. Her heart pounded. She sank a little lower when one Defender stepped back, sweeping the swamp with a piercing gaze, while the other stood unmoving.
As if he’d come out of a trance, the second Defender turned, then pointed along the edge—where Isadora would have run. They stepped onto it, then paused, murmuring in Ilese. The Defenders lingered, waiting for movement, no doubt. Lucey had warned her about their patience. Alessio’s wide, frightened eyes met hers.
Another twig snapped, this time behind them. Isadora’s low, raspy breaths faded. The foggy incantation began to weaken its grip on her throat. An explosion hurled a burst of yellow fire through the trees. The Defenders recoiled.
Pieces of bark and tree whipped through the air, landing in the water.
Another explosion.
Isadora shoved Alessio deeper into the brackish waters, and they began to move. Tongues of fire licked the dry trees overhead, driving away the pervasive mist. The Defenders howled.
She thought she heard Lucey giggling until the sounds faded into the distance. Isadora forced Alessio to keep going. The lake gave way to slick banks. The deeper marsh became thick mud as high as their knees. The mud froze to their skin as they pressed on, winding through the trees, hidden by the dark flakes of drying mud.
“N-n-next?” Alessio whispered, gazing into the darkness with soulful eyes. The Defenders were minutes behind them. For now, there was some room to breathe and walk and plan. Lucey would continue to work against the Defenders. Unless Isadora wanted to be locked in Carcere or killed by Cecelia, she had to get Alessio to Letum Wood.
Both their lives depended on it.
Isadora calmed her chattering teeth and pointed west.
“We walk,” she said.
Alessio said nothing as they trudged through the mud, slogging around fallen trees, past slushy pits, and into the occasional stretch of shoulder-deep swamp water. Isadora kept as close to the tree line as she dared. Hours seemed to pass, filled with paranoid imaginings, unfamiliar sounds, and the pull of dried mud on her face. If possible, the night chill deepened.
Letum Wood appeared like a band of midnight in the distance. Eventually, the watery marsh gave way to firmer, cluttered ground. Saplings. Young trees. Shrub brush. The stench faded—or perhaps she’d just gotten used to it. At her side, Alessio clung to his arms. His teeth chattered like a bag of old bones.
“Soon,” she murmured.
He said nothing.
Mud froze on her dress. Flakes scraped off her arms, falling to the ground in petals. Although they pressed hard, the landscape didn’t change much. Marsh. Bog. Letum Wood in the distance, as if it would never get closer. She paused, holding out an arm to stop Alessio.
“Wait,” she murmured.
She slipped into the magic.
Letum Wood proliferated around her again—oddly comforting. This time, only three paths remained. Hers, Sanna’s, and Alessio’s. No Lucey, but also no Defenders. She fought the temptation to check on her sister and returned. The magic settled inside her like a sigh.
“Just us,” she said.
Alessio’s shoulders relaxed a little bit.
“For now. Let’s keep going.”
The first fingers of dawn hinted on the horizon when Isadora and Alessio skidded to a stop an hour later. The marsh had ended. An open field, at least a thousand paces across, lay between them and Letum Wood. It would take several minutes at a full run to cross, but neither of them had the energy. She hesitated. The distance didn’t bother her.
It was the lack of Defenders.
Moving through the marsh and toward Letum Wood was their obvious path—the Defenders would have known. But the odds were good that the Defenders didn’t know when or where they’d pop out of Palude Marsh. If Isadora entered the paths again, she’d draw them to their location, something they likely hoped for.
“Running is our … ah …” Her mind skipped around, too numb and tired to remember the right words in Ilese. “Only, ah … chance. Can you do it?”
Alessio blinked, eyes bleary. The bone-deep cold had long ago shifted from misery to numbness. Finally, he nodded once.
“Fast,” she said, searching for the right words. “Er … really fast.”
She reached out and grabbed his hand. He sucked in a sharp breath but didn’t pull away. Isadora nodded.
“Go.”
They sprinted together. Clumps of weeds tore at her feet, reaching up to trip her. Rocks covered the ground. Saplings, struggling to grow so near the marsh, clogged their path. Isadora’s aching legs burned with the exertion. Her lungs, still tight from the orange fog, cried out for more air.
The air next to her shimmered, and something slammed into her side. She stumbled with a cry, caught herself before skidding to her knees, and clambered back to her feet.
“Go, Alessio!”
Alessio pulled ahead of her, eyes wild. Within seconds, she tripped over her own feet. When she attempted to stand, she fell onto her head, scraping her right ear.
A tripping curse.
She wracked her mind for the counter-curse. She only had a few more seconds to counter it before it took hold for four days.
Alessio grabbed her arm, jarring her back to reality. Isadora muttered the counter-curse and shoved back to her feet, fistfuls of dirt in her hand. She threw out a shield that would survive three curses. Attacks pinged off the invisible magic with dull thuds.
Four Defenders appeared in front of them, teeth bared.
Isadora threw the dirt. One of the Defenders recoiled. She cast another protective spell around Alessio and herself, then attempted a blindness curse. The Defender transported before it hit its mark, opening a space for them to dart through. The others disappeared, transporting not far ahead. Isadora threw a second and third curse. She struggled to replace a protective shield that broke under an onslaught of magic.
Alessio managed to stay at her side. Less than two hundred paces left. The Defenders fanned in front of them in a half circle now, shooting curses in a flood. Her chest ached—she thought her heart would pound through her ribcage. She couldn’t keep replacing her magical shield and outrun them.
She slowed. If they focused on her, Alessio could escape. Isadora wrapped an invisibility spell around him. He disappeared. The Defenders scowled, peeling away. Four toward him, two toward her.
A Defender appeared next to her, reaching for her dress. She ducked, avoiding his hand, and sent a rock flying at his face with a spell. He stumbled. The magic of the shield wavered. A curse slammed into Alessio. The invisibility spell disappeared. He reached up for his eyes, slowing.
“I can’t see!” he screeched and stumbled over a bush. He fell, skidding on his shoulder with a cry.
Isadora lurched toward him, grabbed his arm, and hauled him to his feet. She started a fire on one Defender’s shirt. He howled and backed away. Another transported away, appearing close at her side. She threw a blighter—a magical ball of energy—at him.
“Do the counter-curse!” she called to Alessio.
“I don’t know it!”
The forest loomed thirty paces away.
“Just keep running!” she said. A Defender swiped for her arm, but she dodged. Her shield wavered underneath another barrage of curses.
Twenty paces.
Isadora focused all her mind on the shield just as a burst of magic slammed into it. The shield shattered into a gauzy mist, throwing them forward. She fell, rolled, and leapt back to her feet. Alessio shouted, arms flailing. She couldn’t do the counter-curse for him.
Ten paces to Letum Wood.
Where was Lucey?
Maximillion?
Isadora shoved Alessio as hard as she could into Letum Wood just as a Defender grabbed her sleeve, grunting as he lunged. The fabric tore. Isadora whirled around, maintaining her balance by sheer luck, and kept running. The other Defenders lingered back, eyes on the forest, which loomed tall and terrifying.
A vine whipped out from the forest. It grabbed a Defender by the neck and tossed him into the air. His scream stopped when he landed fifty paces away, head bashed into a rock.
Two Defenders transported away.
One advanced.
The crack of magic hitting a tree trunk exploded in her ear as Isadora sped into Letum Wood. Alessio fell to his knees, hands on his eyes, sobbing. Isadora grabbed him and yanked him back up.
“Come on,” she said.
“I’m blind!”
She pushed him through the trees, ignoring his terror for the moment. It didn’t matter where they went in Letum Wood as long as they went deep enough. The sound of following feet still stalked them.
A burly Defender, all muscle and brawn, sprinted after them. His eyes darted around. He ran distracted, gaze swinging from the floor to the trees, no doubt scanning for vines.
There were far worse things here than vines.
Something tall, thin, and precariously built on an old stump caught Isadora’s gaze. A fairy house. They were rare enough—especially this close to the edge of the forest—but unmistakable. She skidded to a stop. The Defender did the same, only a few paces away. His chest heaved.
“This is my home,” she called in Ilese, panting. “Get out.”
“You will die with the rest of the Watcher scum!”
“I am a Watcher scum,” she hissed, then smacked the fairy house. Bright colors boiled out of the tree with hysterical shrieks. The cries of at least ten livid, bloodthirsty fairies cut through the air. Isadora cast an invisibility spell and disappeared. The fairies came face-to-face with the Defender. A moment of silence lingered in the air.
“Get him!” a tinny voice bellowed.
“He harms the fairies!”
“You. Must. Die!”
The entire stump shifted to the left from the sheer force of raging fairies as she and Alessio sprinted away. The Defender’s screams faded as they plunged deeper into Letum Wood, leaving the bog and the Eastern Network far behind them.
An hour later, a young boy with bright eyes and long blond hair stood in the middle of a weak animal trail. He wore ragged clothes and no shoes, but he peered at Isadora and Alessio with a sharp gaze. He couldn’t be older than ten, although the sheer lack of light in this part of Letum Wood made it difficult to tell for sure.
“Ya stink.” He plugged his nose. “Did ya roll in troll dung?”
“Not now,” she snapped.
“Ya here for the lady?”
“Yes.”
“Prove it.”
Isadora opened her hand, palm up. A swirl of bright-blue magic coalesced into smoky, glowing lines. The crisscrossing design blended into a smooth tapestry that tilted on its side and turned to face him. The boy frowned.
“That’s not it!” he cried.
“That’s it!”
“The lines are drooping. It’s supposed ta be neat and even.”
The edges of the design did tilt where they were supposed to be flat. And, the final color in the scheme was violet; though, it was supposed to be sapphire. She scowled.
“It’s a work in progress.”
“I should send ya to the bog again.”
“Let us through!” she muttered, scowling. “We made it this far.”
Alessio slumped against a tree. The young boy glowered. “Come on, then,” he muttered as he spun around. “She’s waiting.”
Only a few more steps brought a small cottage into view—or perhaps the disappearance of a powerful transformative incantation that hid the cottage. A kind, old woman, with a crooked smile and bright-white hair twisted into a braid, waited in the doorway. She raised a hand.
Isadora stopped walking. This wasn’t the woman’s real appearance—no one in the Advocacy ever showed their real face. Not even to other witches in the Advocacy. Though the transformative magic had long since left Isadora, at least the dried mud protected her fair features and blonde hair.
Isadora motioned to Alessio.
“They hit him with a blindness curse. It will be a few days before he can see again.”
The woman glanced at the high canopy, then back again. “Sometimes that’s better,” she said.
Isadora turned to Alessio, a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You’re safe now. You’ll stay with her until we can find you a new place to start your life.”
“Here?” He gulped, still touching his eyes. “In the forest?”
“For now. It’s safest. Once things settle down, we’ll bring your family to you.”
He hesitated, then nodded once. “Thank you.” The woman advanced, taking him by the arm. Together, they disappeared inside the safe house.
The young boy followed Isadora as she turned and moved farther into Letum Wood, lost in thought. The aftermath of their escape burned hot in her veins, as if she were on fire. She’d transport back to the castle eventually, but only after putting distance between Alessio and herself, just in case.
A familiar voice broke her reverie.
“And where in the name of the good gods is Lucey?”
Maximillion strode next to her where the young boy had been. Instead of his usual ironed clothes and pocket watch, he wore a faded pair of pants and a simple white shirt rolled above his elbows. On him, the simplicity, taken with his disarrayed hair, was …
Oddly wild.
Isadora turned away, swallowing a lump in her throat.
“I haven’t seen Lucey since the ambush.”
“Something went wrong,” he snapped.
Isador
a pressed her lips together with a frown. “Nothing outside our plans.” But something surely felt wrong. She recalled the strange split in the paths that she saw in the magic. The lack of Defenders throughout the marsh.
She recounted everything she remembered while Maximillion folded his hands behind his back, his glacial blue eyes contrasting with the thick locks of chocolate hair on his forehead. He never could contain his hair when he transformed. It about drove him mad.
“Interesting,” he murmured. “Well, no doubt Lucey will be fine. It was a … decent first run, despite a plethora of mistakes.”
“Don’t choke over the compliment,” she muttered.
“Regardless of your many failings, you still managed to save Alessio’s life. That’s something, at least.”
“I’m glad of that.”
She waited for a well done or I’m proud of your work, but when it didn’t come, realized that was as good as she’d get. She sighed. It had been a long night. Real concern for Lucey filled his gaze despite his forced ease, distracting him. Lucey’s absence for such a long stretch of time wasn’t unusual, but still gave cause for concern.
“Go home,” he said. “Take a bath. Get some rest. I won’t expect you for the full report until tomorrow morning. Lucey will have contacted me by then.”
“Send me word when Lucey returns, will you?”
He was already gone.
Sunlight grazed the far horizon in shades of yellow, violet, and burgundy when she transported back to her predesignated spot, and then to another location, just to be sure. Through the trees, not far from where she landed, loomed Chatham Castle. Night shadows still clung to the facade. Fatigue consumed her to the marrow of her bones.
Isadora stifled a yawn, walked fifty paces into the forest for extra insurance against being followed, then transported back to Pearl’s home in Berry.
Chapter Three
Sanna doubled over, her breath coming hot and fast as she stared into the trees. A poacher in Letum Wood.
“Mori.”
Witch magic bore that poacher away.
Sanna clutched at the stitch in her side. There was no doubt that arrow contained liquid silver—the only thing that could kill a dragon. Silver paralyzed dragons, allowing witches to hack them to death or drain their blood. Eventually, the silver would stop their heart. It was the exact weapon Daid had used to kill Talis and stop his regime, and what poachers used over one hundred fifty years ago to massacre the forest dragons.