We set off, once again hand in hand, sweeping over the stone hills and valleys. A grove of Ashwood trees lay ahead, wet leaves shaking in the moonlight.
“Where’s your sister?” Pheolix asked.
I glanced away. “I can’t tell you. But we had a plan. We laid tracks. She’s safe.” I hoped.
Pheolix nodded. “Maybe someday.”
“No,” I said, eyes on the trees as we passed. “I swore a blood vow that I’d never tell a soul. To protect her.” My eyes shifted to him. “Once we’re settled. Once it's safe. I want to find your brother.”
His mouth parted. “When I said I’d lost him,” he murmured, “I didn’t mean that I don’t know where he is.”
“What?” I stopped, turning toward Pheolix. “Where is he?”
But Pheolix didn’t answer.
Cold air fogged over my mouth. A chill lanced down my spine. A sweep of frost permeated the nearby trees, so thick and crystallic they glittered.
My connection to the water in the air vanished.
Pheolix crossed in front of my body, backing me into the nearest stone slab as we searched for the direction it came from. Which way to run. But I knew somehow, through instinct or experience or a solid education in my own ill-luck, there was no way to run.
They stepped out from the trees and rocks, surrounding us from every angle. Their hoods off, that prickle fired down myspiculaeas I met their eyes, one after another. Pheolix pressed me flat against the rock, an arm held out to the side to cage me in.
One of them stepped forward.
The drone threw a punch. Pheolix ducked, straightening before the other Naiad’s arm fully stretched, and struck him in the throat.
He went down with a choke, and two more took his place.
Pheolix let one of them attempt a swing, waiting for the Naiad’s arm to extend and locking his own arm around it. I flinched at the crack that followed. The Naiad didn’t make a sound.
Twisting, Pheolix threw him into the other one. Then turned in time to grab the fist of a fourth in midair, halting the drone. Pheolix kicked that one square in the balls.
A female dashed into my side. I shoved her off, but she fought with the same brand of precision Pheolix did, snapping my arms together behind my back and forcing me to the ground with a violent wrench up against my wrists. She fit a cold boot into the back of my neck. Then suddenly her weight vanished, crashed into the stone by Pheolix’s body. She crumpled away, but he’d already surged back to fight with more of them.
Nine Naiads lay strewn over the ground around us. Dead.
A thin cord cracked.
It whizzed under my ear, a soft vibration through the air.
Pheolix jerked, shoulders caving forward.
And looked down at an arrow in the side of his abdomen.
A shriek erupted from low in my lungs as I reached for him. Even in the dark, the powdery surface of the shaft gleamed, both pearlescent and dull—someone had tipped it in ash.
I knew that ash. It was caustic against skin. It burned lungs when inhaled.
But it was lethal in the blood.
The smell of burnt flesh bloomed, the sound a thick sizzle.
Pheolix dropped to his knees.
59
Selena
