“What is this sudden influx of dryads?” Ciaran sighed with a shake of his head.
“Who are you?” I called, raising my voice to address the stranger who still stood across the courtyard.
The cruel glint that came into his eyes when he looked at me, clearly insulted by my audacity in addressing him, told me everything that I needed to know about him.
He was Ruadhán. He was here forme.
The male began to move toward us with a deceptively peaceable stroll, but Ciaran turned his head slightly as if he heard something and chuckled.
“Tell your little friends they cannot sneak up on me,” he recommended before facing the approaching dryad.
The stranger cocked his head with intrigue.
“You must be a Shadow Walker. What an advantage it must be to sense your enemies in the dark,” he drawled in a velvet-soft voice that made the hairs rise on my neck. Suddenly, all I wanted to do was run as the stranger came to a stop in front of us, but I held my ground and quietly erected a shield around me and Ciaran. I was sure that the dryad would be carryingchukapowder and was not about to let him diffuse our power.
“What do you want?” I snarled, watching closely as he slowly raised his hands to show us he bore no weapons, but I still did not trust him even a little.
“I am merely following orders,” he smirked.
Before I could demand to know exactly whose orders those were, it felt like something stung me as it wrapped around myankles and squeezed hard. I heard Ciaran hiss in pain as well, but I was too distracted with dread to pay any more attention to him.
I’d been expecting an attack directly from the dryad, but the sleeping nettle had grown quietly out of the earth at our feet. The plant was also known as thechukavine, and it was from its poisoned barbs that thechukapowder was created. Its paralytic effects were not quite as potent directly from the source, since dryads distilled it to make it much stronger, but it still muted my power.
“What—” Ciaran gaped, lifting his hands to stare at them in confusion when his fire would not come to burn away the nettle.
“It is achukavine! Your magic is gone!” I choked at him as I quickly unsheathed the sword at my hip to slice through the plant. I growled as its barbs were dislodged.
Ciaran raised furious eyes to the stranger and reached over his shoulders to retrieve the dual blades on his back. One of them whirled through the nettle around his legs before he pointed it at the dryad.
“You aredead,” Ciaran snarled, but the dryad merely tsked at him.
“I am not here for you, Shadow Walker. Lower your weapons, and you will not be harmed,” he swore.
“You really think I am just going to let you take her?” Ciaran scoffed and widened his stance into a battle-ready position next to me. “I don’t need magic to kill you.”
“Is she truly worth all this trouble?” the dryad asked, and I had the sense he didn’t think I was. I wondered if he was in disagreement with whoever had sent him.
Ciaran did not need to answer. His aggressive posture was telling enough. Part of me was tempted to tell him to go and make sure to get Amira to Rian. But I knew all too well what awaited me in the Rowan Wood, and I had no intentions of going back there alive.
The dryad sighed when he saw that Ciaran would not be deterred. “Very well then,” he said with a careless but elegant flick of his hand like he was swatting a fly.
Four other male dryads stepped out of the shadows at the edges of the courtyard.
“Should have called my armour,” Ciaran noted as he shifted behind me so we were back-to-back.
“You can’t do it now?” I verified over my shoulder without taking my eyes off the males who began to circle our position. One of them winked and blew a kiss at me, and I thought he seemed a little familiar.
“None of my power works,” Ciaran admitted.
I knew from experience withchukathat I would still be able to do some limited shapeshifting. Most females were permitted the use of just enough magic to clothe and feed themselves and nothing more.
The dryads moved at once, coming at us in a flurry of weapons and vines that erupted from the earth at our feet to try and snag our limbs. And I was immensely thankful that Ciaran had dragged me out of bed every morning to train with him. I easily intercepted the short bone blades that swiped for me with my dominant hand while cutting vines away with the claws on my other.
“At least they are not nearly as powerful as you are,” Ciaran called, making me laugh in the middle of a parry. My weapon twirled around my assailant’s sword just the way Ciaran had taught me so the momentum of the sweep made the male lose his grip. The blade fell into the sand, and he scowled at me as he backed up so his companion could take his place in front of me. It was that vaguely familiar male who had winked at me so suggestively.
“Wow, Ciaran!” I said between swings. “That might… be the nicest thing… you have ever… said to me!”
I heard Ciaran laugh as I disarmed the second male and kicked his knee before he was able to recover from the shock oflosing his sword. He shouted out in pain and clenched his leg as he tumbled into the dirt.
