Orion seemed to realize this at the same time as he put his arms around me to protect me from the sudden surge. There wasn’t even room for the beasts to claw at us much less for us to swing a sword.
“Orion—”
“I have you. I will not let them hurt you,” he swore, his arms like a wall of his own that held them back from squeezing me. He was stronger than I’d ever imagined as he forcefully made space for me to breathe.
But for how much longer? Fuath were climbing over one another to reach us, and Helena did her best to fend off the high attacks, but I knew in my heart we could not hold out this way for much longer.
That was when the earth trembled beneath our feet as if in warning. Thunder rumbled overhead so ominously it silenced even the squalling of dying Fuath.
“Riordan?” I choked hopefully into Orion’s chest.
“No,” he answered uneasily, his head tilted up as the trees began to shiver. “This is… something else.”
An unintelligible scream erupted, and then the Fuath suddenly descended into a writhing mass again. Only this time they were trying to get away and clawed one another in their efforts to flee into the forest.
“Thank the gods,” breathed Sofia once we could all get in a breath. I turned to her in relief and saw that Ares had caged her with his arms the same way Orion caged me. Even though she was also a demigod who could have held her own in the crushing crowd.
I analyzed each of my companions, relieved that they all seemed well except for some bite marks and shallow scratches. But I froze when I saw just what had the Fuath all fleeing so desperately.
Living shadows. The whole forest had come alive with swaths of darkness that swallowed Fuath in groups and left them behind in heaps of dead.
“What in the name of the Merciful—” Helena began.
“Move!” Orion shouted when the shadows consumed the last of the Fuath and came right at us. Except none of us could move when vines suddenly seized our legs to hold us in place. The griffins beat their wings furiously in an effort to pull free, and I tried to burn away the foliage, but it remanifested so fast that it was no use!
The darkness continued to swirl toward us rapidly until a scream was clawing up the back of my throat. Orion put his arms around me and braced for the impact, but the shadows imploded just before reaching us. They flew in every direction to settle under the leaves and in hollows. And from the explosion strode a vaguely familiar and breathtaking man withhoney-blond hair, the most striking tabby eyes, and a wicked grin I knew not to trust.
“You should see your faces,” he taunted us in a lilting dialect of Sìth Gaeilge, the oldest language of the fey.
“Who the fuck are you?” snarled Ares with his sword raised at the ready despite the fact we were trapped.
“Your saviour and your doom, it seems,” the fey noted with another cruel smile. And then my stomach twisted as he seemed to take note of how Ares and I were trying to shield Sofia. “Let us make sure you all behave.”
Before anyone could object, the fey had produced a long whip, which he used like a lasso on Sofia. It cinched around her middle to confine her wings against her back and her arms at her sides while he jerked her toward him. The vines on her legs released her, but they kept the rest of us restrained as the fey pinned her against him with a bone blade to her throat. Her wings flashed from their electric state to corporeal form as she tried to free them. But the lasso around her must have been magic because it held even when her wings became immaterial.
“If you hurt her, I will gut you slowly,” Ares warned, but it only made the fey smile until Sofia suddenly ripped the air from his lungs.
He retaliated immediately with fire magic that sparked under his hands. It snapped and spit like burning cedar on her skin until she winced and relented, allowing him to draw in a ragged breath again.
“You are confusing me, little bird. Are we fighting or playing right now?” he smirked a little breathlessly.
“You are disgusting!” she snarled while Ares trembled with so much rage that I thought he might combust.
“Just be a good girl, and I swear you will not be hurt,” the fey assured Sofia, just as I pieced together the identity of this man who wielded fire and shadow.
“Wild Hunt,” I choked out, which made the others all grow suddenly still with the same dread that was coursing throughmy veins.
“That is very good, little witch. You did not think that you would get away with what you did to my family?” demanded the rider.
“Where is Ornella?” I asked him, and his vicious eyes turned even colder with his amusement before he raised them over my shoulder.
I turned, my heart shooting into my throat when I saw my friend standing right behind us.
“Ornella!” I cried, but my relief faded quickly when the vines around Orion began binding his wings and then yanked him away from me. “What are you doing?”
I tried to burn the vines clinging to my legs again and stepped toward my mate, but they kept lashing violently out of the earth to wrap around me. I was just about to unleash a torrent of fire to sear the earth around me when Orion was forced to his knees in front of Ornella. He was facing me as she dug her extended claws into his throat from behind him in a clear threat, and I stopped short.
“Hello, Amira,” she snarled at me with a cold sneer. “Stay back or the angry one loses his head.”
