They turned right, away from the direction that pulled them to Osalor. They couldn’t run there, not now, not if it was the last place in all the wilds. Where, then? Where?
A hip-high stone lay in Saeldian’s path. They ran up its sloped side and barely saw the narrow, deep gorge waiting on the other side in time to leap, legs and arms still working as if they ran on even ground.
The ground met their boot soles hard enough to jolt throughtheir ankles and knees, but still they ran. To the Village That Chooses Its Own? Where else?
But what if it hadn’t chosen them?
They hadn’t escaped that landing smoothly. Saeldian’s ankle flared with every step. Not badly, at least, not right now. But Saeldian would pay for every step later. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to run. And Saeldian had nowhere to go.
There was half a moment to feel that empty, lonely pain before Saeldian smelled lightning and a just-burned match. They took two more steps before the sheer weight of lifting their legs was too much, and the air smelled of hot iron.
They couldn’t move, but they could hear a pleased humming tune as a woman with long white hair wearing a traveling robe and carrying a sturdy walking staff walked out from behind a wide fir trunk.
“There you are,” the witch said. “And alone too. I’ve been looking for you.”
She was so powerful. It radiated from her, cold and implacable as a magnet. She circled Saeldian like a cat who had caught its mouse but wanted to play with it before sinking its teeth into the poor creature’s—Saeldian’s—spine.
“Let’s talk, my dear.” The witch tapped her chin with a black metal rod—an iron rod. “I know you. Or I should say, I know who you are. And you have something I want. It would be easier for you if you gave it to me.”
Saeldian tried to speak, but only “Nnnn” emerged. They couldn’t open their mouth. They couldn’t swipe the curl that rolled in front of their eyes. But those could move, tracking the witch as she walked from one edge of Saeldian’s vision to the other.
“I know you don’t know the truth, poor thing. But that trinket you wear is mine, and the magic in it too. If you give it to me, you can live.”
Saeldian could live, yes. But they would have nothing. They would lose their power, and Saeldian wasn’t enough of a fool to imagine that Osalor would forgive them, so add an enemy to that count.
And how did they know that this witch was telling them thetruth? This was the very witch Osalor had warned them about that first day in the wood. This was the witch who hunted Osalor because of the amulet Saeldian wore. Wasn’t it?
Saeldian made a big show of struggling to speak until the witch loosened the bindings around their mouth. “What will happen to Osalor if I do?”
“What a loyal little thing you are. I offered you the chance to live, and you don’t ask me to make you a better offer than whatever he gave you.”
Saeldian said nothing.
“Very well. I’ll find him and make him pay. Now, are you going to devote yourself to him, or are you going to look out for your own skin?”
Saeldian swallowed, but the next question was obvious. “I can’t move. You could just take it. But you want me to give it to you. Why?”
Then the witch stared at Saeldian for a moment. “You don’t know.”
Know what?
“Stop!”
Kell’s voice. He wasn’t far away, and the witch was off-balance.
“Good job waiting for my backup, by the way,” Saeldian said. “And elsewhere!”
They cast the spell the moment the others broke into view.
Chapter Seventeen
One Hundred Acorns
Where Kell Waits Until the Last Second
Kell had to forget the way Saeldian ran out of Hearthaven’s Repose. It didn’t matter. He already knew what would happen if they knew. He just never meant to tell them. But once they realized that they couldn’t say anything that wasn’t true, it was too late.
He loved Saeldian. Hopelessly. Eternally. And once he’d said the first truth, there was no point in holding back the rest. Even if it was in front of the circle of fey who had gathered to hear every word.
