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Rosetta barely had time to let out a distressed squeak before the rocks slipped out from beneath her and she disappeared in a cloud down the other side.
We climbed faster, listening to barks and growls and whimpers coming from just beyond our view, not knowing which were coming from Rosetta and which were caused by her.
Kellan reached the top next; then Zan. I came up behind them, but Onal was still struggling to get past the halfway point. Down below on the other side, three wolves in varying states of decay were brawling with Rosetta, snapping and scratching, teeth bared and eyes burning as she darted under their feet, swiping where she could swipe and biting when she could bite. But she was one against three and obviously beginning to tire.
Without a blink, Kellan skidded down the rocks sideways, one foot ahead of the other, leaving a single-line scar in the gravel mountain. He tucked into a roll at the base and rose with his sword already drawn, then plunged into the fray with Rosetta, giving a guttural battle cry.
Zan followed suit, a dagger in each hand, tearing with one and blocking with the other, his black coat flying behind him as he stabbed and parried.
I threw my hand down to Onal. “Come on! Here! Take it!”
“I’m too old for this shit,” she said, straining to reach.
“Just a little farther!” Her fingers were almost in my grasp.
Then the rocks slid out from beneath her, and she tumbled in a cascade all the way back to the bottom, where she went still.
I didn’t want to leave the others to fight the wolves alone, but I couldn’t abandon Onal. My eyes stinging from the dust, I hoisted myself back over the ridge and was just starting to go back down after her when a shrill whistle sang out from the dark line of trees. I peeked over the top of the rubble to where the others were fighting and saw six of Arceneaux’s acolytes emerge from the forest. They were led by a seventh: I knew him immediately. Lyall, her second-in-command.
He had Rosetta, back in human form, locked tight in his grip, the curve of an iron knife pressed into the soft skin under her jaw.
He whistled again, and the wolves froze mid-fight and then padded obediently to his side. One wolf had white ribs jutting visibly from its sagging fur. On another, the musculature of its hackles was open to the air; even from here I could see the stringy, graying meat pull and release as it moved. The third wolf was the same one Zan and I had already encountered outside the Quiet Canary; his teeth gleamed in his half-bare skull.
“One move,” Lyall said, walking Rosetta forward, “and I’ll use this knife to separate her body from her soul. Now, put your weapons down.”
“Don’t!” Rosetta tried to say. “I can’t be—” But her words were cut off as the iron knife pressed deeper into her skin.
Kellan and Zan obeyed, laying their blades down and rising with their hands in the air.
The half-skull wolf had begun to sniff the air, shivering in excitement. It licked its teeth and what was left of its lips and made a growling bark that almost sounded like a word:
Girl.
Girl.
The last wolf was at the base of the broken rocks, staring up at me, its ravaged face pulled into a monstrous grin. I looked at Zan, and he mouthed one word: Run!
I half ran, half tumbled down the rocks, and crawled over to Onal, who had begun to stir. She groaned as I tried to lift her. I felt the magic in her blood before I saw it, oozing from a terrible gash between her collarbone and her shoulder. I strained away from its call, tamping down the urge to use it and focusing instead on putting distance between us and the coming canine.
“Let me go, you clumsy barbarian!” she growled.
“Can’t,” I breathed. “Wolf.”
It had just crested the top of the rocks and was staring down at us, red eyes glowing.
“In that case . . .” Onal said.
I hoisted her arm over my shoulder and we limped back the way we came, with the dog close enough behind us that we could smell the stench of it. It seemed to be slowed by some of its missing pieces, giving me enough time to focus my concentration on all my own cuts and abrasions and begin to chant the invisibility spell. “We are not seen. We are not seen.” But I had been inert for two days; I was dehydrated and hungry, my blood sluggish to respond.
The wolf’s confusion at our disappearance earned us a little bit of time and distance, but it didn’t take long for my diminished power to sputter out.
Girl. Its coughing bark came again, like a taunt.
Girl. It was my imagination. It had to be my imagination.
Little miss.
I stopped in my tracks, the last of my pitiable invisibility spell dying on my lips.
