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In battle.
But just before they reached us, a row of hedge bushes appeared in front of me, their bushy leaves and thick branches nearly eight feet high and completely obscuring the small army from view.
“What the hell?” I heard one of the riders shout. “Where’d they go?”
I turned to find Melaina poised in a strike stance, arms lifted toward the hedgerow, knees slightly bent, and face full of concentration as she’d used her magic of disguise to cover us.
Except the wall was only an illusion. If the men only tried to walk through the hedge, they would meet no resistance whatsoever. I swung back, preparing for them to realize nothing actually stood between them and us.
But instead, the caw of a raven filled their air as it dive-bombed our attackers.
Holly.
The unicorn raven landed on the ground in front of us, transforming as she went so that she morphed and grew, shedding her feathers for scales and growing enormous. She landed with such a massive thud on the ground that the earth shook. A great roar emerged from her lungs as she spread her wings, the wind produced from the move totally blowing away the glamoured hedgerow Melaina had just made.
Not that hiding us mattered anymore. The riders who were attacking didn’t seem to care about us with Holly—transformed into a giant dragon—looming before them. She reached out her talons and caught one man by the waist, plucking him from his horse and flinging him to the side. He flew about twenty feet before crashing into the side of a boulder and slumping limply to the ground.
Then Holly tucked in her neck as if inhaling, only to breathe out a stream of fire.
“Holy shit.”
She sprayed the ground in front of our enemies, making a wall of flames separate us from them. They screamed as if she were burning them alive—which she totally wasn’t—and they wheeled around on their horses, fleeing in all directions.
I shook my head in complete awe. “Unicorns are so badass.”
“Yeah.” Quilla appeared at my side. She seemed similarly transfixed by the forest destruction Holly was reaping before she glanced at me in a daze. “So how the hell did you get one to be so devoted to you?”
I shrugged. “I just gave her a backrub and sweet treat.” Then I grinned. “Maybe that’s what I should’ve tried with you from the beginning, huh?”
She groaned and rolled her eyes at my pathetic joke.
“Indigo?” a male voice said from behind me.
I spun around, weapon raised, only to stop dead. “Axel?”
He’d somehow gotten past Holly’s barrier of fire, and instead of running, like everyone else diving for cover was doing, he sought us out instead.
Always so brave, that Axel.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised he would be among a posse that was out hunting Graykeys, but I was.
When his gaze strayed past me, it narrowed with hate, and he lifted his sword for an attack.
“Don’t want to alarm you or anything,” he said calmly, never taking his gaze off Quilla. “But you might want to step this way, cousin. You’ve found yourself in the presence of a Graykey.”
I glanced back at Quilla who was slowly backing away and had found another dagger. She lifted it threateningly, prepared to let it fly.
Turning back to Axel, I asked, “Her? How do you know?”
He crept a few paces closer to her, but since I was still safely positioned between the two, I didn’t stop his approach.
“We set up a magical perimeter around my father’s home. Any Graykey that crosses the boundary trips an alarm to alert us to their presence and turns their eyes black.”
I whirled back to check Quilla’s eyes. “Son of a bitch,” I murmured in surprise. I’d been so busy checking her over everywhere else for injuries I guess I hadn’t looked into her eyes. She still had the whites, but the browns of her irises were all black now, as if the pupil had swallowed them whole. It was kind of creepy to look at, actually.
Returning my attention to Axel, I asked, “Is there any way to turn them back to normal?”
“If she escaped the magic perimeter, they’d return to normal, but we’re not going to let that happen, are we, cousin? We can take her out now. Together.” Then he paused, frowning, and sent me an odd look, finally catching on to the fact that something wasn’t quite as he thought it was with the situation. “Wait.” Straightening, he blinked at me. “Why would you ask that?”
