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“Watch out!” she screamed, struggling desperately to free herself.
Ethan swung a tree branch and hit Joel on the back of the head. Moments later, she heard his body slump to the ground.
Followed by silence.
She heaved a panicked sob. Joel! My girls!
“Well, isn’t this convenient?” Ethan circled the horse until he stood several feet away, snarling down at her with one bloodshot eye. Terror clawed at her throat as she relived the memories of a rope tight around her neck. Her legs leaving the ground. The breath nearly strangled from her lungs. “We were waiting nearby for you to return this way. We didn’t even have to shoot you down ourselves.”
“Leave…” She punched his leg. “Us…” She smashed his foot with a fist. “Alone!” She clawed at his ankle.
But the man simply laughed hoarsely and moved out of her reach, unaffected by her weak attempts to hurt him.
Whimpers from the opposite side of Sunweave spurred her panic faster. Her girls were still alive. But for how much longer?
The other man, Cole, helped Ethan drag Joel’s unconscious body toward a tree, tying his hands behind his back and his torso to the trunk using what appeared to be the same rope they’d tried to hang her with. The sight of his head rolling to the side fanned anger within her. She struggled again but only managed to groan at the burning pain.
Ethan pulled Joel’s flute out of his waistband and attempted to break it against his thigh. He hissed and swore when the flute remained intact. Instead, he tossed it aside, out of reach. It stuck out at an angle in a mound of snow.
“We should kill him,” Cole said, nodding his head toward Joel.
No! No! No!
If they touched him again, her magic would reign vengeance. But as she tapped into the magic within her as her father had taught her, it shrank away. She didn’t have enough practice controlling it herself.
Ethan shook his head. “It would be the smart thing to do. But no. He saved my life once.” He kicked the bottom of Joel’s boot. Joel remained unconscious. “Consider my debt repaid.”
“I have no debt to him.” Cole pulled out a knife.
She screeched and thrashed against her pinned leg, which spurred the whimpering from her children even more. “He’s done nothing wrong! Leave him alone!”
Ethan’s lip curled menacingly. “You don’t think we don’t know what he did after they killed my cousin? He’ll hunt us down, too.” He nodded to Cole. “Do it.”
“Stop!” Maisy shrieked as she and Eva stood hand in hand between the two thugs and Joel. But the sound turned into an inhuman wail, piercing her ears and straight into her mind. Maisy’s wail seemed to rip her from the inside out, pain bursting through her head until she feared it might explode.
Despite the agony of her daughter’s magic, her hands sifted through the snow, desperately searching for anything to grab onto. When her fingers closed around a stone, she winced and took aim from her awkward angle. Ethan and Cole clutched their heads. Each man screamed in agony as if Maisy’s magic was directed more at them than at her.
And then she threw the stone with all her might.
It struck Cole in the temple. He collapsed to one knee.
But through his menacing scowl, his attention snapped toward her. She desperately scrambled for another rock and found one just as Cole reached her side. He pried it from her fingers, drew back his arm, and struck her on the side of the head.
Her entire world turned black.
She was just barely aware of her surroundings as her consciousness faded.
“Leave the children,” Ethan growled, followed by the weight lifting off her leg. Someone lifted her limp body before her body succumbed completely to the darkness.
Chapter 17
“Papa Joel!”
Someone shook his shoulder. He groaned as a pulsing pain throbbed in the back of his skull. But a heaviness kept his eyelids closed. His head rolled to the side while darkness threatened to cave in on him again.
Small hands rested on either side of his face, shaking him until his eyes cracked open. Wide, green eyes stared back at him. Blonde hair hung around Eva’s face in a messy array of golden strands. And Maisy…
His eldest stepdaughter stood over him, her chin trembling as she shook his shoulders again. “Wake up, Papa. Wake up!”
