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“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I shouted as tears pricked my eyes. Except I did. Leif. The page about the nightsteel rune sword—the same item Mrak hadn’t wanted me to make. It was dangerous, he’d said. Familiar to him.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to force together thoughts through the fog of intoxication. Familiar like that symbol on this man’s dagger.
Think, think, think. Fast.Where had I seen it before? Maybe that’d give me a clue as to what these men wanted.
Think, Aisling.
The memory slammed into me so hard, it stole breath from my lungs as I stared up at the man with my torn bag.
I’d seen that symbol on their blades before. It’d been on the book that’d given me the spell to summon Mrak.
I blinked, slowly processing this realization. “I—”
The taller of the two men cursed under his breath. “She doesn’t know. Or she won’t give it up. Either way.” He turned toward his companion, and in that moment, I saw an opening.
I pushed off the brick wall and began to sprint away on uneasy legs. I aimed to burst between the men and make it down the street, but they both grabbed my shoulders and threw me back against the brick wall. My head connected again, and this time, I saw stars dance along the edges of my vision.
Still, I kept my mouth shut. I wouldn’t give them any information if it dealt with Mrak. Not without knowing the context, or why Leif wanted a sword with dangerous runes, or why their blades displayed a symbol like the one from Mrak’s book.
I hated this trapped feeling. It reminded me too much of how trapped I’d been in the feeder community.
“Leave me alone!” I screamed. “Mrak!”
Silence still. Emptiness. Where the hell was he?
The taller man stepped closer. I backed up against the brick wall to no success—there was nowhere else to go as he pressed the blade to my throat. “All we want is the page Leif brought to you. I don’t care if you can or can’t forge the weapon, but I need the instructions back.”
“Why the hell is this blade so important to everyone?” I spat as fury began to replace my fear. Anger at Mrak’s abandonment. Anger at allowing myself to become so intoxicated that I couldn’t think straight. I should have just taken the taxi with Willa, and then none of this would have happened.
And where was Mrak?
“As if you don’t know,” the taller man said. He was so close, I could now smell his bad cologne. It made me want to gag. “Where. Is. It?” He pressed the blade closer. A sharp, quick pain bloomed along my neck and a tiny, warm trickle started. Blood. Blood on my neck, sliding down it. Even if it was the tiniest drop, I’d felt that same sensation so many gods-awful times that, now free from reprimand should I react, only a feral, raw need to get away remained.
I screamed and grabbed the man’s dagger-hand. Heat bloomed along my fingertips, searing his skin. He cried out in pain as his skin melted, but I reached up with my other hand and held on tightly.
His friend lunged for me. I kicked out, sending a trail of fire along my boot hot enough to burn the asphalt in the middle of summer. The shorter man staggered backward, careful to avoid the flames as his friend’s hand melted in front of him.
I didn’t want the man’s hand. I wanted the dagger gone, no longer a danger, no longer drawing blood from me. So I moved my hand from the man’s wrist to the hilt of the dagger, where that familiar symbol was, and concentrated on burning that instead of skin. The metal, resin, and whatever else the hilt had been made from melted in the man’s hand and in my hold, but the fire didn’t hurt me. The gold-inlaid symbol of circles and a triangle disappeared into the rest of the dagger’s material.
I was so focused on watching this, so satisfied at being able to act to defend myself, that I didn’t see the first punch coming from the shorter man. Nor the second. Both of his fists impacted my jaw in quick succession. When he punched me a third time, now in the gut, I staggered sideways, breathless as pain screamed across my head and body. Blood pooled in my mouth and then poured from my nose.
As the men helped each other, I wiped the blood away, frozen at sight of crimson on my hands again.
“You crazy bitch!” the taller one screamed. His shorter friend tried pulling him back and away from me, this confrontation going how none of us had expected. But he yanked himself out of his friend’s grip and charged me, knocking me back against the wall once more. In my focused, frozen, stupor, I didn’t have it in me to stop him—had barely seen the attack coming, really.
This time, when my head slammed against the brick, darkness swam around my vision.
It did not retreat.
