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How long before he caught up to the coach? He’d been moving fast, so it wouldn’t take him long. Maybe she should hide?No, keep moving.If she had any chance it would be getting far away from him. In case he could sense her thoughts, she concentrated on the ferns.Ferns. Grass. Trees. That’s all I am.
She scuttled through the ferns for longer than she’d expected. Long enough that she began to wish she’d paced herself, her breath growing ragged and loud in her own ears.Just the wind. Wind in the ferns.
A presence slunk across her senses. Something dark and feral. Unsavory.
Not Gabriel. But what?
Any chance they’ll send the hunters after ye? Keep yer senses sharp. Anything looks, sounds, or smells weird…Dary’s advice echoed in her mind. Had that mounted figure been the hunters and not Gabriel after all? The presence smeared itself across her mind, sending a bolt of atavistic terror through her.
She broke into a flat-out run. And howls blazed into the sky behind her.
~10~
Nic ran likeshe’d never run in her life, as if death chased her with slavering jaws.
Very likely, it did. If only she’d stayed in the coach… Except even that might not have saved her. What would? Her thoughts flew in frantic circles, a sharp stitch in her side stealing what little breath she had left. The parasol trees were too spindly to climb—and then she’d just be stuck anyway, treed like a cat with hounds baying for her blood beneath.
A sob of despair tore out of her—and a dark shape flew through the ferns off to her right. The size of a large dog, the boneless leaping of a weasel. Another, off to her left. They were flanking her.
When a third stood up directly in her path, she had no breath to even scream.
Like an idiot, she simply collapsed, her limbs giving way in watery terror. Sobbing for breath, she stared at the thing. A beast from nightmares, the hunter had to be a creation of House Ariel, made for Tadkiel’s cruel justice. It smiled with long jaws, rows of teeth sharp as a weasel’s, canting its head to study her with one eye dark as old urine. “Lady Veronica Elal?”
“No,” she replied. “I’m Marah, of Port Anatole.”
Two more presences slunk up beside her, and another behind. “Pleasse, Lady Veronica Elal,” the leader said. “Let’ss not make thiss more difficult than needed.” It produced a flask. “Sssome water for you.”
Nic eyed it, then gave the hunter a hard stare. “No.”
It shook its head, almost seeming sad. “Foolisshness, familiar. We are tassked to bring you home ssafely. In good condishion.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she spat.
“But you are,” it replied. “You have no choisse. We musst bring you home—willingly or not. Sssave yoursself ssorrow and come with uss. We will not harm you.”
The conversation had at least given Nic time to catch her breath, the angry stitch in her side easing. Holding out her hands in a facsimile of surrender, she got to her feet. “What if I don’t want to go back?”
It shook its head, the same sad gesture. Small repertoire of humanlike mannerisms, perhaps. “You have no choisse. We musst bring you home—willingly or not.”
Maybe a small repertoire of phrases, too. Nic turned in a circle, surveying her captors. Five of them. She obviously couldn’t outrun them. Maybe if she pretended to go willingly, she could escape them at some point. Giving the leader a rueful smile, she pretended to sag in resignation. “You’ll take me home if I cooperate?”
“Yess, Lady Veronica Elal, we will.”
“All right, then. It’s a long walk back to Port Anatole.” Nic turned to head back toward the road. The hunters behind and to the sides of her tightened their circle, blocking her way. Her heart, still racing, climbed up to cramp at the base of her throat, the gut-watering fear making her shake.
“Wait, Lady Veronica Elal. We musst ssecure you.”
“What?” She spun back around to the leader. Not that it was any less frightening than the others, but somehow the fact that it spoke to her made it seem… capable of reasoning with. “No. I’m going willingly.”
“And we’ll enssure that remainss to be true.” Just as it had produced the flask of water, it produced a collar—the heavy metal locking kind—with a long chain dangling from it.
“No,” she repeated, her voice a horrified whisper. All those dreadful stories of familiars wearing collars swam up to mock her. “You can’t. I won’t.”
“The work of a moment,” it promised. “It won’t hurt.”
It advanced on her, and Nic broke. In a panic, she tried to run, the hunters all tackling her, pinning her to the ground as she shrieked and fought. To no avail. The hunters held her spread-eagled on the ground, one on each limb, and the leader held her head still by dint of a hairy knee on her forehead. A dollop of drool fell from its fangs as it bent over her, slipping the collar behind her neck, the lock sealing with an audible snick and a burst of magic.
Revolted, devastated, utterly defeated, Nic lay there limply, no fight left in her. How ignominiously her bid for freedom had ended. How worthless she was. To come all this way just to be dragged home—and to face far worse consequences than she would have if she’d just married Lord Phel and capitulated to her fate. The moment she’d gotten those test results, confirming that she’d never be a wizard, she should’ve known what that meant: that she would never rule her own life. If she’d given up then, she could’ve spared herself so much misery.
