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“Jump, or we’re both dead.”
She leaned forward on the damaged sill as a hound fought to get to her. Conor lunged, but his sword arm remained clumsy. The hound whipped around, his claws unsheathed. He struck Conor a blow across the chest, before turning on Ellery, raking her arm from shoulder to wrist. She screamed, plunging off the ledge into the darkness.
Chapter Seven
Using the butt of his sword, Conor knocked the hound back before he could strike again. The Keun Marow tripped over Ellery’s forgotten valise, Conor’s blade sliding cleanly home.
He surveyed the damage. Three dead. Two mortally wounded. The pack that attacked him on the tor numbered at least twice as many. He grabbed one of the wounded hounds, fixing him with a deadly stare. “Where are the rest?”
The creature glared back, bl
ood dripping from the corner of his mouth. “Didn’t expect you here.”
“Why have you come?”
The hound lolled, his eyes glazed.
Conor shook it. He’d no time. He still needed to find Ellery. “Answer me.”
It raised its head. “Magic. Strange magic. Asher wants it.” It said nothing more.
Conor rose, less confused, but more suspicious. His chest on fire, his head muzzy with the hound’s poisonous mage energy, he forced himself to step over the dead and dying to reach the broken-in front door.
He discovered Ellery in the crushed bushes beneath the parlor window. She lay sprawled on her side, one arm flung out as if she tried breaking her fall, the other bent oddly beneath her. The left side of her dress had been shredded by the hound’s attack, revealing deep bloody gashes down one arm and across her shoulder. His heart hammered as he knelt beside her, pushing aside the dark cap of her hair. She couldn’t be dead. Not yet. Not like this.
Her breath caught on a moan. “You’re alive.”
She opened her eyes. “Am I?” She tried sitting up, but fell back with a string of curses that would put any soldier to blush.
He hid behind a stern expression. “Your arm looks broken.”
“It feels broken.”
“The wounds are deep, though the bleeding is sluggish.”
“All words to warm my heart.” Conor couldn’t help it. He laughed. Few faced what she had and came away with their sense of humor intact. Asher and his minions had stripped his bare long ago. “We’ll see to both injuries once we’re clean away.”
She gave a panicked glance back at the cottage. “They’re—”
“Dead, but we can’t stay here any longer. It isn’t safe. Can you travel?”
Ellery closed her eyes for a moment before biting her lip and nodding.
“We won’t have to go far before I can see to your wounds. You’ll be throwing punches again by tomorrow.”
Her eyes snapped open. “Tomorrow?” She lurched forward, bit back a scream, and collapsed unconscious.
“Just as well. This will hurt,” he whispered before gathering her up in his arms.
Her head rested against his shoulder, her short crop of curls brushing his sleeve. He found himself staring. His heightened eyesight picked out the freckles across her nose, the sickle-shaped scar by her temple. Not so many years ago, he might have pictured himself finding a woman like her. Loving.
Having children. Living a life rich with laughter and passion. But that felt like another lifetime. And those fantasies had been replaced by darker dreams.
Conor paused, listening. Something felt wrong. He lifted his head, testing the air for danger. Beneath the dull pound of the surf came another noise, a dissonant chord against the comfortable night sounds. A second pack hunted. A second pack approached. Conor couldn’t hold them off, not with the mage energy frying his blood. He glanced once more at Ellery’s sleeping face. “I’m sorry for using you. But it has to be.”
Then with a phrase, he gathered the invisibility of the fethfiada around them both and slid into the trees.
Ellery opened her eyes, looking up into the night sky, a thin smudging of gray in the east. Tangled branches overhung her bed, and the rush of spilling water sounded to her right. She moved, and pain lanced her side. Across her shoulder. Down her arm. But beneath the sharper agony was a dull throbbing that pulsed through her entire body. Even her toes hurt.
