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Ice formed around her heart as she gripped the roots of the hedge.
“Conor’s no easy mark,” the second voice spoke again.
“That’s why I have you. You’re going to get me Bligh, just as you did his sister.”
There was a long silence. The second voice spoke again, the words clipped with emotion. “You didn’t have to kill—”
“Enough.”
Glancing up through the branches, she choked off a gasp. The creature speaking seemed human. He wore a frock coat, knee breeches and a starched neckcloth. But his pale skin was pulled mask-like over bones sharp as knives, and his fingers resembled claws as they clutched his cane.
Asher. It had to be.
Could she leave Conor to that?
“What of the girl?” Asher’s companion was a tall, rangy man. But she could make out little else. He stood deep in the gloom of the copse, hidden from the moon’s faint shine.
Asher on the other hand stood full in the light, giving Ellery plenty of opportunity to watch the dark emotions flit across his evil features. “The soldier’s daughter? Her gifts interest me. But her end is certain. She cannot be allowed to live.”
Panic choked her, but she struggled to control it. Conor had been telling the truth. She felt the ripple of death that washed off Asher in fetid waves. It soured the air, salted the earth, poisoned all it touched.
She’d run from Conor. And now Conor was her only hope. Inching on her belly, ignoring the grasping tangle of briars, she climbed down from the hedge. Step by silent step, she crept up the road back toward the village. Every moment, she waited for a shout from behind. A blast of magic. The keening wail of the Keun Marow. But Asher and his companion were too deep in conversation to note her passing, and the night kept her secret.
Ellery knew something was wrong. A crowd swelled the doorway of the tavern, spilling into the street. Shouts and angry words carried back to her on an ill breeze. Clouds condensed overhead, smothering the moon, and Ellery shivered, sensing Asher’s power in these doings, though she couldn’t explain why. Perhaps it was only her imagination run wild. Though by now, the real world was far outstripping anything her imagination could conjure.
Asher’s net was closing. He wanted her. Then he wanted her dead. This was all Conor’s fault. And Conor was going to fix it. He’d saved her once. He could do it again. She only needed to reach him.
A man’s thick voice shouted, “He tried to kill ’em. Run mad, he is.”
Another echoed the accusation.
Standing on her toes, she fought to see over the heads of the men. Struggled to catch a glimpse of Conor or hear a snarled threat as he settled them with one arrogant word. Even the reassuring presence of Evan would have calmed her runaway pulse. So far, the men were holding back. But she knew it would take but one wrong word or gesture to turn the rabble into a mob.
Evan had given them two days to be gone from here. Their time was up in more ways than one.
She pushed her way through.
Conor stood on the bottom step, a hand on the banister. Only Ellery seemed to notice it was the one thing keeping him upright. He’d dressed in haste, his shirt untucked and buttoned askew, the mage marks twining across his collarbones vivid in the lamplight. “I’ve no quarrel with you, Mr. Kay.” He raked the gathering with a warning look. “Nor with your friends.”
Emboldened by the crowd, Mr. Kay stepped forward. “We’re a God-fearing folk. We don’t want your devilry in our village.”
“Which is why I’m leaving. Let me pass, and I’ll cause no trouble.”
“It’s too late,” Ellery called out. Conor’s attention shifted to her with what she thought was relief. “The trouble’s already here. He’s found us.”
“Where?”
The men jostled her as she spoke. “South of the village. He’s not alone
. He travels with a man.”
Conor’s face remained grave, but his eyes glittered with a new malice. “Not a man, Ellery. A traitor and a coward. My cousin, Simon.”
A shiver of drawn steel drew her eye. “No more talking,” Mr. Kay said. “I’ve had all I can take of your kind.”
His bravado inspired the men to renew their calls for Conor’s blood, pushing forward into the taproom, knocking Ellery aside.
“Look out!” she shouted.
