AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My ragged throat burned like hot irons had been shoved into it. Readying for the next attack, I scrambled away, spinning around in the shallow water. But the creature was gone. A small, circular ripple in the sand indicated something had vanished straight into the creek bed.
Then the ripples dissipated as clear water rushed along its merry way.
Wearing only one shoe now, I stomped out of the creek for the weapon lying uselessly on the shore. I slung the quiver back over my shoulder and snatched up the bow, first slapping myself in the face with the string and finally holding it upright. I tried to grab an arrow from the quiver, but the strap was too long, and the arrows hung nearly horizontal across my back. After swatting the air several times, groping for an arrow, a deep, reverberating laugh startled me so severely that I grunted and swung the tip of the bow out like a sword.
Across the stream, the blond man stepped into view.
“I’ll gore you with this if I must. I’m not half bad with a blade.”
He stopped chuckling, then tipped his head back and laughed. It was the kind of laugh that loosened the tension inside me and I instantly desired to join in. A chuckle bubbled up. I likely looked anything but dangerous in my sopping wet wedding gown and one slipper, but I quickly tamped down the near-laugh, smothering it with the fear that still clutched at my lungs.
His gaze leveled out, and he stared at me with dark eyes—dangerous eyes, like those of a hunter who’d spotted his prey. This was the Labyrinth, and I could trust no one. He was no ally, no matter that he’d spared my life. My breaths quickened.
“Then it’s a shame you don’t have a blade,” he said, resting one hand on the hilt of the dagger at his waist.
He was gloating. Or threatening.
“Who are you?” I hissed.
“A trapped soul. Like yourself.”
“That’s what Edith said.”
“It’s what we all say.” He nodded at the silt-clouded water. “Kelpies are nasty creatures.”
“That was a kelpie? I never thought they looked like that.”
He grunted. “It’s always how I imagined them.” He stepped down the bank, one hand resting casually on his knife. “I told you to stop attacking me.” He drew the blade and twirled it with deft fingers.
“I’m not attack—”
A horrible image flashed through my mind. A battlefield. Bodies, so many bodies, lying motionless in the grass at my feet. They wore the dark green and gold uniforms of Bevon's royal army. Blood ran down from a long cut on my right forearm, dripping off my fingertips. In my hands, I held twin swords coated in red.
But they weren’t my hands.
Then my shoulders shivered, and I was again staring at the trickling creek and one waterlogged slipper on the bank beside me.
The stranger charged toward me, splashing through the creek in three long steps. I braced myself and jabbed with the bow, but he swatted it away. In a breath, his knife was at my throat, and I was lying back against the dead leaves and broken twigs along the weed-choked bank.
“It seems you are lying,” he spat.
6
His knee pinned my shoulder down, and I crammed my eyes shut so that I wouldn’t have to watch his face as he killed me.
“I can’t even do magic!” I shouted through clenched teeth in a last-ditch effort to save my own life.
He chuckled, the knife pressing harder, and a tear leaked out of each of my eyes. My brothers’ faces floated through my vision.
Then the knife withdrew, and the pressure vanished from my shoulder. I pried one eye open. His knife was back in its sheath, and he held both his hands in his hair, staring at me in wide alarm.
I labored to my feet in my heavy, wet dress. “What was that? Are you trying to kill me or not?”
His voice whispered on the breeze, barely louder than the trickle of the creek. “I don’t know. You tell me. Are you not deliberately breaking my spells?”
At his words, every hair on my arms stood up. He held my gaze, his pupils softening from pinpricks to a normal, less frightening size.
More to prevent myself from launching into breathless tremors than from any desire to continue a conversation with this maybe-murderous stranger, I took a deep breath and forced myself to say, “I can’t do magic on demand.”
