“Get down!”
Caim lunged, but he was an instant too late as something lashed through the doorway. He didn’t get a look at it, but he saw its effects as Keegan was hurtled the length of four wagons down the corridor to land flat on his back. Sprawled on the floor where the youth had stood only a moment before, Caim did the only thing he could think of-he rolled to his feet and charged the gate. Something zipped over his left shoulder, as quiet as an evening breeze, but the power of it jangled down his arm from shoulder to fingertips.
Something stood in the doorway. A slender figure framed by the darkness. Something in the way it stood, arms upraised as if supplicating the night sky, reminded Caim of his past. It had to be…
The witch.
Caim sprinted with both knives held low for gutting slashes. Then the figure pushed back its hood, and a moonbeam caught her high cheekbones, the slope of a slender nose, smooth smoky-gray skin.
Caim heard sounds beyond the doorway, but all his attention was focused on the woman as her lips parted.
“Scion…”
What was that supposed to mean? A warning? There was something about this woman that dug into his brain. Her statuesque beauty called to him. The mysterious folds of her clothing whispered of forbidden secrets. Caim blinked. What was he thinking? He tried to stop his momentum, but an irresistible force drew him toward the doorway. He dug in his heels. His legs shook, but they continued to carry him forward. Caim clenched his jaws as he remembered his battle with Levictus, but there was an allure about this woman he couldn’t resist. If he just got close enough to see her better, to smell the sweet musk of her hair, to bend his neck… No! Kill her! Kill her!
Caim watched his arm extend with horrifying slowness. The point of the suete knife shone bright as it reached toward her shadowed breast. Caim warred with himself. He didn’t kill women. Not since…
He forced his mind back on the witch. She was lifting a hand toward him. Caim braced himself, but nothing seemed to happen. Then a fierce pain flared in the palm of his right hand. Caim ground his teeth together as tendrils of smoke rose from the blade of his knife and the steel began to darken before his eyes. His nerves screamed for him to drop the weapon, but he held on, determined to fight through the pain. All he could think of was completing the last three steps that would carry him to the witch and plunging the smoking blade into her heart.
Two steps.
Caim hissed as his knife inched closer. His legs felt like pillars of wet clay, dragging him along. The wind howled in his ears, the rotting stench filled his lungs. Invisible talons closed around his throat, and the witch’s mouth opened in a smile. But the assault only hardened his will.
One step.
Caim looked into her dark eyes, sparkling like pits of oil. Much of her face was still swathed in shade. Then the shadows parted, and Caim saw her in full. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, which saved it from being bitten through as his jaws clamped shut. He knew her features as he knew his own. Unbidden, the old dream bubbled up through his subconscious, and he was once again standing in a familiar courtyard illuminated by walls of raging flames.
The frigid wind flogged his small body. The cold slid through his veins like ice water. There was blood on his hands. He wiped them on his shirt, but they wouldn’t come clean.
A wail pierced the silent night. Caim’s stomach ached like someone had punched him as his mother burst from the burning house, into the arms of the waiting soldiers. He wanted to run to her, to save her, but he could do nothing as the dark men dragged her away, into the fields and the great forest beyond, vanishing like a pack of ghosts.
His mother’s face.
Caim’s feet almost slid out from under him as the paralysis left him. He halted the impetus of his thrust. His arms, suddenly too heavy to lift, fell by his sides. His mother’s screams pierced his skull. Caim opened his mouth, but he stood voiceless before her, unable to move or pull his gaze away. She hadn’t changed at all, still as youthful and vibrant as in his memories. But there was a cast to her features, an opacity to her eyes that cut through him. Then she smiled, and he was sure that if he could just look closer, he would see her as she had been before.
The strident screech of metal snapped Caim out of his stupor as rows of iron bars fell across the doorway, separating him from the woman with his mother’s face. The impact shook the floor as the heavy portcullis fell into place.
The witch clapped her hands. A cloud of darkness fell over Caim as he was hurtled away from the doorway. A cocoon of shadows enveloped him, protecting him from the icy wind that tore at the skin of his face and hands and stole the breath from his lungs. Despite the protective barrier, he landed hard. Caim rolled up on one elbow as the shadows peeled away from him. Some of them were riddled with hoarfrost and did not move. He glanced down the passage toward the gate. Keegan stood in the atrium, one hand on the gate’s windlass. The woman stood in darkness once more, all except for her eyes. They burned into his brain from across the divide. When they flared up, a sudden ache ripped through his chest.
As Caim started to rise, something zipped past his ear. Outside, a troop of crossbowmen ran up to the other side of the portcullis. Buzzing quarrels peppered the air. One slammed into Caim’s shoulder and knocked him on his back. Breathing through gritted teeth, he sat up, and the bolt fell away. Its point had transfixed a wriggling shadow and failed to penetrate his jacket.
Keegan yelled in his ear. “Come on!”
Caim ran with the youth, missiles speeding past them, and tried not to think about one of those steel-headed bolts punching through his spine. The corridor seemed miles longer than before. As they approached the stairs, he heard fighting ahead. Caim passed Keegan under the stone archway and plunged into pandemonium. Outlaws and jailors were locked in combat on the stairs. There was no time for tactics. Caim jumped into the fight.
Vibrations ran up his injured arm as he stabbed a man holding a truncheon. The jailor cried out and pitched into the arms of the outlaw he had been about to brain, but Caim was already moving past them. The outlaws fought without savvy or technique, but their foes were possibly worse. On the second-floor landing, a knot of Keegan’s friends fended off twice their number of guards. Caim sliced his way into the line of attackers. Shadows gathered overhead as if to watch the slaughter, and he had to fight to hold them at bay. The power hummed within him. The black sword rattled against his shoulder, pleading to be let free, and part of him wanted to do it. What’s happening to me?
He wanted Kit back, but he had no sense of her. She could be on the other side of the moon. Blood ran across the stone under his feet, and bodies piled around him until the remaining guards pulled back up the steps. Energized by this reprieve, the outlaws surged forward and pushed their foes up to the next level. Caim started to follow, but a hand clapped on his shoulder. He whirled, then lowered his knives at the sight of Ramon. The big man’s face was masked in blood. An ugly purple bruise marred his cheek.
“What?”
Beyond Ramon, several outlaws hunkered on the steps. As the sounds of fighting receded, he heard their painful groans. Caedman sat against a wall. Caim hadn’t taken the time to really look at the outlaw captain before. He was as tall as Ramon. His arms and shoulders were strong despite being twisted in angles Caim didn’t want to think about.
“I take it,” Ramon grumbled, “we’re not going out the front.”
“I don’t suggest it.”
Caim pushed past the big man. Keegan knelt on the floor with Liana’s head cradled in his lap. A thick tide of blood ran down her scalp. Caim set down his weapons and touched her gently. The gash on her head looked nasty, but it was shallow.
“She tried to help.” Keegan rubbed the back of a hand across his face, leaving streaks of blood. “I didn’t see the guy behind us until it was too late.”
“She’ll be all right,” Caim said. “But we need to get her out of here.”
He looked around. What options did they have? Fighting their way out the front gate would be suicidal. He might escape, with luck, but with the witch involved he couldn’t even predict that with any certainty.
Scanning the outlaws, he spotted the tall man with red hair in the back. “You. What’s your name again?”
“Braelon, but everybody calls me Oak.”
