her jaw clenched tight. Ashlin’s free hand reached for hers and squeezed.
“Here.” Isyllt drew her exorcist’s kit from her coat pocket and fumbled a silk-wrapped lump from the leather wallet. Phaedra’s ruby glittered as she unfolded it. “Take this. It will seek out its own.”
“I’m no mage,” Savedra said, eyeing the stone with distrust.
“You don’t need to be. All you need to do is wear it and pay attention. You’ll feel the pull.” Sending anixeroi out in this alone might be murder, but she needed fewer distractions to deal with her stalker. She closed her eyes in concentration as she called another light, fixing this one to the foreign magic in the stone.
“Where are you going?” Ashlin asked.
“We’re being followed. I’m going to deal with it.”
Savedra twisted the ring onto her left hand. The band dug into her flesh as she made a fist. “I feel it,” she whispered. The pink tinge of the new witchlight cast her face flushed and fevered.
“Then go,” Isyllt said. “I’ll catch up.”
As Savedra and the princess vanished into the fog, she hoped that wasn’t a lie.
CHAPTER 21
This might not have been the best plan,” Ashlin muttered, squinting into the eddying darkness. Her hair shone red in the unnerving light, dark with sweat at the nape. The sheen on her brow could have been blood.
Savedra laughed breathlessly. The ruins had been bad enough with Isyllt beside them; with her gone they were a dozen times worse. She wanted to take the princess’s hand again, but knew better than to interfere with someone holding a sword. The ruby shivered on her finger, tugging her deeper into the fog.
Something sharp and cold clawed her ankle, pricking through the soft suede of her boots. Savedra shrieked and kicked. Brambles, she prayed as she whirled, shrubs or rubble—The ground at her feet was clear.
“What—” began Ashlin, only to shout and jump in turn. “Something grabbed me!”
“Me too.” Sharp unseen fingers tugged at her hair and pinched her arm hard enough to bruise. “Shadows!” Each time she saw nothing, but she heard skittering in the fog, and mocking inhuman laughter.
“Keep moving.” Ashlin’s eyes were wild but her sword held steady. “Isyllt said all they can do is distract us.”
“This is more than distraction,” Savedra muttered, rubbing her arm.
They didn’t dare run, but they stumbled and scrambled as fast as they could. Savedra wept, from pain and fear and frustration, never knowing where the next vicious pinch or bite would come from. She tried to think of Nikos, but soon gave that up for the more immediate concern of not sprawling headlong and being eaten.
The tower appeared so quickly they nearly collided with it. A darker shadow against the sky, till the fog thinned to reveal pale, vine-laced stones. Reliefs had covered the walls once, but time had worn the figures soft and faceless. The ruby sparked with a sullen light as Savedra touched the carven sandstone.
“Here,” she gasped. “She’s here.” She held out a hand to Ashlin; her grin made her face ache. “Come on!”
The door was only a few yards away, a dark hole in the wall. She turned toward it—and walked straight into the shadow that detached from the wall to envelop her.
She screamed, short and shrill, before the blackness filled her mouth and choked her. Cold and clammy and slick as oil, it sank icy hooks into her flesh, a hundred pinpricks that stole her warmth and drained her strength. It coated her tongue, rolling slowly down her throat, and she couldn’t breathe, let alone fight—
Someone was shouting. She didn’t think it was her. Not Ashlin’s panicked cries but a man’s voice, over and over, the same command. She didn’t understand it, but the darkness must have: It peeled away, and a sudden blaze of violet light blinded her.
She lay on the broken stones, skirt tangled around her legs. Her lungs ached; her throat burned; her skin felt scoured raw.
Ashlin knelt beside her, easing her up and cradling her head against her armored breast. “Ma chara,” she breathed, stroking Savedra’s brow. The moisture that smeared under her touch was thicker than sweat. “Ma chrí. It was all over you, on your skin. I couldn’t cut you free—”
“I’m all right.” She coughed around the words, tasted blood and mucus. Pinpricks of blood glistened black on her hands—more streaked her fingers when she rubbed her face, and her dress clung wetly to her skin. She found no wound—the monster had sucked it from her pores. “What happened?”
“He saved you.”
Savedra