the belt at her waist.
First, she carved a circle in the earth.
Then she spat into it. With the knife, she cut the tip of her left index finger and smeared her blood into the saliva and dirt.
Rearing up, she held the knife high overhead, chanted under her breath and drove it into the earth.
Moments later, the earth shifted and a small sphere rose from the circle she had drawn in the earth.
After murmured words from Tyriel, the sphere cleared…spinning, waiting.
Another whispered order and now it showed the faces of several men. Most, she had never seen before, but she recognized them from the looks in their eyes, the cut of their clothes. Mercenaries.
Bandits would be a better word. Their type rarely worked the way a mercenary did, preferring to hide and attack and pilfer.
One man, though, she knew.
Michan.
“Where?” she whispered, rising to her feet.
As she rose, the sphere drifted in an eastern direction. Toward the woods. To the west was the Shojurn River. The caravan followed the path that headed north, to Shojurn City, still nearly three weeks away. If she remembered correctly, and she was certain she did, the nearest village was a good three-day ride, not even equipped with a militia.
But where was Aryn?
The globe went blank, saying Aryn wasn’t anywhere that her power could locate.
So, like Tyriel herself, Aryn was shielded.
Tyriel gestured fluidly to the camp. “Ay vern noi.” I cannot see you.
She murmured quietly in ancient elvish, “May the darkness protect and hold you.”
And that simple, the camp was gone—or so it seemed.
Illusion. A simple shield, but the sleeping people in the camp weren’t the ones in danger.
Prowling through the woods, sword in hand, Tyriel searched. Countless circles, countless deer trails. She had already spied where the others were, the ones who hunted for their prey, and dodged them easily as they also prowled the woods.
When a hand shot out just behind her, Tyriel didn’t hear or see anything until a blade was pressed to her throat, held by a very knowledgeable hand, with the sharp edge just to the right, where the large vessels lay. A bit different on an elf, but eh, she could still bleed to death if he cut deep enough.
She murmured under her breath, lifting one arm to plow back behind her when he started to speak.
“Hmm. I can tell you aren’t here t’ cause harm but know this—I go to none but the one who already bears me.” The voice was Aryn’s but the cadence, the rhythm, was not.
She lapsed into silence, releasing the magic she’d been calling to her in preparation to fight.
“Fae magic,” he whispered against her ear. “I know the taste of that.”
She shivered, the brush of his mouth against her ear unbearably erotic as a new magic, wild and potent, somehow primitive, filled the air and began to swirl around her.
She’d been right. Aryn’s blade was enchanted.
Heavily enchanted.
And there was something else—the magic in the sword had started to settle inside the swordsman. He was no trueborn mage, but in time, he would be a mage, or enchanter, all the same.
“I mean no harm to him or the others. Only the ones who cast the sleep spell,” she said slowly, lowering her sword and simply waiting.
“Hmmmm.” The hand around her throat urged her back, back against his body, until she was flush against him. His other hand stroked the moonstone at her neck, then stroking the pendant of the stunted tree as the moonstone glowed in recognition at his touch—how odd. Last, he slid his hand along her neck to the curve of her left ear. “You’re fae.”
“Aye.”
“Hmmm. Not just elf. Blood of my kin as well. Jiupsu,” the deep guttural voice said, one hand stroking over her dense black curls. His other hand went from her throat to trail down the center of her chest, down her torso to spread flat over her belly. The knife was suddenly just gone as his hand spread wide open over her stomach, pressing flat and holding her flush against him.
Against her back, she felt his cock swell and throb. “Jiupsu. Warriors who sing and dance—”
Jiupsu. Wildling…the race her mother’s people descended from, thousands of years ago.
Tyriel’s head spun at the realization of just who had bespelled Aryn’s sword.
More…now, she ached. Ached for the touch of the man gripping her in her what she realized was complete and utter possession.
Oh, no...No, no, no...
Grabbing onto her sense of self with everything she had in her, she said coldly, “Release me