while ago. “Maybe I should get another glamor while I’m here.”
My heart twisted at the thought. “It isn’t right. That you’d hide who you are so you wouldn’t be persecuted, so you could do what you want to do—what you are the best at!”
“It would be unavoidable, if I decide it’s what I’ll do after this. But if I do it, I warn you, I’ll exploit all the connections I can get.” A hint of his earlier mischief returned as he grinned up at me. “I’ll use them as a shield if I’m ever exposed, and certainly when I step on gluttonous toes within the system. What happened to my father isn’t going to happen to me.”
“If I return to Arbore in one piece, I’ll support all your endeavors to take down corrupt councilors and bumbling ministers.”
“Would you really help me usurp those in charge, Your Highness?”
I shrugged. “I’m living—excuse me, half-living proof that long-established ideals and systems don’t work as they once did, and that relying on those who are out of touch can cause more harm than any good they maintain. In short, my father needs new blood in his government.”
Robin petted Amabel’s head in lieu of my hand, his grin holding both pride and embarrassment. “I never thought you’d grasp or at least care about such issues, but here you are, proving me wrong.”
“Does that bother you?”
“Quite the opposite! I’ve had such a grey view of the world for so long, I kept hoping someone could come and paint over it for me. Any color would have done, really. But with your opinions, and the hope they give me, you’re painting it every bright color I’ve forgotten exists.”
If it were possible, my face would have turned as red as Will’s cloak. But I was sure it still betrayed my reaction to his praise, so I pretended to check our surroundings.
Night seemed to get darker the deeper we traveled down the Pumpkin Path. Its cloak surrounded us along with the thickening mist obscuring any indication where the Path would end. Would Alan—or rather Keenan…
The sound of galloping echoed around us, followed by a scream.
The man I’d just been thinking of burst into view, riding his huge reindeer in a mad gallop out of a billowing cloud, holding a lantern that bathed him in its violently swinging green glow.
It had been his bellow that had ruptured my line of thought.
“Turn back!”
Sinister laughter boomed from behind him, followed by the crack of a whip. It wrapped around his neck, snatching him off his mount, and sending the lantern crashing to the earth, setting the grass aflame.
Fear spiked within me as the men drew their weapons, and my godmothers raised sparking hands. Next second, a figure emerged from the rising fire and smoke.
Stomping over Keenan’s body on a skeletal horse, and clutching a crackling whip made of human vertebrae, the body of a man came into full, horrifying view. A body without a head.
It was the headless horseman!
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I stared at the nightmarish figure before us, a mixture of paralysis and morbid fascination gripping me.
The space above its shoulders offered a peek into the path behind it, and its sourceless laughter seemed to shake the woods. But it was its sinister emanations that drenched my ethereal form in a horror akin to the one I’d felt in the Underworld.
With a roar, Jon charged it with his spear. Keenan sprang up, slamming him back and away from the green flames that ate at the grass.
“I said run!”
The horseman cracked the whip, and its tail-end snapped around Keenan’s neck again, stopping him dead in his tracks. Strangled noises flowed from his gasping mouth as he struggled for air.
An arrow flew past Keenan and pierced the horseman’s shoulder, eliciting a shout that echoed from an unfathomable direction through the trees, and a demonic neigh from its red-eyed, skeletal horse.
Keenan clawed at the whip and tugged, unbalancing the horseman enough to loosen its grip on his throat. The moment he ducked out of the way, Will tossed a knife at the horseman with a frustrated growl.
The horseman caught the knife as if it was standing still, and flung it back. If Meira hadn’t pushed Will out of the way, and stopped its trajectory with her glowing magic, it would have lodged in his head.
Not heeding Keenan’s orders, Jon charged it with his spear again. It stopped him dead, gripping the spearhead, its palm oozing congealed blood without a sign of pain.