Oath of the Alpha - Eva Dresden Page 0,15
name gave, one expected an explosion, something of fire and hailing rock, not Marilsa’s narrow-eyed snarl or the stupefied wonder of the others. Rhyn’s hand went slack, releasing Aida to fall on her backside with a puff of dust that made her cough. The grimy dust coated her tongue, bitter and dark.
Aida did not understand the tears scalding the back of her eyes, but she scrubbed them away. Climbing back to her feet, she scurried between Rhyn and a tight knot of his men, putting herself well out of their reach.
“This true, Rhyn Lirkinson?” Marilsa demanded in a hiss.
“How am I to know? You’re the witch here, not I.” Rhyn swept a curt palm at Aida, his brows knitting as he addressed her with lips curled as if tasting something foul. “That who you’re worth more than gold to?”
“We’ll take her to the border. He’ll find her there.”
“You can’t really think to take her back,” Miyenth said in a faint squeak. “He’ll come after you. Doesn’t matter another had her first.”
“He’s dead!”
The silence was deafening. They all stared, making Aida squirm. Her fear of the unknown sluiced through her veins with jagged ice, tearing her asunder as her feet began to slide across the hard-packed earth, carrying her away from the looming threat they presented. In that moment, Aida realized she was all alone. There was no Er’it to snarl and bark at others who came too close, to give her that sense of safety that no true harm would come to her. Beginning to tremble, she sent a frenzied look at the beckoning woods, the promise of safety in their crooked paths luring her closer.
Otaso’s warnings began as a whisper, taunting her. They grew louder as her heart slammed in her ears, silencing Rhyn’s moving lips, deafening her to Marilsa’s words. They would hurt her, do unspeakable things to her… but not kill her. No, for she would provide far too much sport for such an end. She’d wish it by then, though not for some desperate need to save Er’it but to end her own misery.
It was with her guardian snarling his darkest words from the dungeon that she turned and sprinted toward the tree line. Ignoring their shouts and the thumping of so many running feet, Aida paid no mind to the thorny branches catching her hair and slapping her face. Raising her arms and squinting to protect her eyes were the only concessions she made as she bolted through the darkening canopy. Trunks grew more twisted, blackened, looking as if they were charred by some great fire, though the leaves overhead hissed in abundant green glory.
Darting through every narrow breach and slumped passage, she evaded them. Surpassing panting to wheeze, her lungs worked like bellows to pull in air that would not come. Feet stuttering through the jumbled weeds, her toe caught on a deformed root hidden under layers of sifting decay, her arms pinwheeling as she flew toward the ground.
When she fell at Marilsa’s feet, Aida couldn’t even scream. Heels and hands digging into the fetid duff, she crab walked away from the old woman and the inky tendrils licking around her. Dull and sullen, the lightless aura hissed and rattled. Marilsa’s laugh formed of rank power. Aida shook her head in denial of what she saw and continued to deny it even as Marilsa went to one knee with the aid of her staff to lay a dry, coarse palm on Aida’s crown.
“Rest now, girl,” she murmured.
Flight forgotten, Aida melted into the dirt, flopping boneless among the rotting leaves and shiny, crawling things to stare at the green light growing dimmer by the ragged breath.
She did not sleep as such. Left weary and without will, Aida listened to Marilsa shuffle around her supine body and the scraping wheeze of the staff’s pointed end dragging through the detritus to clear a circle, one Marilsa drew ragged lines and shapes in. Candles of red and black were set at points, a spark of power the color of old blood and agony scattering through the air before the singed wicks took the flame.
Bustling off to the side, Marilsa gathered the driest of the fallen boughs and twigs. Scooping up fistfuls of tattered leaves that crackled in her arms, she began setting a fire, one small enough to lend no warmth to the biting chill crawling up Aida’s skin. Head falling to the side, Aida stared unblinking at the obsidian ring encircling her. Though lifeless and void of