Page 200 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
I stopped dead, the world teetering on its axis, and once again felt the brutal punch of a hoof against my chest. “You!”
Both Pete and the hairy, wizened primate he’d spoken to turned to me, the latter now cringing like a criminal nabbed by police—like the phone thief nabbed byme.
He opened his mouth to speak but didn’t form the words before I unleashed a wind that could’ve blown a tree into the air, roots and all. While I succeeded in whipping several people around him off the ground, including Pete, the phone thief stayed put, having clawed fast into the wooden fence circling the fairy hill.
How dare he defy my power!I vaulted myself at the little shit.
“Let’s see you mess with me now!” I screamed, shaking the thief by his frayed linen collar. His dark, wrinkle-ringed eyes boggled, his leathery hands wrestling my grip. “What thefuckdid you do to my father? How did youfindus?Howdid you know what was going to happen? Andwhythe hell didn’t you warn me sooner if you fucking knew? Youknew!”
“I warned you when I felt I should!” the writhing beast beneath me exclaimed.
“Yeah, and only after you played your sordid little fairy game with me!”
The beast had the nerve to laugh. “That’s what we do!”
His levity endured even after I’d punched him, bruising my knuckles but also making his lip bleed around his snaggletooth. “That’s more like it, princess!”
More like the fight he’d prodded me to show the day he’d stolen my MulBerry. The MulBerry he’d used to warn me of the bogeybats. Just a little too late.
Screeching, I clutched his throat, choking him, needing to hurt him. Because he was the precursor to all my life’s horrors. “Don’t—fucking—call—me—PRINCESS!”
Slashing the air, three shadow tethers lassoed my wrists and shoulders, tugging me back from my victim. But I strained against them, gripping the blearing thief’s neck.
The tethers yanked harder. I yanked them back. And Pete hurtled into my side, knocking me off my enemy. From Pete’s expression as he flipped over in the sand, I could tell he hadn’t intended on becoming a yoyo when he’d bound me.
Waspish, I now sat a yard away from him and the phone thief, wanting another go at using my stinger.
Panting, Pete rose on all fours. “You all right, Morus?”
“Just fine, Pete.” Morus spat blood, his skeletal ribcage heaving. “I need a good row now and again.”
“Keep talking and you’ll get another,” I rumbled.
Pete pushed to his knees. “What in bleeding hell has gotten into you?”
Every muscle clenched, I hopped to my feet. “Thatthingstole my phone, then used it in some mind-fuck to warm me—at thevery last minute—that my father was in danger! The night he fucking died!”
Profaning, Pete stood. “Firstly, he’s not a thing. He’s a Kobold. And while I agree his methods are suspect—” Pete canted Morus a look of repudiation. “He likely meant to be helpful. And he was likely working with orders, Shorty.”
“Whose?” I asked, fed up with all bullshit. All of it.
“Mine,” answered a smooth tenor. We all turned toward Myrrdin, who stood on the threshold to the cabin, serene as Eden’s sea. “Kobolds are masters at crossing worlds, despite restrictions against it, so I sent him to the human world to warn someone that the portal at Angel Oak was ajar.”
Morus looked even more horrendous frowning. “I tried. They wouldn’t listen to me. My last resort was to warn you, Amaranthine.”
My heart stuttered. “Who did you try to warn before me?”
Groaning, Morus sat up, shrugged apish shoulders. “Who didn’t I? None would heed me. Neither would that fool paragon you were friendly with. I begged him to pass word onto your uncle, the high druid.”
Uncle Neel was a high druid? Did the position of circle center even exist in this world?
“I suppose the good paragon decided against it. Until he discovered the open portal on his own.”
I shivered. Could all my recent tragedies have been avoided if Briar and his guards had listened to this one ugly creature? I doubted it. “Why wouldn’t they listen to you?”
“Because I’m a Kobold. Athing, as you said.”
“Sorry.” I glowered at myself. “I shouldn’t have said that. I have no problem with your race. I have a problem withyou.”
