Page 222 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
My boots had just found purchase on a hardy gust when shadow tethers snared my arms, legs, and shoulders, grounding me despite my momentum. I was a chained rocket trying to blast off.
Dang it, Amy! You didn’t keep your head in the game! Youknewthey were coming!
I landed with a running gait, relinquishing my grip on my friends, and flailed against my new bindings. I could understand a few more tethers than the one around my ankle. Maybe. Twenty—that was excessive.
Weird, how these tethers felt nothing like Pete’s. His had felt like peach fuzz, forgettable as a well-worn watch. These, though—they were steel wool, strangling.
Morus scuttled to my side, clawing a tether. When that failed, he fisted the damn thing, gnawed it like a turkey leg.
“That won’t work,” Pete uttered, his voice tissue paper thin. He’d braced his sagging body against another tree. I met his watery eyes, knowing what he was saying. There was only one way to sever a shadow tether. And no witnesses could get away alive if I used it.
Dando smacked his tricorn into the ground, pushed to his feet. “I’m plum fed up with this shite! Where the feck is that spell harpy Alys? You gave her the blasted voiding spray too, didn’t you, Lugh? You lummox!”
Guess you blew away the right Leprechaun, Amy.
Dando spat as Lugh’s face flashed red. “We aren’t bloody taking this one without using both—stroppy bitch that she be.”
That was the exact wrong thing to say to me.
An ember kindled in my belly.
Suddenly, the breeze turned, and I realized with a start and a sniff that Morus wasn’t beside me anymore. From the corner of my eye, I saw him scrabbling away into the brush, yanking a debilitated Pete with him. The last I saw of them was Pete’s face, contorted, despairing.
He wanted us to fight together.
Tied like livestock to a slew of Gentian’s worst, I wanted that as well.
Echoes of myself weeping, alone in a field, punctuated this thought. Destroying the cool I’d kept. Because nobody could rescue me from this mess—the one I’d barreled toward like a bull out for blood.
Damnit, Amy—what the hell have you done?
Gulping, I squared my tethered shoulders and faced my aggressors. “You won’t take me at all,” I declared, worried one of the harbingers might chase after my fleeing friends. Just because he could. “I’ll make you kill me first.”
Dando scoffed. “What a curious thing to say.”
He sounded so calm, so impassive. That’s why I didn’t anticipate it—the shadowy noose that clamped my airway closed. Or the instant, primal panic I felt when I realized I couldn’t fucking breathe!
“Know what happens when you die?”
I stumbled to my knees, frantic to claw away the tether choking me. But other steely tethers tugged back my arms. Denying me even the struggle for breath.
Pete!Morus! Come back! Help me,please!
I saw them in my mind’s eye, hobbling toward some haven in the jungle, some refuge from my fire, thinking I’d unleash hell on the Leprechauns at any moment. Something I totally had the power to do! IknewI could do it!
Just not if I couldn’t focus on that ember dying in my belly. And not if I wasn’t in immediate mortal danger. Which I effing wasn’t!
Dando wouldn’t strangle me to death. He wouldn’t get his bounty if I died. But he could render me unconscious, then bind or spell me into another lengthy captivity. And damn my sniveling self, but I didn’t think I’d be able to stop him.
And there they suddenly were, as clear as the willows’ tears—my every shortcoming laid bare, my entire life’s insecurities splayed open. Right there, as I grappled for air under the snickering of devils, I could have had all the powers in the entire magical realm secreted within me, and it didn’t make one fucking bit of difference. Because I couldn’t get a grip onanyof them, couldn’t see past my own fears and anxieties to touch them. I could only see that I wasn’t worthy of the weight of the Aurora legend. That I was, deep in my marrow, nothing but a weakling imposter who’d thought she could be more. For herself. For her family. For Pete. For anyone in the universe who needed saving.
But I wasn’t enough for them. I wasn’t strong enough. I wasn’t smart enough. I wasn’t brave enough. I wasn’t royal, or mighty, or divine enough.
Though, damnit all, Iwantedto be!
Dando leered in my bulging face. “When you die of a blood curse, dear princess—you ken the curse doesn’t end with you.”
Fire! Now! I need fire!I grappled for that deadened ember, black dots filling my vision. Mother’s sake, smoke had been right there at my fingertips justmomentsago. It had beenrightfucking there! Where had it gone?Where?
