Page 184 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
“Aye, normally it is, Glashtyn. This time, however, my course is set for the Kirk of Cara on an ordination of capture. A bevy of its druids have been raving about the coming of the next goddess, as the aurora’s painted the night sky.”
Were there really druids—holy fae, I assumed—raving about me in the streets?
I mean,maybeme, I corrected myself.
“Gentian wants them brought to his cadre for inquest.” In my mind’s eye, Sedge shrugged. “Pete lent me his cart last we met, so I could transport my marks more easily.”
“We’ve heard tell of no such ordination,” Glashtyn rasped.
“I doubt Gentian wants his plot for capture widely known,” Sedge returned. “The druids might scatter into hiding if word gets loose. And we all know your companion here can’t shut his yap about such things.”
I imagined Pecks’s snarl unmasking the beast behind his dignified speech.
“Easy, now,” Glashtyn cautioned Pecks with an icy chuckle. “No need for such aggression. If Sedge is being honest, then he’ll have no objections to us searching his cart for—stowaways.”
No, no, no, no!
“Feck!” Pete hissed.
Sedge clicked his tongue as boots clipped toward the wagon. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you—”
A scream threatened to break from my throat as the wagon shifted under a rising weight, but I clamped my mouth, and Pete gripped both Sionna and me just as Kit surged up and snarled at the invader, ferocious as a lioness. Whichever ambusher had tried climbing into the wagon wisely fell back.
“As I was telling you,” Sedge continued, Kit’s feral warning still churning. “My pawler’s lording over a recent kill. She’ll bite your heads off if you should even attempt—”
“Yet we see no corpse,” Glashtyn snapped, the wagon bouncing again.
Kit barked like a mad dog and pounced. A ghastlier snarl, I’d never heard.
A vehement oath preceded a physical struggle between fae and canine. The iron tang of blood saturated the close confines of Pete’s cloak, Kit doing her damndest to gnaw off one of the harbinger’s appendages until he dislodged her gnashing fangs.
“Call off your bitch, fucking fanger!” Pecks’s inflection painted the wordfangeras a racial slur.
Unruffled, Sedge answered, “You ken I would, but there’s no reasoning with her.”
“We’ve snuff hounds too! We’ll let them take turns shredding her!”
Sedge scoffed at Pecks’s threat, alleviating my fears for Kit. “You mean the beasts cowering in the ferns?”
“Our hounds don’t cower, fanger,” Pecks seethed. “Especially not from one lone bitch.”
“Perhaps not.” I heard an inhuman (and infae) purr of menace, like a dinosaur acquiring prey. “PerhapsI’mfrightening them.”
That noise made me a little frightened of Sedge too.
“Enough of this rubbish,” Glashtyn grumbled despite Sedge’s turning mood. My blood frosted at theschingof an unsheathing blade. I jerked to jump up and race away, feet circling the wagon, but Pete held me down—even as a sword jabbed between the wagon slats, limning the immediacy of our doom.
Kit bounded about, attacking the slashing blades, giving Pete and I the flexibility to juke into safety, though tears burst from my eyes at every single evasion. How long could we really skirt the death blows?
At a startled noise behind me, I feared I’d found out. Pete’s fingers dug into my belly.
“I hit something!” Pecks’s sword sliced to and fro, Pete his pin cushion.
I cried into Sionna’s neck, curled in Pete’s protective arms like a pill bug, and didnothingto help him. I was too damn scared.
“What in the Isle—?” Pecks then screamed like a little girl. His assailing sword clattered off the wagon ledge, something thudding wetly in its wake.
The Incubus head!He’d stabbed the Incubus head! Not Pete!I wanted to sing exultant songs to Pete’sJaysus.
