Chapter Ninety-Five: Rescue

I was self-aware enough to be worried—somewhere deep, deep in the recesses of my mind—about my demeanor as I walked into the restaurant Cynthia had procured for us only a few days ago. I’d been angry a lot of different ways in my life, and from experience this was one of the more dangerous. My rage roiled low in my gut, icy cold and coiled up in preparation to strike. Patient. Just waiting to unleash itself upon the ones stupid enough to fuck with me.

Those with sharper instincts took one look at me and got the fuck out of my way as I headed towards the back rooms of the building, Allie on one shoulder, Serena on the other. The others waited just outside for me to figure out just what the hell had happened. According to the out of breath, slightly terrified waitress who’d come running into the manor looking for me, I’d hopefully find my answers here.

All chatter came to a jarring halt when I opened the door. My fears were slightly abated when I saw one of the three I was worried about, injured but alive. Jayme was reclined on a couch with a sheen of sweat coating her black and blue face. One eye was swollen shut and her lip was split. There was blood on her clothes, but not enough to be concerning. Another of the restaurant’s employees was pressing a towel to the crossbow bolt sticking through her upper thigh. It took her good eye a second to focus on me, which told me she was at least a little concussed. And from the way she held herself and winced with each breath I figured her ribs were bruised at best.

Once she realized who she was looking at her gaze filled with shame and her eye dropped to the floor. One nod to Serena and we were moving like a well-oiled machine. I touched the bolt with a shadow, banishing it straight from her leg, and Serena immediately pressed her palms to the wound to heal it. Jayme groaned through clenched teeth, but she relaxed into the couch as Serena’s magic started to take hold.

“Sir, I’m sorry.” Jayme started, her voice strained. “I failed to protect her. I didn’t—”

“Worry about blame later,” I said in a quiet, commanding tone. Her mouth jammed shut and her eye flicked back up to me. Already some of Serena’s healing was reducing the swelling on her face, but it didn’t take a healer to know Jayme was done for the day when it came to fighting. I knelt down next to her so we were nearly eye-to-eye. “Tell me what happened.”

In short, clipped sentences, she told me about how they were stopped on the way to the clothing shop. How Tiana attacked first, but the ambush was sprung immediately after. That tracked with what I’d felt. [Danger Sense] had alerted me enough to know they were in trouble, so I’d used [Empower] to boost Tiana’s stats. From what Jayme told me of the fight, it came in handy. It just wasn’t enough. And at that distance I wasn’t able to summon tendrils on her armor, so that had been all I’d been able to do while they’d fought for their lives.

My face was a mask while she recounted the short, violent fight. The woman who’d appeared out of thin air to grab Karina. The gems they’d used to knock Karina and Tiana out. That was why the Link had so suddenly cut out. I could sense her enough to know she was alive, but I couldn’t get any sense of direction from her. Then they’d roughed Jayme up enough so she couldn’t follow before taking off into the city. She’d managed to limp back to the restaurant, slipping in and out of consciousness, and sent one of the employees to find me.

I could see how much she blamed herself, so I put a hand on her shoulder. “It wasn’t your fault,” I told her.

“When they jumped you, they attacked the eyes I had following you at the same time. It was a coordinated effort, and from the sound of things you lost before you ever had a chance. You made it back here and got word to me, and that’s the best I could have hoped for from anyone in your position.”

The air rushed out of her lungs in a sob and her head fell back to the couch. She rested her forearm over her eyes and grimaced. “They took her. They took my friend, Zaren.”

“I know.” I gave her shoulder a squeeze. “But from what you’ve told me, they were after her to begin with. That helps a lot. That means she’s not dead, and Tiana’s still unconscious. If they used the same gem on both of them, then we can assume they haven’t hurt Karina either.”

She lifted her arm to look up at me with red-rimmed eyes. “How are you so calm right now?” she demanded, just on the lucid side of hysterical. Impressive, all things considered. I’d seen more seasoned fighters than her lose their shit in situations that weren’t as bad as this one.

I held her gaze so she might understand how serious my next words were. “This isn’t calm. I’ve just learned the hard way that panic helps no one. When we find the ones stupid enough to cross me, they’ll see just how calm I’m not, trust me.”

That seemed to make her feel better. She swallowed, then sat up and pushed Serena’s hands away. “Don’t waste any more mana on me, not when I won’t be any help getting her back. You will get her back, right?”I nodded. “I will. And I’ll make sure to discourage anyone else from making moves like this one.”

“Good.” She laid back again and dug the heels of her hands into her eyes.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise. When I turned around, Nariko was walking in through the door. She gravitated towards Serena, though her eyes were on me. “I trailed them to an abandoned warehouse. Valith found me and took over watch.”

My rage twisted inside me. It sensed that I was one step closer to unleashing it. I looked down to Jayme. “See? I’ll just pop right in and pick her up. Easy as pie.” Jayme snorted, but I could see the relief in her body language. Then, to Nariko, “I thought you were off today.”

She just shrugged. “Got bored. Saw a group of armed people slinking through that gave me bad vibes, so I followed them to the ambush site. It was a losing fight, especially when the lady with the scar showed up, so I figured it’d be smarter to watch and report.”

“Good instincts,” I said, inclining my head. I’d figure out a way to repay her later. Right now I had bigger issues to deal with. “The warehouse?”

She gave me some brief directions. “Valith and Tsuki are watching it now.”

“Feel like running another errand for me?”

“Sure.”

“Find one of Sandrel’s scouts. Have him key Sandrel in on the situation, let him know I plan to respond accordingly.”

She arched a brow, but nodded and slipped out of the room so quietly I wouldn’t have known she was even there if I hadn’t been looking at her. “Jayme, stay here until I send someone to help you back. Until further notice, nobody goes anywhere alone. Not until I know why they came after Karina.” I saw a flicker of something in Jayme’s eyes that told me she might have an idea, but that was a conversation best left for later.

She agreed, and I gave her shoulder one last squeeze. “You did good. Next time you’ll do better. That’s all there is to it.” Then I left with Serena and Allie in tow. The latter had watched the entire encounter silently, taking in every word I said and how I said it. She’d been present when I’d felt the attack happened, and she’d left no room for argument when she told me she was coming to help.

Safina, Noelle, Therese, Rose, and Nora all waited outside for us, each of them kitted out and ready for battle. The former two looked to me while the latter three looked to Allie. “We have a location,” I told them, not breaking stride.

They fell into step behind me. “What’s the plan?” Allie asked, stepping up to walk at my left.

“I’ll be walking in the front door, making a lot of noise. I want you and your team to take a side entrance.”

She pursed her lips as if she wasn’t the biggest fan of my orders, but she didn’t argue. Therese, however, cleared her throat. “From what I understand about your team, Tiana is your ranged damage. Without her, you’re only frontline. Maybe splitting up isn’t the best plan.”

“They fucked with my people,” I said simply, my voice dangerously low. “They’ll expect me to retaliate in anger, even if they won’t see me coming so soon. Safina and I are intimidating enough, and Noelle and Serena both can do some serious damage. We kick down the front door with an appropriate amount of shock and awe and they’ll respond.”

“Meanwhile,” Allie interjected with a grimace, “we can slip in a side door and head straight for where we think the captives are.”

I nodded. “They’ll likely know about us if they’re watching me half as close as I suspect, but odds are they don’t know about you yet. If they do, they won’t know what you’re capable of. We pincer them, make sure they’ve got nowhere to go. Recovering Karina and Tiana are priority number one, everything else comes secondary.”

We’d barely entered the warehouse district when a dark shape fell from the rooftop next to me, landing silently. A hazy figure emerged, then the illusion faded to reveal Tsuki. Her golden eyes found mine immediately, and her cheeks darkened slightly.

Then she cleared her throat and gestured for us to follow. “We think there are at least twenty,” she said, winding through the alleys between buildings. “Two on the door, the rest somewhere inside. All the windows are boarded up, so we can’t see inside. Mostly soldier types. Lots of swords, shields, and bows, but nobody that outwardly looks like a mage.”

“Got eyes on a second entrance?”

She nodded. “There are three. The front door, a loading area with a big door that’s closed and locked, and a smaller side door.”

“We’ll take the front, Allie I want you on the side door. Tsuki, you and Valith watch the exits in case they try to slip away. Engage if you think you can handle it, follow and report if you don’t.”

Tsuki nodded, then she turned and ran towards a nearby wall. A few feet away her image split in two, one Tsuki spinning and bracing against the wall to launch what must have been the main Tsuki high enough for her to clamber up onto the roof. The one that did the boosting dissolved into thin air, and the real Tsuki wrapped herself in that hazy cloak again and all but vanished from sight.

“She’s picked up some new tricks,” Serena noted.

Noelle grunted. “She wants very badly to be useful.”

“Well she’s more than proved herself. Let’s go.”

Allie and her group split off to head towards the door Tsuki had directed them to. Allie shot me one last look that told me she wasn’t psyched about us splitting up, but she didn’t protest. I wish I knew how to tell her that Jack was probably the only other person in my household I trusted to lead a secondary team like this, but there just wasn’t time.

The front door was closer than either of the other doors, so we came to a stop so Allie’s party had time to get into position. Like Tsuki had said, two guards were out front. They wore armor, but it was nothing special. Plenty of weak spots to expose. Both carried a sword and shield with a crossbow over their shoulder. Closing my eyes, I reached out with my extrasensory abilities.

This close, even though she was still out, I could finally sense her armor. A feeling that I hadn’t realized was there until I went looking for it and found nothing but emptiness in my head. Wasting no time, I conjured three Essence boosted tendrils from her armor. It was costly at a distance, but if it meant saving Tiana then it was well worth it. Not wanting to give away the game until I was in a better position, I wrapped the tendrils tightly around her, flattening them to her flesh and hiding them under her clothes.

She started to ever so slowly stir as my shadows slid over her body. I could tell from what I felt through the tendrils that she was lying on her side with her hands restrained behind her back. I wrapped a shadow down each arm and slid them under the ropes binding her. Nonmagical, which meant I could sever them in an instant when the time came.

[Danger Sense] was slowly ramping up. Without using my shadows to physically search the room I didn’t know what surrounded her, but from what my skill was telling me she still wasn’t in immediate danger past being a captive. Someone or something dangerous was approaching, but they weren’t there yet.

Unfortunately, without knowing if a guard was in the room with her, my options were limited. Fortunately, Tiana and I had discussed a few hypothetical scenarios that came close enough to this one that I had a plan.

“This is still fucking insane,” I whispered to myself. Sorry about this, Tiana. I took the third tendril, the one not wrapped around her arms ready to free her, and slid between her legs. Then, making it thick enough to be felt but not to cause any damage, I plunged the shadow into her ass.

I knew from the way her body jolted that she was wide awake now. I halted the tendril, leaving it inside her but decreasing its thickness a little. She struggled against her bindings for a moment, but I gently squeezed her arms with my tendrils. I felt her looking around, then she shifted enough to tap the tendril between her legs twice.

Two taps meant ‘I’m okay, keep going.’ A signal we’d designed for the bedroom, but it worked just as well here. I could imagine she wasn’t feeling particularly aroused in a situation like this, which meant her secondary class wasn’t helping her at all right now. I could fix that, even if it left me feeling more than a little strange about it.

I ordered the tendril to start slowly pumping in and out of her while I split off a wisp to stimulate the nub at the hood of her lower lips while she slowly sidled across the floor. She pressed up against something, and it took me a second to realize it was another body. The moment I touched it I felt that familiar yank on my shadows. Karina.

She wasn’t moving, but a quick foray with one of the tendrils on Tiana’s arms to her pulse point told me she was alive, just unconscious. Since I hadn’t had a few dozen discussions about boundaries with her like I had Tiana, waking her up the same way was out of the question.

While Tiana jostled her, trying to get her to wake, I felt a Link approaching. As I opened my eyes, Valith appeared next to me in a crouch. “Another group just entered the side door. Four guards that look better equipped than the other soldiers we’ve seen and someone in a hood.”

“I don’t like this,” I mumbled, more to myself than to her. “Tiana’s awake, but Karina is still trying to break out of whatever knock-out spell they’re using. They’re on the first floor, somewhere on the northeastern side of the building if my senses are right.”

Valith nodded. “I’ll pass it along to Allisandre.”

“Val,” I said softly, causing her to pause before she used [Blink] to teleport again. I held out a mana potion. “They fucked with people I care about. I don’t plan on taking prisoners. Is that going to be an issue for you?” She’d been used to kill against her will for a significant portion of her life. I wouldn’t do the same to her now.She just shook her head. “They kidnapped my friends. They’ll get no mercy from me.”

“Good.” She nodded once and Blinked away. I turned to Noelle and Safina. “You two ready?”

The two responding growls I received almost brought a smile to my face. Noelle’s spectral armor wrapped around her and she hefted her overly large battleaxe with a dangerous look in her crimson eyes. Safina was even scarier. Her heavy half-plate armor would have been far too much weight for anyone but a Half-dragon with impressive strength, and the mace she carried was nearly as big as my head. With a shield taller than Noelle that looked normal sized on her near-nine-foot frame, Safina was terrifying.

Serena, wearing only my shadow armor, just nodded and brandished her spear. I walked out in plain view of the warehouse and the two men scrambled to draw their swords. They didn’t wear the crests of the city guard, which meant they were either privately owned soldiers or mercenaries. “Hey, you can’t be here!” one called.

The other, who collected himself much quicker than his ally, stepped forward. “This is private property, and you’re trespassing. We’re going to have to ask you to—” His eyes flicked away from me to Safina, growing wide when he took in the sheer size of her in her armor.

That was his mistake. Distracted, he was too slow to react as I surged forward. I pulled a dagger out of my storage and slammed it into his thigh, right between the plates of his armor. It sank into the hilt and he screamed on his way to the ground as his leg gave underneath him.

The other man cursed and lunged forward, but I sidestepped his clumsy, rushed attack. Tendrils shot out and latched around his wrist, yanking him forward and into my elbow. I felt his jaw crack against the strike and he went down hard. The screaming man went silent as Noelle cracked him upside the head with the flat of her axe and Safina finished off the other guy with a solid slam of her mace. Neither were dead, but they wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

“Should we check them for keys?” Serena asked, but I wasn’t listening. Karina’s presence pressed to Tiana’s side had disappeared. Tiana tried to stand but was shoved roughly to the ground. I was ready to send my shadows on the offensive when [Danger Sense] ripped through me. Tiana froze, her heart hammering against her chest, and I sent my shadows questing across her flesh just enough to feel the tip of the spearhead pricking her throat threateningly.

Then the spear vanished and [Danger Sense] quieted, but not by much. Tiana tried to push herself backwards and hands wrapped around her upper biceps, yanking her to her feet. That was enough for me. I lashed out with the shadows I’d planted on her, shredding her restraints and slicing at anyone who meant her harm. At the same time, I sent an [Empower] her way. Between the boost to her stats and my tendrils, I had to hope she’d last long enough for us or Allie to get to her.

“Safina, the door please,” I commanded.

“With pleasure, sir,” she said, a feral grin splitting her face. With one kick from her massive, armored boot, the door crumpled. Shards and pieces of wood and metal exploded inward, landing on the floor in front of nearly a dozen men in shoddy armor with various weapons. They all stood, frozen in shock, as Safina ducked under the door frame then stood to her full height. “Permission to let loose?”

I summoned a short sword to each hand. In the cramped hallways and with allies nearby I didn’t want to rely on the Jailer’s Blade just yet. “Permission granted.”

With a roar that would have made grown men piss themselves (and likely did, judging by the sudden smell in the room) Safina charged into the group of soldiers shield first. Noelle was just behind her, sinking her battleaxe into the first man stupid enough to swing a blade at her. I was only a half step behind, engaging three men with my dual blades. Serena remained behind, stabbing at anyone she could reach and covering all three of our blind spots at the same time.

[Horde Slayer] gave me the boost I needed, and I dumped an [Empower] into the three with me as well as Allie, feeling her Link grow close enough for her to have entered the building. [Giant Killer] never once activated, which meant the men that stood between me and my friends fell quickly.

Safina’s mace trailed blue lightning as she swung it with enough weight and force behind it to lift foes from their feet with the power of her strikes. Shields shattered and armor crumpled under her assault. Noelle’s axe would have been threatening enough, cleaving through flesh and bone with ease, but the added explosions of her [Bestial Strike] caused plenty of additional damage. And the spectral ravens weaving through the fight kept us from taking any real damage.

And to top it all off, we fought as one. Thanks to [Tandem Fighting], since we were all Linked, I felt as if I knew what my allies were going to do before they did it. We worked together to take our enemies apart as often as we stepped in to make sure none of us were taking on too many at once. At one point, I fought three while Noelle and Safina teamed up to take soldiers down one at a time. They didn’t stand a chance.

The fight didn’t last long at all before they were all either dead, unconscious, or injured enough to no longer be a threat. I wasted no time in running deeper into the warehouse, towards where I felt Tiana still fighting. My shadows kept the enemies at bay while she blasted them with her lethal force magic, doubly dangerous because of my [Empower] and the arousal I’d built in her before everything kicked off.

Right when the first of the three tendrils I’d given her finally ran out of juice and faded, I felt a shift in [Danger Sense]. There was a blending sensation between the Links I had with Allie and Tiana as Allie’s party jumped into the fray and [Tandem Fighting] activated. In a matter of seconds, the tendrils went from being nearly overwhelmed to not having anything to do as Allie and Nora took up positions between her and the enemy.

We came crashing around the corner to see Allie’s party engaged in a melee with at least ten more soldiers. There must have been a few inside by the time Nariko had found the place, because we’d surpassed their initial guess of twenty.

I searched desperately, but I saw no sign of Karina. Tiana’s head whipped around, her eyes falling on me, shining with relief. She nodded, then her gaze hardened. “We’ve got this. They took Karina that way,” she said, nodding down an adjacent hallway. “Go.”

As badly as I wanted to hold Tiana close and make sure she was alright, the logical part of me knew I had to move. If they’d taken Karina, there was every chance they were trying to escape with her. I took off down the hallway in the direction she’d indicated.

Hang on, Karina. I’m coming.

# # #

A few minutes earlier…

Karina hadn’t had a headache like this since her and Jayme had stolen a few flagons of wine from the kitchens. It took her a moment to think past the pounding in her skull long enough to even try to move the rest of her body. Her shoulders ached from how her arms were pinned behind her, but with a jolt of panic she realized she couldn’t move them. Pain dug into her wrists when she tried as coarse ropes dug into the skin there.

A frightened whimper slipped from her as she tried and failed to sit up, doing her best to take in the room around her with bleary eyes. Small, cramped, and empty. No windows, just brick walls and a single thick door. Not even a blanket between her and the hard concrete floor. She paused when she bumped into something warm and soft. “Shh,” a voice said next to her ear. Tiana, she realized. “It’s alright, take a breath. It’s important to not panic right now.”

Not panic? She was currently restrained in a strange place, still dizzy from whatever had happened to her. She was fucking terrified. It didn’t take a leap of the imagination to know she’d been kidnapped, and as her vision stopped swimming and she took in Tiana’s bruised, restrained form, she realized she wasn’t the only one. Then, like strikes to her gut, the memories of what had happened came back to her.

“Oh gods, Jayme!” Karina cried out. She jerked forward, searching the room for her friend, only to roll as she violently heaved. Nothing came up, but her body certainly gave its best effort.

“Easy,” Tiana said, the sound of her voice the only thing allowing Karina to keep tethered to sanity. “Those gems did a number on us. I’m still coming out of it, too.”

“Jayme, is she—” Karina spluttered, still heaving.

“She isn’t here,” Tiana said softly. “But there isn’t a third set of bindings, and there’s no sign she was here before I woke up. That isn’t important right now.”

“Not important?” Karina sat up, wishing her hands weren’t bound so she could at least wipe the tears from her eyes.

“That’s right,” Tiana said, her turquoise eyes pinning Karina in place. “There’s nothing you can do for her in this moment. Right now, we need to focus on our own survival. Worrying about anything that isn’t directly related to us could get us killed.”

Karina did her best to calm her heaving breaths. Tiana slid over so they were side by side once more and Karina couldn’t stop herself from leaning into the taller woman’s side. Taking whatever comfort she could from Tiana’s warmth. “What do we do?” she asked, straining against her bonds.

“Right now? Nothing,” Tiana said softly, resting her cheek on the top of Karina’s head. “We breathe, we wait, we listen. We don’t know where we are, how many men are around, or even who has us. They could be listening, so we can’t say anything important. Understand?”

Karina nodded numbly. It made her feel wretched, but a part of her was glad she wasn’t alone. “I’m sorry. This was my fault.”

“Hey,” Tiana admonished, pulling away enough to look at her, “this was nobody’s fault but the men who took us, plain and simple.”

“They were after me, though,” Karina said, a tear trailing down her cheek. “You just got caught in the crossfire.”

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Tiana promised. She pressed her forehead to Karina’s. “We’re going to be okay. Zaren will come.”

A shaky laugh was all Karina could manage at first. “You have a lot of faith in him.”

There was a twinkle in her eye making Karina wonder if the mage knew something she didn’t. “He’s earned it. And he won’t leave you behind either. It doesn’t matter to him in the slightest that you aren’t human, you’re important to him. He will come.”

Karina closed her eyes, trying to take Tiana’s words to heart. To let them become her reality. She had to believe them or she’d fall apart. “You were amazing back there. You’re a badass.”

Tiana smirked, a light blush blooming on her face. “I’m not so special.”

“You destroyed those guys. If we’d had one more frontline to watch our backs, and if I hadn’t fucked up and gotten caught, then we would have come out on top.”

Tiana just shrugged. “I had some help.”

“Will you teach me to fight like that?” Karina asked, her voice barely a whisper. “If we survive this?”

Tiana leaned in close. “We will survive. And after, if you’ve got a mage class, then absolutely I’ll teach you whatever you need to know to feel safe.”

“Zaren will be okay with it?”

A soft laugh slipped past her. “Zaren is a big fan of the women in his household being able to defend themselves when push comes to shove. Plus,” her eyes twinkled, “he’s got a bit of a thing for kickass girls, so learning to fight will only help your chances.”

Karina felt herself blushing profusely. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Tiana shifted, gasping softly as she did, her face growing even redder. “I’m sure you don’t.” Then the unmistakable sound of a key being inserted into a lock filtered through the door and Tiana’s playful expression faded. “Listen to me,” she said, her voice low, “whatever happens, whatever they try to do, you stall. Stall for as long as you possibly can. Do whatever you have to and buy yourself time. Every second counts, do you understand me? And whatever you do, do. Not. Panic.”

Karina nodded fearfully just before the door opened. Tiana tried to stand, but a boot shot out and shoved her to the ground. She’d barely looked up before a spear was being pressed to the hollow of her throat, making her freeze. “Now, now,” the man holding the weapon said, “no need for all that. Cooperate, and things won’t have to get ugly.”

Then another man, tall and thick with muscle, snatched Karina by the arm and roughly yanked her to her feet. Karina fought, cursing and spitting at the man, using all her willpower to keep her light from lashing out at him. Behind him stood two more men, big and armored, as well as the scarred woman from the ambush. She couldn’t fight them. Not without any kind of training.

That didn’t stop her from kicking and fighting the man every step of the way as he dragged her from the room. “Remember what I told you!” Tiana called at her, even as Karina was essentially carried past the threshold.

They paused outside as the man turned to the scarred woman. “Redhead’s all yours,” he said gruffly.

Her grin widened. “Pleasure doing business with you. I hope we can do it again sometime,” she said, trailing a long nailed finger down his bicep.

He grunted, then he was dragging Karina away from the door while three of the men from the ambush walked inside. She fought, trying to get back to her friend, but the only reward for her efforts was a sharp blow to the back of her head. The hallway swam around her as she was dragged into another room and unceremoniously dumped into a chair.

She tried to rise, only to be shoved back down. The man who’d dragged her here just looked down at her with a cruel grin. “Now, now, I’d best behave if I were you. Boss doesn’t know exactly how roughed up you got in that ambush just yet, and he gave Victoria plenty of leeway in bringing you in.”

Karina froze as the implications of his words sank in. “W-what do you want with me.”

“Me?” He chuckled. “To get paid, of course. My boss? That’s a whole different matter.”

As if his words were a signal, the door behind him opened. Through it stepped Karina’s worst nightmare. Lord Serrick Davvon, in all his slimy glory, strutted into the room like he was king of the world. When his eyes fell on Karina, his grin grew wide. “Leave us,” he commanded.

The thug still holding her down frowned. “You sure, boss?”

He just shrugged. “Wait outside, and if she somehow makes her way past me and to you then you have my full permission to educate her on her place in this world,” he said simply, his words making Karina’s blood run cold. “That ought to serve as plenty of deterrent, shouldn’t it little Seelie?”

Unable to find her voice, Karina just nodded. Tears spilled silently down her cheeks as her light recoiled inside her, as if it knew just how truly screwed she was. She’d always known Davvon was demented, but to go so far as to kidnap her in broad daylight?

The thug left the room and Davvon set a small case on the table in front of her. “Now then, little Seelie, let’s you and me have a chat. Cooperate, and things can be rather easy for you. You’ll find that I can be a rather amiable master when my instructions are followed.”

He opened the case and set a strange object on the table. It was a magical gem in some kind of frame. He flicked a piece into place and a low hum filled the room. “There, now we won’t be overheard. Not with what we’ll need to discuss.” Then he pulled out a rectangular silver tablet with a spike at the top.

“Now, sorry for making you wait, but I was in a rather annoying meeting with your dear old father.” Karina felt the blood draining from her face and Davvon’s expression grew delighted. “Oh, yes. It took some digging, but the knowledge that the great Rolar, Chosen of Thyana, goddess of light, is your sperm donor will make me powerful beyond imagination.”

Then he pulled a knife out and Karina felt herself begin to tremble. He thumbed the blade, walking around the table with slow, deliberate steps. “My master has spent most of his natural life searching for a specific set of individuals, you see. Ones that meet very specific criteria. But, as much of a genius as he is, my master can be a bit literal in his thinking.”

He dragged the blade across Karina’s shoulders. Not hard enough to cut, but hard enough for her to feel the sharpness of the blade. “You see, he’s been searching for years in all the wrong places. In the north where the sun never sets. In the deserts where there are no clouds to offer shade. You see, the Shadowborn was born in literal darkness, so surely its counterpart must be the same?”

Nothing he was saying made any sense to Karina. Davvon was more delusional than she could have imagined. She needed to get away from him, but there was no way she could take on the four trained men outside the door. She wasn’t anywhere near an expert, but even she could tell those four were a cut above the men and women that had ambushed them.

“But I started to think in the opposite direction,” Davvon continued, unaware of her thoughts. “You see, the original Shadowborn were born in times of darkness. Not literal, but metaphorical. When the side of light became so oppressive it cast shadows dark enough to spawn a weapon capable of righting the scales. So I started to become a little more… abstract in my thinking.”

He stopped behind her. Before she could react, he’d grabbed her wrist. She let out a cry of fear, pulling against him, but he merely used his knife to cut through her bindings. He yanked her arm in front of her, holding her body down with his other hand, and gripped her thumb. She let out another cry, this time in pain, as he twisted her hand and jammed the thumb down onto the spike at the top of the silver tablet.

“I thought to myself, what or who would be the embodiment of light?” he said, holding her thumb to the tablet while she struggled against him in vain. Crimson blood ran from the puncture, flowing down the tablet and sinking into the silvery surface. “It didn’t take me long to come to a reasonable conclusion. Rolar. Great, perfect Rolar,” he spat, shoving her down harder.

Breath was driven from her lungs as the edge of the table dug into her ribs, but he didn’t let up. “The picture perfect Chosen! All things every god aspires for their Chosen to be! Honorable! Kind! Merciful!” He grabbed her by the hair and yanked her head back. “Perfect fucking Rolar, Chosen to the goddess of light! How could it be anyone else? But alas, Rolar never took a wife! Never had dalliances! He never paid for a whore, never relished in the spoils of victory, hells, for a while I wondered if the old bastard might not be a godsdamned virgin!”

Davvon paused, his face splitting into a wide grin. With his hand still fisting her hair, he turned her face towards the tablet. Written across the top, above her stats and skills, was a word that made the last of the hope in her wither and die. Lightborn. Her class. One she’d instinctively known all her life she couldn’t tell anyone about. Jayme was the only one she’d ever spoken the name aloud to.

“Then I found out about the Seelie that had followed him around. Tending to his wounds. Repairing his armor. The rumors that she would often stay in his tent well past sunrise, even if they never so much as shared a kiss outside it. Her devoted loyalty to him. The child she had nearly a decade later whose father was only ever a topic of speculation. A child that grew up protected, in the capital. A servant protected by someone powerful.”

He yanked her head back again, forcing her to sit upright, leaning down until his nose was almost touching hers. “Hello, little Lightborn. You’re going to change everything.”

Then he shoved her away, releasing her. She curled into herself with a whimper, rubbing the raw patches of skin under her wrists she hadn’t even realized had been bleeding. Surely he could have used that blood for his tablet, but he’d wanted the pleasure of causing her more pain. She wanted to run. To find the darkest corner imaginable and hide in it, away from him. She wanted to scream and cry and rage at the world, but all she could do was sit there numbly while he pulled out a final item from his case.

A collar.

A thick, iron collar with runes etched into the inside. It looked seamless until he whispered a word, then grooves appeared as symbols glowed orange on the outside of the collar. Where a second ago it had been smooth, unblemished metal, it clicked open.

“Now, can’t have you misbehaving any more, so you’ll have to wear this until you realize who owns you.” He smiled at her, but his eyes were cold. “I’d tell you not to fight me on this, but we both know that’s a moot point. I’ll enjoy punishing you later regardless.”

Her light rebelled in her chest as he approached. She knew somehow that this was her moment. It was now or never. If he got that collar around her throat, even over Zaren’s that she still wore, her life as she knew it came to an end. But he was as arrogant as he was delusional. He’d left her hands unbound. She had a single shot to survive, and she was going to take it.

He grabbed her, trying to shove her back down onto the table, but she fought back with everything she had. She kicked, screamed, and bit, raking her nails across his face with her free hand while she collected her light in the palm of the hand he was holding on to. He cursed, trying to manhandle her into a position where he could pin her with his body, but Jayme had shown her a few moves to use on men bigger than her. She twisted and bucked until her hand came free.

“Stupid bitch!” he screamed, managing to grab hold of the hand she was using to claw at any skin she could reach. She used that as leverage to pull herself close, shoving her hand in his face and letting loose with all the power she had. Her mana pool was drained by the barrage of attacks she’d held back and light burned so bright it seared his image into her retinas.

He howled, dropping the collar and jerking back. “You little whore! I'll fucking gut you!” he cried, clawing at the seared area that had once been one of his eyes.

Karina lunged for the collar he’d dropped. The metal was thick and heavy, and it was immensely satisfying when she swung it as hard as she could into the side of his head. He screamed again as the metal cut into the skin above his eye, but Karina was lost in a haze. Someone was screaming. All the fear and panic she’d been tamping down came to the forefront as she slammed that heavy iron collar into Davvon’s head again and again and again.

By the time she came to a stop, her limbs were trembling and her front was covered in blood. Numbly, she realized she was the one who’d been screaming at the top of her lungs. Davvon’s face was smashed to a bloody, seared pulp, and he was no longer breathing. She looked at him for a second longer before she lunged away, vomiting everything she had in her stomach. She threw up until she couldn’t any longer, then she forced herself to look at the man she’d just killed.

There was no pity or remorse in her, but it still took everything in her to rifle through his pockets. The only thing of value she could find was a dagger, but she wasn’t so naive as to think it would help her against the men that waited outside.

All too soon, the door banged open. “Boss, we gotta go. The warehouse is under—”

He paused as he took in the scene, his eyes wide. The other three filed in behind him, similar looks of shock and rage on their face. “What the fuck did you do?” one of the other men asked, his voice low and menacing as the door latched shut behind him.

Buy Time. Tiana’s words rang through her head. She couldn’t think about what these men would do to her given the chance or she’d freeze again. Instead she raised her dagger, hoping she didn’t look as afraid as she felt. Then she lifted her other hand, allowing her light to slip past her skin and wrap around her arm. Wisps of angry, pure white light twisted around her skin. Every second counts.

“Davvon underestimated me,” she said, her voice ragged from screaming, “will you do the same?”

The four men all paused for a beat. Karina struggled to keep her light swirling with what little mana she had left. If they called her bluff, she wouldn’t even have enough left for a single attack. Then the one in the lead snarled. “Seelie bitch. You’ll pay for this.”

He took a single step forward, and everything exploded.

The door erupted in splinters as a mass of swirling darkness raged into the room. There were surprised grunts and shouts that turned quickly into screams as the figure tore into the four men. With flashes of silver, black, and crimson, the newcomer had one of the men on the floor in seconds. The other three tried to flank him, but he seemed to have no front or back. Tendrils of darkness lashed out in all directions, blocking and striking with enough speed to keep the two behind him from interfering as he sunk his blade into the throat of the second man.

Rather than pulling it free, he left the blade behind and whirled on the other two. Another blade, this one short and thick, appeared in his hand. One man’s weapon was too long to wield accurately in such a tight space, so it wasn’t long before he was bleeding out on the ground. The last man fell prey to the shadows, trying to crawl away with dozens of cuts covering his body. The man in the shadows just calmly knelt over him and pulled his head back, slicing his throat in one fluid movement.

When the shadowy figure turned towards her, she realized it was Zaren. Angry, whirling shadows erupted from his back and sides, whirling and collecting around him like a furious cloak. His eyes went from Davvon’s body to her, taking in her blood covered appearance.

“Are you alright?” he asked softly, his voice impossibly loud in the silence of the aftermath.He should have been terrifying. Wrapped in monstrous shadows and covered in the blood of the trained men he’d slaughtered. Apparently unfazed by the blood he’d just spilled. Unbothered by whatever injuries he’d sustained. He was barely even breathing hard from the fight he’d just dominated.

Karina should have been absolutely terrified of the man, but all she could do was throw herself at him, the sobs finally breaking free as she collapsed against his chest. Her knees buckled and she heard the sound of the knife hitting the floor, but his arms were there to catch her. He held her tightly, his hand cupping the back of her head and his shadows wrapping around her like they were just as glad to see her safe as he was.

“It’s alright,” he said, his voice gravelly, his arms crushing her to his chest in just the right way. “I’ve got you now.”