Brigid helped Kenzie to her feet, and they started to look through the mud and reeds at the edge of the bog for the elusive sword.
A tingle of dread signaled Kenzie before the mists grew dense, wrapping clammy tendrils around her. Ryan shrank to her side as the mists thickened, then parted, revealing Turner standing not ten feet from them.
His outline was darker than before, and from this shadow, his blue eyes shone with cold light. He raised a tranquilizer rifle and shot first Ryan and then Kenzie, who leapt at him to keep him from her son.
Brigid’s hands automatically reached for weapons she no longer carried, but Turner invoked the binding spell. She froze in place, bracing herself for a third dart to come for her.
It never did. Turner lifted something that glinted in the half light and the mists became dense. When they thinned again, Turner, the Shifter woman, and the Shifter woman’s cub were gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Brigid checked the perimeter of the place of their captivity, but Kenzie and Ryan were nowhere to be found. Turner had taken them.
The darkness was nearly complete by the time Brigid returned to the place she considered base camp—the large, flat boulder she used as a seat, the soft pile of leaves that was her makeshift bed. Kenzie still had the cloak, which meant Brigid would have no cover tonight. But this place, wherever it was, was far warmer than her home in Tuil Narath—what the Shifters called Faerie—so it scarcely mattered.
The emptiness that smote her as Brigid seated herself on the rock surprised her. She didn’t like sentimentality, and she didn’t like Shifters. Or so she’d thought before meeting Kenzie.
Kenzie had proved companionable. The Shifter woman understood, the same way Brigid did, about love and loss, hardship and happiness. Brigid didn’t like to think about what Turner would do to her, or to Ryan, the cub.
Turner was a madman. Brigid had assessed that as soon as she’d looked into his cold, emotionless eyes. He cared for nothing and no one. He’d coerced Brigid into her labors, not to help his people, but for his own glory. To show everyone he’d been right that Shifters existed, and that they’d been wrong to shun him. Being right was important to him, and he was willing to hurt others to prove it.
Turner needed to be eliminated. That was the most efficient way to restore Brigid’s life, as well as the lives of the Shifter woman and cub she’d decided to like.
The conviction rang like faint strains of music in her ears. It felt good to have a purpose. Brigid had always planned to kill Turner when the opportunity arose, but now she had to make it arise.
All very well, Brigid told herself, deflating a little. But she had to figure out how. She was stuck here, unable to leave but at his choosing. He had weapons, including the one that shocked, as well as spells and magical talismans. She would have to take away a weapon and turn it on him and hope she picked out the correct talisman to let her out of here.
After sitting some time in contemplation, Brigid realized that the music she’d begun to hear on the edge of her awareness was not in her head.
It was a humming sound, sweet and ringing, somewhere in the woods. Strangely, she thought she recognized the tune—a song her daughters liked to sing, perhaps? But that wasn’t quite right.
Brigid wasn’t one to sit still and wonder. She came to her feet and walked into the darkness, searching for the music’s source.
About twenty yards to the right of base camp, she spied a light. The night was starless—if this place even had stars—and the light was a harsh beacon in the darkness. Its source lay on the ground near a clump of small trees, light spangling branches that leaned over it.
Brigid approached with caution. The light didn’t move or change; it simply waited for her.
She brushed back a tendril from a fernlike tree and found herself staring down at a long-bladed sword with a thick silver hilt. The sword itself didn’t contain the light; the runes etched into it did, and Brigid knew the music came from them.
Deep magic had forged this weapon. Fae magic.
Brigid studied it before she reached for it. That she could touch the sword, she didn’t doubt. She was as Fae as the magic inside it. She hesitated only because of what Ryan had said, that a Shifter sword smith had forged it. Shifters could use iron, and iron was poison to her.
Another assessment told her that the entire thing was made of silver, no iron or steel involved. Brigid could smell the silver, taste it in the air.
She leaned down and closed her hand around the hilt.
The music crescendoed into a wild symphony. The sound grew so loud Brigid wanted to drop the sword and clap her hands over her ears, but she made herself stand fast.