She had always prided herself on excellent control of her magic. Between the moment her magic slithered out to kill him and the next instant, her brain made the connection, and she withdrew her power, aborting his murder in midstrike.
“Yes?” she asked, sounding as normal as she could.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.” No. No, please take me away from here. “You look older,” she said, to say something. His face was covered with wrinkles.
“Liquid latex,” Richard said. “Processed tree sap mixed with water. If you slather it on your face, it will shrink as it dries, wrinkling the skin.”
He resembled the dead man so much, it was uncanny.
Richard leaned toward her. “Once we get to the island, things will be chaotic. It’s essential that we aren’t separated. We must find the bookkeeper. He’s our only lead to the top of the slaver ring.”
A shrill whistle made them turn. Jason had mounted a horse.
“Wretches, scum, and villains,” he called out. “Lend me your ears!”
Light laughter rippled through the crowd.
“Every single one of you is owed a debt by the slavers. Tonight we collect. We’ll board their ship. We’ll sack the Market. We’ll be legends.” He paused and smiled. “We’ll be rich.”
An enthusiastic riot of catcalls and guttural grunts answered him.
He tilted his head. “But we don’t do this just to get rich.”
“We don’t?” someone asked with pretended shock.
More laughter followed.
“No, we don’t. Look around you.” Jason spread his arms. “Go ahead, look.”
Heads turned as people looked at the woods and the night sky.
“Tonight, we’re the masters of all we see. Tonight, we will triumph and grind those bastards under our boots. We’ll take their money and their lives.” His voice gained a savage intensity. “We’ll listen as they scream and beg us for mercy. We’ll smell the gore as we cut them open and bathe our hands in their blood. We’ll gouge the light out of their eyes. Tonight, we’ll truly live!”
Silence claimed the clearing.
“Hell, yeah!” Richard barked in a deep voice.
“Yeah!” another male snarl echoed.
The crowd erupted in shouts, shaking their fists.
“He gets carried away sometimes,” Richard told her under his breath.
“You don’t say.” More violence. More murder. More joy as her magic devoured lives. Charlotte swallowed. She vividly remembered the seductive rush of pleasure she had derived from killing the slavers, and experiencing it again terrified her to the very core. Her teeth chattered. She clenched them, and her knees began to shake.
“We move!” Jason roared.
Around her, people picked up their gear. She wanted to turn around and run the other way.
“May I?” Richard asked, holding a pair of cuffs.
She raised her hands. Carefully, Richard placed the pair of handcuffs on her wrists. “Twist like this, and they’ll open.”
The cuffs felt so heavy on her wrists. Charlotte forced herself to nod.
His fingers brushed her hands, the rough sword master’s calluses they bore scraping her skin. His hands were warm. She looked up at him, asking for reassurance.
He met her gaze. “I won’t let anything happen to you, my lady.”
He said “my lady” as if it was a term of endearment. There was such quiet conviction in his voice that, for a moment, the clearing and everyone around them faded away. It was just the two of them, and he was touching her hands and looking at her in that particular way, concerned, almost tender. Such a strange emotion in the eyes of a man who was a killer. Her worry melted into the air. If only she could walk right next to him, with him holding her, nothing could hurt her.
“Form two lines,” Jason called out. “Slaves in the middle, slavers on the sides.”
Reality rushed at her in a terrifying avalanche. What she was doing, standing with him like this, was wildly inappropriate. She didn’t care.
“Stay safe,” she said.
“You, too.”
Richard released her and nodded to the dog. “Come.”
The beast hesitated.
“Come,” Richard ordered. The big beast rose off his haunches and trotted over to Richard. Richard locked a long chain on the dog’s collar, mounted his horse, and took position next to Jason. The women formed two lines behind her and Miko, and they started down the road, the “slavers” on horses around them.
They trudged down the trail. The oaks ended, and the marsh began, a perfectly uniform field of low grasses. The trail veered left and right, cut in the grass. The horses clopped through the slushy, oversaturated soil, their hoofs splattering her clothes and face with mud.
The anxiety returned full force. Charlotte knew they’d only been walking for a few minutes, but this trek through the vast field of mud seemed endless. It felt like she was marching through some extended nightmare to her death. The wind rose up, flinging the salty smell of the ocean into her face.
She thought of Tulip’s ashen eyes, and éléonore’s charred body, and George’s haunting voice. “Please, Mémère . . .”
She would stop it. No matter how much it cost her.
An eternity later, the marsh gave way to sandy dunes rough with clumps of sea-oat grass and blanketed with patches of short, creeping grass with wide leaves. Thin spires, like the stamens of a water lily, rose between the leaves, glowing with green, and as the breeze touched them, they swayed, sending dots of brilliant emerald into the night.
“Don’t step on those,” Miko said next to her. “That’s fisherman’s trap grass. It will burn your legs.”
They crossed the dunes and finally stepped onto the beach. In front of her, the ocean stretched, dark and menacing. To the left, the coast curved, forming a small peninsula, cutting off her view with trees. To the right, the distant turquoise lights of Kelena shimmered, like a mirage above the water.
“Three torches,” Richard said. “One in front, two in the back, about twenty feet apart.”
A “slaver” on her right slid off his horse, took three torches out of his saddlebag, ran forward, thrust the first torch into the sand, and lit it.
“It’s a dark night,” Jason said.