Treacherous Witch

"—not until we reach the border. I won't be crossing it."

Valerie gazes at her queen, the moonlight caught in her eyes. "Then why are we crossing?"

"There's a man on the other side. We must find and kill him before he returns."

"What man?"

*

They took a few minutes to prepare. Titus smeared the Duke's blood on her face, which disgusted her, but she preferred it to his other option of giving her a black eye.

Anyway, it wasn't hard to look wounded and miserable. She was still limping from the stitched bullet wound in her thigh, which she had not been able to properly heal, and the lacerations in her back from the wyvern's talons hurt too. Worse than that, she didn't trust Titus, and she knew he didn't trust her either.

"I want a weapon," she said, eyeing the torture instruments on the table. That knife would do. Or she'd take a hammer, nice and hefty, thwack a few skulls.

Titus snorted. "Absolutely not."

Of course. Her only option was to play the wounded bird. Valerie bowed her head as Titus pushed open the heavy oak door, and they stepped out of the tower room and onto the spiral steps.

If the guards had overhead their conversation, it was already over. But although they bristled suspiciously, Titus set them straight.

"Stay here. The Duke is not to be disturbed. I'm taking the witch back to the Patriarch."

So, with her hands twisted and Titus holding the knife he had refused to give her, they descended the staircase, exited the stairwell and walked the hallways of the Patriarch's palace. She was terrified that at any moment they would be stopped. Servants passed them. Guards gave them questioning looks. One asked Titus why the witch was not with the Duke.

"The Patriarch ordered her returned to him as soon as she gave in. She didn't last long."

Then they reached the entrance hall where the great doors beckoned outside.

"The lawn," she whispered. "The locket is outside."

"Liar," he hissed back. "You're looking for a chance to escape. Where is it?"

"I'm not lying! It's in the fountain in front of the lawn. Go take a look if you don't believe me."

She felt him hesitate. Obviously he didn't trust her enough to leave her alone. But they couldn't linger without attracting attention.

They moved forward. Titus pushed open the door, and she drank in the cool night breeze like a woman dying of thirst. Clouds obscured the sky—enough cover to hide their escape, perhaps. She could taste freedom.

They stepped off the porch…

"Master Titus! Where are you going?"

"Quickly," Titus muttered, and they half-hobbled, half-ran down the gravel path to the lawn. She could see the fountain now, the faint silvery spray of the water standing out against the grass. Her heart raced.

"Oi! Stop!"

She sensed it before she saw it. A pall of magic—and not the locket, they weren't close enough—which meant it had to be…

Valerie wrenched out of Titus's grip and threw herself to the ground. A second later, a black shape plummeted out of the sky, and she heard the wyvern's claws slam into Titus behind her with a sickening crunch. He screamed. There were other shouts too—guards or servants, she wasn't sure which, and she wasn't going to look back to find out.

She had one goal now.

She jumped up and dashed to the fountain, ignoring the burning in her thigh, praying, hoping against hope that the silver locket would still be there, that the Patriarch hadn't sensed its presence, that no servant had discovered it, that no guard had picked it up. She'd dropped it in the stone basin under the clear running water. It would be visible to anyone looking, but why would anyone look? Surely they'd had more urgent matters to attend to: the aftermath of the ball, whatever had happened to those dead servants…

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She almost skidded on the gravel, bracing her hands on the rim of the basin to stop herself. Stared at the water. No, no, no…

The locket was gone.

She sobbed and plunged her hand into the basin, fishing around. It had to be there. Had to be.

"Hands in the air! Come back right now!"

She turned. One of the guards approached across the gravel, musket raised. Behind him, the wyvern screeched. Other men had gathered around Titus sprawled on the ground. She couldn't see whether he still had the knife. Without the locket, she couldn't help him even if he did.

Slowly, Valerie bent down and dug her dry hand into the gravel, grabbing a fistful of the fine sand that lay beneath.

"Stand up! Hands where I can see them!"

The palace guards did not wear helmets. Their muskets were very real, but their uniforms were more decorative than protective. This guard had not yet pointed the muzzle at her. She had a window of seconds when he might be vulnerable…

Valerie straightened up and calculated her best chance.

Then, when he was barely a foot away and reaching out to grab her, she flung the dirt into his eyes. He reeled back with a cry.

Valerie ran.

She ran, ran, ran, in her hideous restrictive dress, her pathetic soft slippers, the stitched wound in her thigh splitting, her muscles on fire, but she didn't care, she didn't care—she sprinted full tilt across the lawn, lungs burning, her breath a hurricane in her ears, and the shadow of the wyvern launched after her, and the guards yelled, and a gunshot cracked into the air and she cursed, zigzagging the last few feet, and the dark river loomed up before her, wide and fast and deep, and Valerie gasped one final breath and plunged—

A wave of cold slammed through her. Water filled her mouth and ears.

She struck out, kicking the slippers off her feet, and surfaced with another gasp. She felt a rush of air, a rush of magic, then dived again just in time to escape the wyvern's claws from plucking her out of the river. The current carried her; she barely knew which way was up or down. She kicked up, scrabbling for any kind of purchase, and resurfaced under the shadow of a bridge where she clung to a stone protrusion and tried not to hyperventilate.

The wyvern couldn't reach her here. But she couldn't stay either; it was pitch black and she was freezing. Shuddering, she waited for what felt like an agonisingly long time until she could no longer sense the wyvern's magic.

Then she swam out past the bridge, fighting the current and the freezing, choppy water. Her muscles burned. Her body dragged her down. She kept on swimming. Giving up was not an option. Drowning was not an option. Finally, she reached the other side and dragged herself up the bank by sheer force of will.

There she lay in the mud for as long as she dared to get her breath back. Her gown clung to her skin, wet and cold. The night air began to bite. Shivering, sodden, she forced herself up. The high bank tailed off into a grassy verge bordered by an iron railing. It reached her waist, so it was climbable, but metal spikes spanned the top of the railing.

She climbed it, ripping her dress. Fell onto the cobblestone street. Stared up at the empty sky. Gas lamps lit the grand buildings, their dark faces frowning at her. She got up and stumbled onwards like a drunkard, trying to mentally reconfigure the city's layout from her memory of flying to the palace on the wyvern…

Of course, the city streets weren't empty. The sun had set and the moon was rising, but Drakardia did not yet sleep. Carriages rolled through the boulevard, their horses snorting in the cold night air. An occasional lone rider cantered past. A grubby-faced boy in dirty clothes shouted at her from an alleyway. A group of ladies gave her a wide berth. Two gentlemen in top hats exclaimed at her approach—"Oh, I say!"—"Are you quite all right, ma'am?" She picked up her pace again, ignoring the blisters forming on her feet.

On the next corner, she almost collided with two imperial guards outside one of the grand state buildings.

"Where are you going? No street walkers around here!"

She cursed. One of them stepped forward to block her way, and she dodged around him, breaking into a run even when she thought she was utterly spent. The cobblestones cut into her feet. The wind whistled through her ears, a cruel chill.

Then a shadow momentarily blocked out the moon, and Valerie looked up. The wyvern sailed above her. Distant shouts followed, and she knew the Patriarch's men had found her.

Breaths ragged, panting, she fled the main street and into an alleyway between two tall buildings. Horse hooves followed her. Her heart rate shot up again—the usual city traffic moved at a trot or at best a canter. This was a gallop, and they were closing in fast. She put on a burst of speed through to the adjoining road, the pain in her feet making her sob, and darted through an open iron gate into an empty park.

The trees might provide some cover from the wyvern, but she hadn't lost the horses. The pursuit of galloping hooves thundered louder and louder.

"Valerie!"

She turned, startled.

A dark-haired rider bore down upon her, his cloak flying out behind him. A second rider followed. Above them, a black shape closed in, the wyvern swooping between the trees…

The rider drew a glowing white sword. It flashed upwards and tore into the wyvern's belly; the creature wheeled away with an awful shriek.

Valerie's heart jumped.

The moonlight caught the face of her pursuer: intense blue eyes, an aquiline nose, that familiar harsh face…

"Avon!" she gasped.

"Climb on!" he urged her, pulling at the horse's reins, then holding out his hand…

She felt as if she had entered a dream. Avon swung her up into the saddle in front of him, then kicked forward and swept her away.