I snorted. “Oh please. If I ever chose to do anything to you, you’d give so much consent. Like, all the consent.”
“Enthusiastically so,” Kevin agreed. “But you’ve seen what happens when Gary gets mad. He’s going to Unicorn Rage all over your face. You’re going to look like the aftermath of a gangbang at an arts and crafts store. So much rainbow and glitter.”
“If you had finished letting me tell my awesome story, you would have heard the way I was going to get us out of being in trouble.”
“You may continue.”
“Maybe I don’t want to now.”
“Yeah. You had no plan, did you.”
“Not even remotely. But I’m sure something would have come to me. But since you interrupted my narrative, we’re screwed, and neither of us will get laid.” I paused, considering. “Or rescue our loved ones and save the kingdom from the clutches of villains. Because I should have said that one first.”
“Priorities. You have them. Do you think it’s as bad as Dimitri said?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. I guess we’ll see soon enough. He tends to be all doom and gloom. That’s what happens when you’re six inches tall.”
“But….”
“But we’ve been gone for eleven months. That’s a long time.”
“Yeah,” Kevin sighed. “It probably doesn’t help that we’re—”
A shout in the woods ahead.
We both froze.
“Is it—”
“Let me,” I said.
I closed my eyes.
And pushed.
There was green. And gold. And it poured from me, much stronger than it’d ever been before. A pulse rolled through the forest as the Dark Woods responded to it, pulling it outward, rippling through the trees. It was pure and simple and came without even the barest of thoughts.
And there they were.
Seven blips that echoed back from me. Five were dark and fetid, boiling with corrupted magic. The other two were… muted, somehow. I could tell they were there, but it was like an absence of any light. A dark space in the swirling colors of the forest.
But whoever they were, there was trouble.
I opened my eyes.
Kevin’s eyes glittered darkly. He’d felt what I had. He was a conduit, after all, able to help me channel my magic, to expand it. It was a gift that had awoken in him in our time away. He magnified everything about me.
“To the sky,” I told him quietly. “Tell the others. Wait until I give the command.”
“On it.” He spread his wings and, with a muscular thrust, lifted off above the trees and into the dark clouds above.
I reached up and pulled the hood of my cloak over my head. “I bet I look so badass right now,” I muttered. “All billowing and shit. Fuck yeah. Let’s show these mothercrackers how to get their asses kicked.”
THEY WERE moving quickly through the trees, five in pursuit of the other two. Kevin’s words echoed in my head. If we saved those being pursued, chances were they’d tell others about their rescuers, and word would get out of my return before I wanted it to. I didn’t know what we were going to say when we were finally face-to-face with those we’d left behind.
I didn’t want to be covered in rage glitter and rainbows. That was going to suck balls.
I moved through the Dark Woods, surefooted and quick. The two in the lead were beginning to lag, and I didn’t have much time before the others caught up with them. I needed to make one hell of an entrance.
I found them near a cliff’s edge. The two being chased were in makeshift armor. They didn’t have helmets but instead wore fabric over their heads and faces, leaving only their eyes visible. One was larger than the other, and he had forced the smaller figure behind him in a protective gesture. He held a sword in one hand, flourishing it defiantly. It was familiar, that practiced flip, and I thought of my knight, but this couldn’t be him. There was a slight clumsiness to him that Ryan never had.
Soon, though. I’d find him soon enough. And hope that he wouldn’t be too angry with me.
But there was one I recognized.
He stood in front of the other Dark wizards, looking as calm as if he were taking an afternoon stroll. He’d been slight when I’d first seen him, hunched over and stuttering about his sickly sister who loved HaveHeart and wanted nothing more than to meet us. But as soon as we’d reached the house, the stutter had fallen away, and he began to monologue about his mother and truth corn and blah, blah, blah, only putting himself on my shit list with everything that had come after.
This was who he was now: a slithering snake. He wore a long coat, the collar flipped up around his neck like a douchebag. His dark hair was longer, pulled back into a tight ponytail, and he had a smile on his face, teeth flashing.
And what made things stranger was the Dark magic that coursed around him. He hadn’t been a wizard when I’d seen him last. Not that I’d known. It hadn’t even seemed like he’d had a propensity for magic. It looked as if Myrin had been busy.
“Well, what do we have here?” Caleb asked, cocking his head at the two at the edge of the cliff. He sounded like an asshole, and I wanted to punch his nose off his face. “And with nowhere else to run.”
I rolled my eyes at the clichéd grossness that Caleb had devolved into. I was so going to murder his entire body for being complicit in the death of Morgan of Shadows and the injuries to Ryan Foxheart.
“Revenge,” I hissed.
Caleb jerked his head in my direction.
“Fuck,” I whispered, lying low to the ground.
He couldn’t see me, but he watched the tree line for a long minute before turning back toward the people at the cliff’s edge. “Tell me. What did you hope to achieve? I’m told you infiltrated my ranks a week ago. What exactly were you looking for?”
“Kiss my ass!” the one to the rear cried. A woman. Younger, from the sound of it. “We’re not telling you anything.”
“Katya,” the other one growled. A man. “Shut your mouth and let me handle this.”
“Yes, Katya,” Caleb said, slightly mocking. “Let him handle this.”
“Let me at him!” Katya snapped, trying to get around the man. “Let’s see how smug he can be when I get my fingernails in his eyes.”
“Ooh,” I whispered. “I like her.”
Caleb laughed. “Amusing, little girl. To think you could ever touch me. You know who I am. Which means you know what I’m capable of.” He shook his head. “It’s a pity, really. You have such balls. I could have used someone like you.”
“I would never join you,” she snarled.
“No? You seem rather… firm in that decision.”
The man was struggling to hold her back and keep his sword up at the same time. “Let us go.”
“Or what?” Caleb asked, sounding curious.
“Or you’ll regret it,” the girl growled.
“And how do you figure that?”
“Katya,” the man said again. “Don’t—”
“He’ll come for us,” Katya said, defiant and angry. “I know it. Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but he will. And you’ll be sorry.”
Caleb blinked. “Him? Who are you—surely you don’t mean—” He threw his head back and laughed uproariously. The Darks at his side looked bemused, shifting on their feet like they didn’t understand what was going on.
Katya wasn’t having any of it. “Let me go, Brant! I’m going to stab him in the asshole.”
It was weird to have a straight crush on a lady. But I powered through it.
“So you’re the Resistance,” Caleb chuckled, wiping his eyes. “Oh my. Today… today is a good day.”