One way or another, I would get that ring.
By the time I climbed into the box, Keelynn was already on the bench, skirts spread wide, glaring out the far window. She didn’t bother making room for me.
Right, so. Back on the trunk.
The moment my arse hit the rivets, tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I should’ve been healed by now, but Caer and Cait had kept me up until all hours, making me work twice as hard. My magic would take time to replenish.
As cold as I was, my arse hurt worse, so I stripped off my coat and stuffed it beneath me just in time for Padraig to crack his whip, sending me back against the feckin’ wall.
Welts from scalding candle wax and cuts from ceremonial daggers and sharp nails marred my skin. At this rate, they’d be there all feckin’ day.
Keelynn still hadn’t looked at me. I couldn’t blame her, after I’d asked her to wait and left her hanging. Had she stayed at the pub long, or had she known I’d betray her and left as soon as she’d finished her wine?
“What’s worse than one witch?” I asked, fed up with the silence.
Those steely eyes swung toward me, the movement sending her plait falling behind her shoulder. When I repeated my question, she answered with a clipped, “I don’t know.”
“Twowitches.”
She didn’t laugh at my poor excuse for a joke. Of course, she didn’t. It wasn’t feckin’ funny. “I’m sorry for what happened last night. I was gone a lot longer than anticipated.”
That pointed chin lifted, and she looked through me as if she could see straight to the wall at my back. “What you do in your free time is no business of mine.”
My free time?
For the last feckin’ week, I’d spent all my free feckin’ time with her. “That’s all you have to say to me?” I wanted her to shout and rail and tell me I was an eejit. Give me something—anything besides steely indifference.
The ring and my freedom felt a million miles away.
“Dammit, I said I was sorry. What do you want me to do?” Did she want me to grovel? To beg? How the hell did I get back to where we were yesterday?
The carriage careened to a halt, slamming my head against the unforgiving wall.
“I want you to stop messing with my bloody carriage!” Keelynn screeched, eyes narrowed into slits.
“That wasn’t me!” Outside the window, a maze of ruins disappeared into a dreary forest.
“You’re so full of—” Her eyes widened, and she called for Padraig.
The back of my neck prickled. Something was wrong. A familiar coppery tang hit my nostrils. Keelynn climbed out of the carriage before I could stop her.
“He won’t be much help to you now, missus,” a man drawled. Not Padraig. Someone else.
Keelynn’s despondent cry for answers was all the confirmation I needed.
Padraig must be dead.
Whoever was outside with her had killed him.
“Easiest way to make a man stop a carriage is to stop his heart,” said the man, a smile in his tone.
I couldn’t see a feckin’ thing in this box without giving away my position. I evanesced to what remained of the stairs inside a crumbling abbey, across the ditch from the carriage.
Padraig slumped on his bench, the white shirt beneath his heavy overcoat now painted deep red. A man stood next to Keelynn. Tall. Strong. Silver hair. Dagger in his hand, aimed at my salvation.
The magic that had failed to heal me stirred, still bound by the curse but fighting against its stranglehold.
I barely glanced at the three mercenaries in leather armor waiting in front of the old wall. The human took a menacing step toward Keelynn and asked for the ring.