Wynn.
Her body lies face-down on the frosty ground, but she isn’t moving. Why isn’t she moving?
The man who first shouted finally reaches us. Red splatters stain his scarred cheek. They look like…
Blood.
The man…his hands…his face…are all covered in blood.
I stumble back, but before I can even take a step, one of the men catches my arm and yanks it so hard, it feels like he’s trying to tear it off.
“Let me go!”
The blackguard’s blunt nails dig into my flesh. “Afraid we won’t be doing that.”
The blood-drenched man’s fist flies toward me, slamming into my cheek. Pain bursts behind my eyes. When I fall, the man holding me lets go, and my knees crack off the unforgiving earth. My face collides with the wet grass with a sickeningthud.
Two of them pin me beneath their knees, splaying my arms wide.
I thrash and whimper, but my cries fall on deaf ears.
Their laughs are vicious. Grating. I try to call on my element to fight them off, but the power that has always lived within me doesn’t respond. I open my mouth to beg for freedom as the third man stomps on my spine right between my shoulder blades. Air evacuates my lungs, and my wings appear unbidden. The limp hair around my face is no longer black but blue.
They broke my glamour. How is that even possible?
My face. My knees. My foot. My spine.
Everythinghurts.
A sharp slice lances across the base of my right wing, and the sickening cacophony of ripping flesh fills my ears. It feels like I’m being sawed in two. Hot liquid splatters down my back. Cerulean feathers flutter next to me.
I gasp and gasp but can’t find my next breath. Black spots speckle at the edge of my vision as I stare toward my friend’s lifeless form, praying for a respite from this pain.
If only someone would make it go away.
A blur darts between the trees. The man at my back lets out a grunt, collapsing at my side with a heavythud, his sightless eyes trained on me. Blood leaks from a crooked gash across his throat, painting the frosty leaves red.
The hold on my right arm loosens. Someone garbles a protest until it, too, is cut off. The third man runs, but he doesn’t make it far before Senan’s guard, Eason, launches a blade at his back, sending the bastard careening into a tree.
Eason hobbles toward me, his lip split, his eye blackened, his shirt torn and bloody. “Stay still,” he whispers, wincing as he eases forward.
“My wings…” I can’t feel my wings. Why can’t I feel my wings? Even glamoured, I could always feel their weight. But now…
Eason’s calloused fingers graze my cheek. “They’re gone.”
Gone? They can’t be gone.Not my wings.
A broken whimper rips from my chest.
“Shhh. Don’t cry. We must conserve our energy if we want to have any hope of surviving in this forsaken realm.” Eason presses his hands to my shoulders. Warmth flows from his palms as healing power pours through me.
“Stop,” I rasp. If he gives me all his magic, he won’t be able to get back home.
“You’ve lost too much blood, Allette. If I don’t heal you, you’ll die too.”
Die too.Die too. Die too.
“Wynn…they…they killed her.” My confidant. My friend.My fault.