It was stuck.
As he pulled again, the ravager wailed and swiped at Alec’s arm. He needed to act fast. The regent could not mind the arena’s lampposts to protect the city from the ravager within and heal Alec at the same time. But he could heal Alec once the beast was dead.
The sword would still not budge.
He wrapped his hands around the blade tighter, but before he could pull, the sword dislodged, as if by…
Magic.
He plunged the sword back into the heart again. This time, the ravager’s body twisted and contorted.
Almost there.
Alec twisted the blade, then looked up, searching the crowd while he finished the beast off. Someone out there was a witch.
And they’d helped him.
But that didn’t change the need for tradition. When this ravager was dead, Alec would have to hunt them down.
The ravager stopped moving, and Alec dropped the blade and fell to his back beside the beast. He stared up at the darkening sky—or was it his vision that was darkening?—as his adrenaline wore off and the pain of his injuries flared up along his flesh. He could feel blood matting against his hair, which meant he’d been hit in more places than he remembered.
But it was done now. The ravager was dead.
Above him, the dome flickered and disappeared, and the regent loomed over him.
“Well done, my boy,” Dvorak said, smiling down at him. “You did well. But alas, we have more work to do.”
With that, electricity funneled from the sky and down Dvorak’s hand. The ground beneath them buzzed with the regent’s magic, and Alec’s wounds began to reverse. An awkward feeling, like a paper cut being split open. Still there, still a sensation, but no blood or pain.
His stomach roiled with the discomfort, but it was a welcome relief from agony. Just a few more moments and…
There.
His body relaxed, and he let out a slow breath. The regent reached down and helped Alec to his feet. He raised Alec’s hand and spun in a slow circle, showing him off to the spectators.
“Our sector is again victorious,” Regent Dvorak said.
The crowd cheered, perhaps louder than Alec had ever heard. He understood it immediately; they had the privilege of being untouched by personal loss, so his near-death experience did not frighten them. They only saw one thing: that as close as he had come to death, he’d still succeeded. And with new runestones around the kingdom failing every day, they needed to know that. Needed to know that no matter how bad things got, there was still hope.
When the regent lowered Alec’s hand, he let out a relieved sigh. The crowd’s attention shifted solely to him.
“Do not despair, people of Sector One,” the regent continued. “Your true queen is out there. She is watching, and we will find her.”
The crowd began to disperse, as that was always the way the regent ended the display, but then he spoke again.
“Stop,” he shouted.
The people froze, then slowly turned back, the confusion writ on their faces.
“No woman is to leave the square.” As he said this, it seemed all of the Guard were coming out from posts to barricade around the citizens. “We will be testing for witches today, starting with the stadium.”
Whispers crested through the crowd but faded as Dvorak held up a small, compass-like object. But instead of cardinal points, this compass had runestones.
“You see this?” he asked. “This is the future! With this device, we can find witches faster—find your true queen sooner—bring forth an heir more promptly. This device will save lives.”
Alec blinked, trying to process this. Dvorak, the Guard, and Alec himself had just allowed a ravager to kill a woman to see if she was a witch, and the regent had this all along?
Something deep inside of Alec bristled, but he pushed it down. He would talk to Dvorak later. The regent would have a reasonable explanation. For now, Alec just needed to do his part to protect the sector. That meant finding another witch, and hopefully, this witch-tester device would help make that happen.
Without so much as looking at Alec, the regent handed over the device. “Magic is a force, Alec,” he said. “It will push away from the person. Let the compass lead you, and when you find her, use the point to sample her blood. That will give you the confirmation you seek.”
Alec turned the device around in his hand, locating a small needlepoint on the underside of the compass surrounded by strange markings that grooved into the stone.
“Yes, My Regent,” he said solemnly, knowing what this meant.
This device would lead him to the woman who had just saved his life—the one destined to become the next doomed queen.
He ground his teeth and started with the front row of the crowd, going through the line one by one. The sharp stone needle wavered, but stayed pretty standard in its position: facing the women. As Alec had no magic of his own, that meant the regent had blessed the device to be used by someone without.
Carved into the wooden case that held the runes and stone needle were two words: human and witch. When the needle pointed away from Alec and toward them, it was solidly on the human marker.
This was going to take all day.
But someone there was a witch. How else could that blade have dislodged from the ravager’s body?
As he continued down the row, the needle’s behavior changed, wobbling more, though still remaining on the human position. He looked up, scanning the crowd.
Whoever it was must be a woman. The guard already knew all the male witches in town, and none was here now. He spun back to the regent, but Dvorak’s back was turned as he conversed with Alec’s comrade, Constantine.
Alec bit into his lip as he looked down at the device. On the side was a small dial. If Alec knew the regent at all—and he knew him pretty well by now—this device was set to find someone at least as powerful as he was. Since there was no sense sending another doomed queen who was less powerful into the arena, he quickly twisted the dial to a higher position. At least now, no one would be selected unless they were more powerful than the regent.
He continued with his procession, but before he made it another two steps, the dial flew to the side. His gaze continued down the row in an attempt to discover what was causing the action. A sudden movement without a face immediately drew his attention.
Someone was trying to sneak farther back into the crowd.
He pushed through, the device in his hand practically humming with energy. But he broke all the way through to the other side of the crowd and still hadn’t found anything. He glanced around, taking a few tentative steps to see what the device would do. It seemed to be guiding him toward the old woman’s cart from earlier.
As he jogged over, the woman’s cloudy eyes settled on him. “May I help you?”
The needle pointed right at her, and he shook his head. “No, ma’am, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with me.”
Something shifted behind her cart, and the hood of a familiar cloak peeked out from the other side.
“Of course,” the woman said, stepping to the side and placing herself directly in front of him. “I’m sure you can understand why I hide,” the old woman continued. “Clearly, I’m too old to have children.”
Alec waved her off. This wasn’t right.
The old woman wasn’t the witch…
But the woman hiding behind her was.
Chapter 5
She couldn’t make out their conversation, but she heard their voices, more like tones and garbled words peeking through the banter of the marketplace.
She should have left sooner. But she hadn’t, and now look what had happened.
This was why she never watched the end of the doomed queen’s displays. The beginning, sure. Like everyone else, she wanted hope, and her need for it was two-fold: One, to know there was a witch out there strong enough to protect the sector, and two, to know she had time before they would come looking for her to be that very witch.
<
br /> But she could never watch the end. She could never stand by while a ravager took a life. Deep down, she knew that if she were to watch the fanged beast tear these women apart, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from using magic to save them, and that meant risking her own capture.
How foolish she had been to think this time would be any different. As if she could stand by and do nothing just because the person in the arena was a witch hunter.
The chatter on the other side of the cart stopped. Was he gone? She stood stock-still, straining to hear something—anything—over the distant voices of the crowd. Surely, at this close proximity, she would hear them if they were still discussing, even if their voices were low. But it was as though the cart and everything around it had frozen in time.
Then she heard it—feet shuffling closer. The witch hunter.
Alec.
Her heart jumped at his name.
Maybe that was why she’d helped him. The man in the crowd had taken her nameless enemy and made him human. And now that enemy had a new device that would make her nature impossible to hide.
By now, he had probably ruled out the old woman. He would continue on to the next person. Adira just needed to stay very still and make sure that next person wasn’t her.
The cart creaked…or was she imagining it?
Adira trembled, her efforts to still herself futile. She held her breath as if somehow whoever was about to come around to this side of the cart might be able to hear her breathing over the buzz of the market.
Had the old woman seen Adira duck behind the cart? If she had, she surely would have said something. Alec would confront Adira about the theft, and, in doing so, discover she was a witch.
And then what? Did he realize the faceless witch he was searching for was the same who saved him back in the arena?
Would he even care?
The man in the crowd had made it pretty clear Alec was bound by a duty even greater than the one assigned to him.
She couldn’t let him find her, couldn’t let him use that device on her. Forget for a moment that she would never be strong enough to kill a ravager with her magic alone—the fact remained that even if she could somehow survive the display, she would still have Regent Dvorak to contend with.
And maybe no one wanted to say it, but surely, everyone thought the same as she. He never gave those women a real chance to get pregnant. He was too impatient, killing them off too fast. Perhaps Sector One would have an heir by now if he could wait longer than a couple of months before claiming the women were infertile. Did he not see his impatience was likely the biggest factor in the delay?
Another step scuffled against the dirt, closer now. Adira could sense him just out of sight, one step away from discovering her.
What was she waiting for? Did she think he would suddenly get distracted, turn around, and walk away? If it were Alec, there was nothing to distract him. The regent assigned him to this task. The other guards would handle whatever else there was.
No, now was not the time for Adira to hope.
Now was the time for Adira to run.
She took a deep breath and bolted. A man shouted for her to stop—Alec, no doubt, but she didn’t so much as pause to look back.
Her feet pounded against the red clay dirt of the marketplace, kicking up dust. She wove between the people, crashing shoulders with a few who didn’t dodge from her path fast enough. Her gaze flickered around, placing one guard after the next.
The regent had said no one was to leave until the next witch was found. All eyes were on her now as she ran, but it wasn’t as though she could have snuck away. Alec had been too close.
Now what?
How was she supposed to formulate a plan to sneak away while dodging an army of guards?
At least she wasn’t the only one in the market wearing a cloak, so as long as she did find a way out, she wouldn’t have to worry about Alec realizing she was the same person as the witch he was after.
She still didn’t like that he’d seen her face twice before that. First at the dispensary and then in the crowd. It placed her in the market at the same time as a witch, and that alone was too much of a connection for her.
She shouldered past another cluster of people in the crowd, then darted across a wide pocket and into one of the back alleys. Now was not the time to worry about Alec and what he’d seen. Now was the time to figure out how to escape.
Spotting a guard at the other end of the alley, she backtracked, quickly angling her face so no one would see who she was. She nearly ran into a second guard, but when he reached out to grab her, she ducked and bolted under his outstretched arm.
Shit.
Guards were everywhere.
She zigzagged through the crowd and headed into the section of the center city where the alleys were more of a maze, hoping these guards weren’t as versed in these streets as she was.
Dipping into another alley, she found herself faced with another guard. She ran toward a side wall and jumped, then sprang back off the wall upon impact to soar over the guard’s head. Adira hit the ground running, trying to push through the cramping pain in her side.
Her parents had trained her in parkour, which gave her the slight advantage of being able to run, jump, climb, and otherwise navigate through obstacles both in the streets and in the city’s less-developed outskirts. But it’d been years since she’d used the skills; her stamina was not what it used to be.
As a sword clipped at her calf, she was also reminded that her parkour skills did little to negate the guards’ weapons.
She pounced onto a stack of barrels, then leapt at the side of another building and clung to the low roof ledge. Her fingertips barely grasped the edge. She pressed the balls of her feet against the wall, pushing herself higher to adjust her finger hold.
Another guard was already scrambling up the barrels after her. He reached for her ankle and tugged, but she swept her other leg across to kick his hand away and then pulled herself higher on the ledge, getting one elbow onto the roof.
Finally, she got both arms and her upper body up and was able to swing one leg over and then the other. She didn’t have the energy to go much farther. She rolled onto her back to move away from the ledge, then came up to her feet, crouching to peer down into the alley.
The guard she left behind was shouting to someone at the end of the alley while pointing at the roof. She scrambled back, knowing she needed to keep moving.
Beneath her, the building trembled. The guards must be coming up the stairs, and it wasn’t just one of them this time. Adira’s lungs hurt, her throat burned, and her sides ached…but she was just a few alleys away from the outer city, and from there, she could get to the outskirts and hide.
The guards burst onto the roof before she could take action. She couldn’t go back down into the alley, and there was no way she could get around that many of them to the staircase—not to mention who might be waiting at the bottom.
Did they even know why they were chasing her? Or were they just after her because they saw her run?
Didn’t matter. Adira stayed careful to keep her face obscured as she took a few steps toward them. This made them pause, perhaps because they were confused about the prey approaching the hunter.
She needed more space between her and the roof ledge. That was all. And once she had it, she turned and bolted, her feet pounding hard against the roof beneath her. She couldn’t slow to place her steps, but they needed to be perfect. She needed that last step to be as close to the edge as possible.
If she overstepped, she wouldn’t get proper push off through the ball of her foot, and she wouldn’t make it across the gap.
So Adira moved as fast as she could without sacrificing precision, hoping she had enough strength left in her to compensate for the lack of speed.
Before she even reached the ledge, she knew it wouldn’t be enough, but she didn’t falter. She pressed forward, pounded that last step against the concrete, and pushed off with as much
force as her tiny legs could muster.
She threw the top of her body forward as she soared, giving herself just enough momentum to make the jump, though she wouldn’t land on her feet.
When she caught the top of the other roof with both hands, the side of the building crashed into her stomach and knocked the wind from her lungs. Breathless and burning with pain, she leveraged her body up and dragged herself away from the ledge, trying and failing to pull in oxygen.
They would be up there before she even caught her breath.
Vyléčit.
She had to think the word instead of say it, her hand clenched in a fist. But magic was more about intention than word.
She visualized the word again. Vyléčit.
Heal.
A third time, like a mantra in her mind, nearly pleading with her own magic to work. Vyléčit. Vyléčit. Vyléčit.
She stumbled to her feet, still not fully recovered, but enough so to bring in some air. The guards were still atop the other building, none willing to attempt the jump and only a few just now turning around to head for the stairwell.
There were other guards, though. Dvorak practically had an army of them.
Adira didn’t wait for full healing. She scattered toward the other side of the roof. Timed her steps back to make them count this time, and then throttled forward. The gap between these buildings was smaller, and she made it across without additional injury.
Unfortunately for Adira, now they knew they were after a witch. No one healed from an impact like that so quickly…not without magic.
She was almost there, though. This time, she ran to the corner of the roof and hurried to the ladder on the side of the building. She gripped the side rails, protecting her hands with the fabric of her cloak, then pressed her feet to the sides as well. With that, she slid down much faster than she could have climbed.
When she reached the bottom, she hopped down and turned to dart off into the outer city, but she hit a wall that hadn’t been there before.
Origin: an Adult Paranormal Witch Romance: Othala Witch Collection (Sector 1) Page 4
