Heirot

Havitharon watched her settle down, but he was too wary to do the same. There were strangers in the next room, and he wanted to stay alert. Never mind that if he fell asleep by accident and there was an emergency, Tenara might not be able to wield him as a sword with her hand in its current state.

The men in the other had gone quiet, and the light under the door had faded. He eventually put their own candle out as well. He was walking to sit by Tenara when a he thought a light caught his eye outside the window. He paused in front of the open shutters, studying the dark treeline outside. Nothing seemed to be out there. He went perfectly still and listened. The woods were too quiet.

"Tenara," he said without breaking his focus on the trees.

Then, things moved very fast. A dark blur whizzed past his head and struck the wall behind him. He had just enough time to turn and acknowledge it as an arrow, when two more flew through.

A shout in the next room told him there were more archers out there. "Tenara, stay down," Havitharon hissed as he whirled for the master bedroom and kicked open the door. Jacob was pressed to the wall to the side of the window, clutching an arrow in his right arm.

"Shit, shit, shit," Thomas rambled as he tried to gather Blaine out of the bed. "They found us?"

Tenara’s mind was muddled with sleep, but the urgency in Havitharon’s voice made her sluggish brain kick into gear. She scurried on her rump until she crammed herself into the corner of the common space. Her gaze locked on the open windows before darting to the shadows in the room, and finally, the door.

The door.

They hadn’t locked the door.

She scrambled across the room, as low as she could—and as best she could on one hand—before she leapt up and slammed her weight into the door, bracing it. Her good hand slid out and shoved the latch Havitharon repaired into place.

From this angle, she could almost see the shadow of Thomas struggling with Blaine. “Who. Are. They?!”

"I didn't think they'd follow us this far!" Jacob called back desperately.

The knob turned, and a strong weight bore back against Tenara's through the door. The footing was better inside; they could hear the sound of boots sliding on loose dirt as the intruders shoved against the door.

After two tries, the pressure vanished and a confident male voice asked, "You want to do this the hard way? Be my guest. Sam, how many doors does this cottage have?"

"One," said a second voice, this one female.

"Well then, you all know what to do."

Havitharon's eyes narrowed to wary slits. He dropped to a crouch. "Down!" he barked.

Two more arrows flew in through the windows. These arrows, however, were on fire. The sound of several more striking the straw roof left little question that the cottage was in trouble.

Havitharon grabbed the panicking man and dragged him to the floor beside him. "Answer her question. Who's pursuing you?"

"A-Arken! Bounty hunters..."

Tenara’s heart beat a little faster at the fire flaring in the places the arrows landed, and then he mentioned Arken. Her pulse jumped, and she turned fearful eyes towards Havitharon. She could barely see him in the next room.

The fools had led Arken bounty hunters to them. Of all the problems that could have befallen them, she hadn’t thought Arken among them.

Tenara took a breath and ran for the small desk, taking her weight off the door. She took a paper from the drawer, the ones she had discarded the day before, and scribbled hurriedly on the parchment.

In Estival. Lake Seron. Arken found us. Running for the Hajaran border. she scribbled onto the paper and took it up into her hands.

She had no worry of burning down the cottage with her magic, should it go wild. It was already on fire. Smoke billowed down from the thatching above, flakes of burning straw and embers beginning to fall like rain. Tenara held the letter with both hands, and wished for it to go to Sinead. To appear on the Queen’s desk, because she could not pinpoint her directly.

By now, her family would be with Sinead, upset and worried because she had disappeared—again. They would be looking for her. Perhaps they would have found Rami, and discovered what he’d done. Who he was to her. Maybe he would have told them a lie. Either way, they didn’t know where she was now. If Arken took them, if they didn’t escape, at least they would have some thread to finding her.

Tenara thought of Sinead’s desk. She opened herself to her magic.

Blood magic made it easy. Cutting herself on Havitharon was akin to opening a box and releasing it. This was harder. She had to focus. To will it. And she did. The power flared in her, the glow of red light flickering in her eyes. But just as she called her magic forward, she felt a burning in the holy wound in her hand. It was like being burned anew, and she almost stopped. But she needed to give them something, some word or breadcrumb. She held the spell, the thought of Sinead’s desk in her mind until the pain in her hand dropped her to her knees, and a black line stretched across her skin, out from beneath the bandage and up her arm. The letter disappeared, and Tenara didn’t know if it reached its destination, or fell in Rami’s lap, or ended up in the sands outside her palace. Her concentration wavered towards the end.

But it was gone. She’d managed to send it somewhere.

She grabbed her hand, heaving air into her lungs and choking on the smoke. It was burning her eyes now, and she searched the cottage for Havitharon. “We have to go.”

Havitharon was at the back wall. He'd been seeking a way to get out through the window, but the fire was already swallowing the wall. The door was the only way out - and that was where the attackers would be waiting for them.

Jacob and Thomas staggered out, Blaine hanging more than walking between them. "What do we do?"

Havi stole a look at Tenara, who seemed surrounded by an aura of her magic. He didn't know what she was trying to do, but he knew for sure he shouldn't move her until she'd finished it. "We don't do anything. She sheltered you here; she didn't sign up to die for you. Get out and fight them yourself."

Thomas paled. "They're serious bounty hunters. We don't stand a chance against them, especially in the dark!"

The roar of the growing fire and the scorching heat were beginning to sear his throat and eyes. Havitharon snorted in disgust and turned his back on the men to check on Tenara, only to find her doubled over in pain. "We have to go," she called, clutching her injured hand. Damn it, he'd just fixed that.

He looked around him and grabbed a carving knife from the kitchen counter. "Here," he called to Tenara as she sought him out through the smoke. His voice broke off in a cough as he sucked in a particularly nasty breath of smoke. "There's no choice but the door."

Tenara grabbed hold of Havitharon with her good hand, clutching tight to his forearm.

There wasn’t any time to tell him her worries about the Arken bounty hunters. Her fears that the quest they’d been on for Thomas, Jacob, and Blaine would be forgotten if they found out who they were.

She couldn’t tell him her fears of them being the ones who took her before, who had crammed her in a ship. Who had drugged her and starved her and raped her. It was easy to pretend it had never happened when it was all a blur, when she consciously willed it into a dark place in her mind and forgot about it. As long as she didn’t think about the cloth over her mouth, the gaps in her memory, the blurred mirage of someone over her, the sound of ocean waves against the hull and acrid stench of chemicals in her nose, she could pretend it had never happened.

But now it was real again. It was outside the door. She could almost see them snatching her. Covering her mouth. Suffocating her in drugs. It might not be them at all but it was for her. She didn’t know their faces. She would never know their faces. They could be anyone and everyone.

Tenara didn’t realize she’d stopped moving. That her grip on Havitharon’s arm had turned bruising. That her panic dragged smoke into her lungs with dangerous vigor.

But then, she remembered she had two things she hadn’t before: her magic—chaotic and unreliable as it was—and Havitharon. The memory of him slamming the soul out of Jacob for flinching to touch her flashed in her mind. He wouldn’t let anyone hurt her—near her.

Tenara reached blindly for the lock and slid it away. Then, she fumbled for the handle and drew the door open.

She was safe as long as they were together, and she would burn her arm to cinders using magic before letting someone take her like that again.

Havitharon could feel her anxiety in the strength of her grip on his arm. He disliked her fear, but the grip felt good. He wanted to get her out, before the smoke made her too weak to move. "They'll be waiting outside. I'll go first, and signal you-"

His instructions were cut off as a piercing heat carved into him from behind. Havitharon looked down at the tip of the knife protruding from his chest, just north of his heart. Then his gaze settled on the owner of the blade. Jacob and Thomas were just behind them, no longer holding Blaine. "Sorry about this, girl. We need a distraction, and anyway, it's not you they're after," Jacob said. With that, he and Thomas shoved them both out the door together. Havitharon cursed himself for letting his guard down as they sprawled forward. As soon as they passed through the doorframe, several sets of hands grabbed them from either side and pulled them apart.

Tenara's eyes widened at the knife point sticking out from Havitharon's chest, and then they were forward, rolling out into the dark. Hard hands grabbed hold of her, dragged her away from him. "Havitharon!" she called, reaching for him. The flood of firelight from their burning home illuminated the shadows, but not enough. It was dark. Smokey. Chaotic.

"Havitha—" A hand grabbed hold of her burned one to force it down and back behind her. She screamed, a wail of agony that sent her limbs rigged. Then, she was face down on the dirt, her hands tangled behind her back. Ropes binding her wrists together.

"This one ain't one of 'em," grumbled a voice from behind Havitharon's head. And that's some lass."

"They're still in there."

"Well, go get them out! We ain't getting a bounty if all we bring is a pile of cinders."

Havitharon twisted against the hands that had pulled his arms behind him. He bent the man's arm against its joint and escaped his hold, as simply and automatically as folding a letter. "Hetty! Andris!"

Two more pairs of hands grasped onto him, and a knee came up from somewhere and struck him soundly in the chest. Havitharon sagged, hanging by his arms. He swept a leg out, blowing one man's feet out from under him, but the other set of hands held him fast, wrestling his arms backward until the wound in his chest made his vision blur. Havitharon rose up in a fury, two men literally hanging off of him.

"He's too strong!"

"Just knock him the fuck out already!"

Tenara writhed on the ground with the weight of the person on her back, watching Havitharon struggle with the bounty hunters. "Havitharon! Stop!" If they knocked him out, he might turn into a sword again. She wasn't sure what power he had to stay in his current form, but a blow to the head was likely to conflict with it. They had to be smart about this. They had to find another way to escape. She thrashed, wanting to call her magic again and blow the men off him, away from him.

The red light glinted dull in her eyes, and the burning in her hand became nauseating. The holy wound was conflicting with her magic, tainting it.

Her voice sounded tinny, like it was reaching him from the bottom of a well. Stop? Why would she want him to stop? He wanted to tear these men apart one by one.

"We've got 'em, Jace," called a man from the doorway. He and another hunter were literally dragging Thomas and Jacob out of the house. The second man had Blaine slung over his shoulder. Either the smoke inhalation had gotten to them, or they'd just been knocked out. Their little "diversion" hadn't bought them much.

Havitharon wasn't sure what to make of Tenara's advice. Should he really stop fighting? "You're here for them," Havitharon rasped, "Not us."

The man wrestling with him smirked. "Hear that, Jace?"

The person named Jace smiled, crossing her arms as she watched her men work. "He's not wrong. And seeing as we just burned down their house, it would be crude of us not to at least offer a meal and a bed for the night.

Havitharon didn't like the sound of that.

"Just let us go," Tenara pleaded as the person on top of her moved and dragged her to her feet. She jerked, but their hands tangled in her hair and hooked into her bound arms. "You have them. Please. Just let us go. We don't have anything of value. We shouldn't have taken them in."

"I beg to differ. You don't see hair this color every day," the man holding Tenara down snorted. "Eh, boss?"

Jace came closer to inspect Tenara's silver hair, which perfectly reflected the moonlight. A smile broadened her smile. "Now, don't be like that, darling. No one's blaming you, and the more mouths to feed, the merrier. We'd hate to kill your boyfriend over there over a misunderstanding."

Havitharon laughed, and it was the coldest sound he'd ever made in Tenara's presence. "Unbind me, and we can resolve our 'misunderstanding'."

"Now, I don't like that," Jace fretted. "You might hurt my feelings."

The neon-yellow glow in Havitharon's eyes said he wanted to hurt more than her feelings.

"Boss, I think this one ain't human. Don't know what he is, honestly," muttered the man barely holding him still. "Cleanest to get rid of him now."

"No!" Tenara snarled, twisting. "Leave him alone."

Havitharon's focus narrowed in on her words, still sounding miles away. It sounded like they were done being nice. Good.

He wrenched sideways and hammered a hand back into his captor's thigh. The strategic hit made a terrible cracking sound and unleashed a howl from the man's throat, and he instantly slumped off-balance. Havitharon spun and twisted the man in front of him, the knife he'd held before now pressed to the hunter's throat. He didn't hesitate to rip the blade through flesh. The man was just beginning to choke on his own blood, and already Havitharon had cast him aside and sprung toward the other man's location. Another scream followed as Havitharon tore past like a gray panther against the wild haze of the smoke.

The man over Tenara hauled her up in front of him, a knife tip pressed beneath her jaw. "Call off your doggie," he growled to the woman.