Page 189 of The Iron Flower

“Get back inside!” Tierney hisses at me as she pulls Wynter in front of her. The Kelpie rises up from under them, and Tierney gives me one last fraught look before she and Wynter take off like a shot toward the northwestern wilds.

No. No. No.

My heart constricts as I watch them disappear into the pitch-black forest.

Stinging pain sizzles along my abdomen, like lines of insects biting, and I pull in a sharp breath, reaching toward my center.

Sage’s rune, I realize with burgeoning fright.

Two spectral figures on ivory horses slip out of the northern forest and into view. Ariel halts just before them as a paralyzing terror seizes hold of me.

The Marfoir are taller than Elves should be, their limbs bizarrely stretched out, their eyes too big. Insectile and dark. An ancient, slithering malice washes over me as Ariel turns and breaks into a run back to the North Tower, her eyes thrown open wide and locking on to mine.

“Ariel!” The cry bursts from me as I set off at a sprint toward her.

The two Marfoir raise their hands in unison, their palms marked by black runes. Lines of shadow scythe toward Ariel and twist around her limbs and mouth.

Ariel lets out a strangled cry as she’s yanked roughly to the ground.

A black flood of outrage surges through me. “Get away from her!”

The eyes of the Marfoir flick to me. They move their palms toward me, and an invisible solid mass slams into my body, knocking the wind from my lungs and hurling me into the air and back several feet to land with a painful thud on my side, my hip and elbow painfully jarred.

I move to get up and realize I’m pinned to the ground by a web of shadow, like an insect in a spider’s clutches. Ariel is trapped as well, her mouth bound closed.

The Marfoir ride close, their cold, malignant eyes a solid black in their white faces, focused in on Ariel with deathly intent. And that’s when I notice it—they have horns made of shadow emerging from their heads, the dark smoke spiraling up to disappear into a twirling mist at the points.

They dismount from their steeds in one unified motion, as if they’re a mirror image of the same being. Together they flick out their long-fingered hands, and curved knives screw out from their palms, glinting in the moonlight.

They stalk toward Ariel, angling their knives toward her neck.

“Leave her alone!” I cry. “She’s not Wynter Eirllyn!”

The Marfoir pause. One of them holds a palm out to me, and shadow bindings lash toward me, slapping around my mouth, my head. Gagging me.

The other Marfoir tears the ivory scarf from Ariel’s head and wrenches her head back as Ariel hisses and struggles. The thing’s mouth jerks into a sudden, gruesome frown as Ariel’s spiky black hair is revealed. More shadow lines fly out from its hands, wrapping Ariel in a cocoon of darkness, only her wild, rebellious eyes still exposed.

The Marfoir lifts Ariel onto its horse as if she weighs nothing and hurls her over the animal’s back as I fight against my bindings. The other Marfoir throws out shadow lines to secure Ariel to the horse.

I scream against the gag of shadow as the Marfoir ride off with her. When they’re halfway across the field, headed toward the western wall of dark forest, all my bindings suddenly give way, tendriling into lines of black smoke.

I surge to my feet and run after them as Ariel’s raven shoots overhead like a small, black arrow, winging toward them.

“Ariel!” I scream.

But they’ve already disappeared, along with Ariel’s raven.

I slow, then stop as desperation hits me with crippling strength. I know what they’re going to do with her.

They’ll hand Ariel over to the Gardnerians. And once the Gardnerians get hold of her, they’ll throw her into the Valgard prison.

And once she’s there, they’ll cut off her wings.

* * *

The predawn sky is overcast and spitting rain as I watch the young Gardnerian fowler tie my missive onto the leg of a rune-hawk.

The Northern Spine is barely visible through the panoramic windows of the hawkery, shrouded in the morning fog. I watch as the rune-hawk is released into the damp gloom, winging its way north—but not to Lukas this time.

---