Page 68 of Pawns of Fate
“I think you scared them, Rose! You’re so brave! I never would have grabbed one.
“That was nothing compared to how we dealt with them at the orphanage. They would go after our food stores. We called guarding the pantries goblin duty.” Rose chuckled. “It was my least favorite job, but I used to bludgeon them to death with a broom.” She eyed the little corpse at the bottom of the boulder, making sure it was well and truly dead.
Rose remembered a dinner in Onanish where Ava had bragged about killing goblins at her parents’ restaurant. “I thought you’d helped exterminate them with your parents?” she asked.
“Oh, that was a lie I told to put York in his place. There are no goblins in the Imperial City!”
And in spite of the looming darkness, the girls laughed together.
LYLA
Lyla ran amental inventory of her mana reserves as she raced through the spindly pines and brush that made up the high desert. She had enough for a handful of strength and speed spells. It would have to be enough. She had to protect Ava and Rose.
She actuated the communication spell. If Syzman used the scrolls properly, they could get to Ava and Rose in time. She could buy them that much with her skills; she’d already managed to distract the werewolves and lead them away from her friends.
“Syzman.”
“Lyla!”He opened his mind to hers so enthusiastically, she felt the pull physically. Damn it. She did not have time to think about the implications of that.
“Syzman, listen. I don’t have much mana. Ava and Rose are a few miles south of the border village.”
“Where are you?”Leave it to Syzman to ask the wrong question.
“It doesn’t matter where I am,”she replied.
“It matters to me.”His words twisted Lyla’s heart in all the wrong directions.
“Get to Ava and Rose.Heis after Rose; you were right.”A hulking, humanoid figure with the head of a canine crept into the corner of her vision. She was out of time.
“Where are you?”
Syzman wasn’t going to let it go. If she told him the truth, he’d come after her instead of protecting the women she’d cometo think of as friends.
“Get to Ava and Rose.”
Lyla cut off the spell as the first werewolf slashed at her with its claws.
ROSE
Night fell, andtheir stalemate with the goblins went on for what felt like hours. None of the little monsters would come within ten feet of Rose and Ava’s boulder. They still skittered around, though, noisy as hell. Rose was sure she and Ave would be stuck on this rock till daylight. Goblins hated the sun; it burned their eyes. If they could just make it till sunrise, she and Ava could run to the village.
Rose struggled to keep her eyes open until she realized their surroundings had gone quiet. Deathly quiet.
Rose grabbed Ava’s hand. Only one thing out here could shut the goblins up like that.
“Do we run?” Ava whispered back.
“I don’t know.”
“Lyla’s probably dead,” Ava choked back tears.
Rose’s heart leapt into her throat. “We can’t afford to think about that now,” she whispered, voice ragged.
A low, canine growl came at them. Rose guessed thewerewolf was twenty feet away.
“I want to run,” she whispered.
Ava nodded. Both girls knew it didn’t make a difference if they hid or ran. The creature could smell them either way. They quietly slipped off the side of the boulder opposite the growl.
