Page 75 of Shadow Caster
Who the fuck werethey? I put on a burst of speed, ready to slip into blur mode, when the air behind me grew still, and then something landed on my back. The weight knocked me forward. My face slammed into the ground.
Something pressed to the back of my neck, a nose. Sniffing. Oh, fuck.
Softly whispered words were in my ear in a language I didn’t understand. Then a hand gripped the back of my head, lifted it off the ground, and slammed it into the earth.
The world went black.
I came to with a jolt. My body was already in fight mode, lashing out. Hands grabbed me, and the weight of a body pinned me down.
No! “Get off me.” I bucked, trying to get free of the unrelenting weight.
“Stop. Please. Not hurt you. Save you.”
The guttural words filtered through my panic. I stopped thrashing and intelligent violet eyes surrounded by gray hardened clay peered down at me. The face beneath the mask was lean and chiseled. Not what I expected of a fomorian.
“Not hurt you,” he said again. “Save you.”
Save me? “You knocked me out and took me.”
His gaze clouded. “Save you.” He frowned as if searching for a word. “Danger.”
“I don’t understand …”
The distant sound of a horn drifted into the cave. Cave … we were in the mouth of a cave. The catacombs? Was that where he’d taken me? I could get back from here. I knew the way home.
But then his grip on me tightened. He yanked on my arm, pinning me while pressing it to the ground.
“No. What are you doing.”
“Save you,” he said again. “Please.”
There was something in his eyes, a desperation, a kindness that sucked the fight out of me.
I nodded.
He lifted my sleeve and pulled a slender dagger from a sheath at his thigh. His naked thigh covered in clay.
My brain made connections even as the knife registered. A naked fomorian with a dagger was holding a knife to my skin. Icy fear trickled through my veins.
I shrank from him. “Wait, what are you—”
His fingers on my arm tightened. “Save you. Please.”
The panic that should have accompanied this situation was absent, and my gut was calm. Serene.
I nodded.
He pressed the blade to my skin, and then there was a sharp sting, a burning heat. He’d cut me, but it was over so fast I barely felt it, and now there was a weird symbol on my arm. Like an S trapped in an oval shape.
He released me and sat back.
“What did you do?”
“Gave you the ability to understand me.” His voice was warm and no longer sounded guttural. In fact, it was almost melodic.
My gaze snapped to his. “You can speak my language?”
“Not well enough, but now that you have the scribe’s mark, you can understand me. You’re in danger. If they find you, they’ll kill you.”
