Page 6 of Ambrosia

I staggered away.

She threw back her head, and her feathered cap fell into the water. She opened her mouth and let out a loud, wailing song with one word I recognized:Isavell, followed by the wordMorgant.

My pulse quickened.

This didn’t seem quite as friendly anymore, and I ran back into the foliage. From the other direction, footfalls and cracking branches echoed through the night. My heart slammed. I was being hunted.

Before I could fully comprehend the danger, a sharppain pierced my shoulders, and another plunged into my lower back. Immediately, the air was sucked out of my lungs as agony shot through my muscles and bones. I heard Torin call my name as I fell to the damp earth. He scooped me up in his powerful arms, held me tightly against his bare chest, and ran.

My muscles spasmed as a toxin spread through me, and I struggled to keep my arms around his neck. The darts tore at my skin.

“That was a mistake,” Torin said, stiffening, and dropped me to the ground.

Pain shot through my back, and I rolled over on the mossy earth. With blurring vision, I scanned the forest floor for Torin. Darts jutted from his bare back like St. Sebastian, and he was struggling to push himself up on his arms.

On his hands and knees, he crawled toward me and snatched the darts from my flesh. I moved to help him, but a boot slammed into him, pinning him to the earth, and someone yanked me up from behind.

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AVA

Irolled over, staring at the man whose boot was pressed into Torin’s back, a towering fae with broad shoulders wrapped in bronze armor. He wore a crown of gilded scorpions that rested against his horns, and long white hair draped down his back.

I swallowed hard.

“Wait.” My mouth had gone dry, and I could no longer think clearly. “Let him go. He doesn’t belong here.” Could he understand me at all?

Black wings spread out behind him. They were gauzy and thin, like butterfly wings. He might have been beautiful if not for his expression. He looked ready to beat Torin to death.

He glanced at me, narrowing his amber eyes. Slowly, he lifted the boot off Torin’s back.

Torin flipped over, snapping the darts, and grabbed our attacker’s leg with both hands, twisting the Unseelie’s ankle in one direction and his knee in the other.

The white-haired Unseelie fell to the ground, the sound echoing through the forest.

But the stranger was only down a moment, and neither Torin nor I could stand. More Unseelie closed in on us. Dressed in furs and armor, leather, and moss, they shouted in their strange language.

An Unseelie with antlers grabbed me by the arms and jerked me to my feet. “Morgant,” he said, addressing the fae with the scorpion crown.

Panic started to crawl up my mind as I thought of what would happen to Torin here in hostile territory.

My body vibrated with pain from the toxins, and I wanted to curl into a ball somewhere and vomit. But I couldn’t because Morgant was pulling me onto a horse. Tossing me facedown over the animal’s back, he sprang up behind me and started down the forest path.

Lifting my head, I glanced back, horror hitting me like a fist. Tied to a rope, Torin was being dragged behind the horse.

I no longer cared about anything except finding a way to get him out of here. Unable to look at him, I turned away.

The forest thinned, and a distant castle came into view, rising from the rocks and mist. It loomed high above us, the base of it twisting like gnarled tree roots that blended into a gothic fortress.

The poison slid through my veins, blurring my vision. I screamed until my throat went hoarse and a fist slammed into the back of my skull.

I lay on a crooked floor,muscles burning and my head pounding. Moonlight cast cold light over my room, a strange sort of cell. Half of the walls seemed to be made of bluish bark that shot upward toward the sky, hundreds of feet in the air. The other half were made of stone, an iron door inset into the wall.

Pinpricks of silver dotted the darkness overhead, little rays of light for a cell both narrow and impossibly tall. In here, I had only shadows for company.

I ran my fingers over the place on my back where the darts had pierced me, wincing at the cramping of muscles whenever I moved. I tried to swallow, my throat parched.

“Torin?” My voice came out as a rasp.

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