Paper Confines

xi. The Snake and the Eagle

Amoret stopped in a circlet of simmering trees, charred black with the crack of lightning. Blazing blue. Vines reached for her from the thick of the woods, but halted at her feet. They shrunk away from the flames. Amoret steadied her hand and her wand felt as heavy as lead in her injured state, but she raised it steadily, the way someone might raise their hands in surrender.

"Good," Tom said, still a disembodied voice, but she knew he was close enough to see her. "After all these years, Amoret, I think we can speak civilly to one another."

She tightened her grip on her wand.

Tom's silhouette appeared like one of Claude's paintings, framed by the burning blue trees and the rolling clouds. He stepped into the light, beautiful but frightening, hair dangling in his eyes, lips curving softly into a smile—

Amoret fired.

She was too weak for silent magic like this, but with a cry and a burst of light, the Expulso curse sent him backward into the shadows. She hardly heard the thump of his body in the grass because the clearing was free and she was running again. Her body twisted through the trees with Reid's voice guiding her, imagining the pinched hand of a merrow around her wrist; every brush of foliage akin to damp, nimble fingers.

The sky went black. No more showing off. Tom was angry now.

It didn't matter—Amoret could see the light swell where the woodland ended and the meadow began—she could outrun him.

She pushed free from the forest and fell to the muddy grass at the foot of the hill. Her arms were wet with laces of blood, more than she realized she'd lost, her dress torn to near shreds. On any other occasion, she might have been startled by her own indecency, and then slapped herself across the face for worrying about something so phenomenally stupid.

Her breath came back in steep pants, but it was there, and that was all that mattered.

"Banks!" Tom shouted.

Amoret didn't think he'd ever called her that before, and it was a strange, ugly word on his lips. It didn't belong to him.

She began to trudge up the hill on sleepy, mud-soaked legs. Cold and crimson with blood streaking her white nightgown, Amoret moved only because she couldn't fathom stopping. It didn't matter that she'd never outrun him; she couldn't stop. That disembodied door awaited at the top of that hill, and she hoped she might be safe on the other side. That she could lock him in here or hide or do something. Awaiting whatever Tom intended to do with her was not an option.

But she tripped over her feet, and the grass tore from the earth, pulling her into the mud. Tom's voice got closer, still calling meaningless, indistinguishable words. Were they even English? There was the rasp of tongue on teeth. Hissing consonants. Something ancient and unused. He did like his Latin. It didn't matter. The words all sounded the same in her delirium: run. So Amoret dug her fingers into the ground like climbing axes and held tight until she was steady again, and ran.

She took off on her hands and knees.

Tom shouted something, and the ground at Amoret's sides exploded in a flurry of dirt and rain water. The sparks singed. She gasped at the splinter of heat and curled into herself, arms going up to cover her face. The ground was lost on her again, and she slipped on the hillside, helpless as the grass slicked her legs and left her tumbling down into that ink-blue dark. She clawed for earth but her grasp fell short. Tom muttered something else. A ridge formed in the muck and caught her by the feet and she couldn't help but be struck by the suddenness of it.

Her head slammed against the ground. She tasted blood. There was a tooth on her tongue. She spat it out.

When Amoret pulled her hands from her eyes, he was standing over her again.