Panic rises in Anya's throat as the knife digs further into her side. She can feel the cold metal blade against her skin as it cuts through the thin fabric of her gown as if it were made of paper.
"Ah, ah, ah," the stranger tuts in her ear. "I wouldn't do that if I were you. You've got something I want."
Anya closes her eyes, trying to calm herself long enough that her magic will respond to her will. She can almost feel it pacing inside of her like a restless, caged animal, desperately trying to escape in a frenzied panic. She isn't even certain if she could call upon it without burning down the entire forest and everything in it.
She should've listened to Elias. She should've been more careful.
"Lorcan." She tries to hide the way her breath shudders, the way she still chokes on the scent of rot and wet earth that rolls off of him in waves. He can't know that she's afraid, can't know that she's trying to buy Tiarnán enough time to escape.
"Someone's done her research," Lorcan croons in her ear, and she shivers at the sensation of his breath on the nape of her neck, hot and wet, and reeking of rotten leaves. "You're a very tricky woman to find, Anya LaSair. Did you know that? You are positively covered in wards and shields. The spell work is..." He inhales long and slow, nose half buried in her hair. "Exquisite."
Confusion breaks through her panic for the briefest of moments. She shoves it down deep within her, refusing to let it show on her face.
"Well," she says, keeping her voice steady, "now you have me." Every word she utters seems to come out of nowhere, manifesting on her tongue just seconds before she speaks them; she's grasping at straws, buying as much time as she possibly can.
"So, I do." Lorcan keeps the knife beneath her ribs as he steps out in front of her. His pale skin is littered with scars, and dark black eyes scan her from head to toe, the echo of a smile upon thin lips. Time has been a cruel mistress to him; he is all skin and bone as though he had been worn down to his bare essences, like waves pounding at a cliff until it dissolved into sand. He is more predator than man; a wolf in tattered rags and shrouded in rot. "It wasn't easy."
"Forgive me if I don't offer my sympathies."
A low, soft laugh escapes him, but it's hardly reassuring. Dread gnaws at her like a starving beast, sending shivers rippling down her spine. Every bone in her body is screaming at her to run but she can't. Her feet won't move, won't even consider stepping away from Tiarnán's limp body until she knows he's safe or...
Until he's dead.
"Let my brother go," says Anya, forcing herself to meet Lorcan's eyes. Immediately, nausea builds in the back of her throat. His gaze seems to bore into her, cutting straight through down into her core like she's made of paper. Perhaps to him, she is. Magic rolls off of Lorcan in pulsating waves that threaten to drown her in their filthy stench. She feels like she's being smothered every time she comes up for air, his magic forcing her down deep inside of her where she can't even feel it.
The man before her gestures his free hand behind him at Tiarnán's body. "I'm not stopping him," he says, "but do not think I care if he survives."
Anger flares inside of her chest. Her own life matters little to her, but her brother's? Anya has only ever put her family before herself; gave Tiarnán her food when they didn't have enough to go around, spent hours patching her clothes and shoes back together just so Brigid would have a coat for winter, protected her siblings from the ire of nobles who hated those with Etrian blood.
She wants to attack him in a blind rage, wants to strike him down for holding her above her own kin, but she has had practice with smiling through gritted teeth and telling sweet, cloying lies to those with the power to have her killed. She has faced Justiciars with their blades covered in the blood of her fellow mages, and she had convinced them that she was nothing, small and innocent and unthreatening.
They never found out that she would burn all of Mórsail to the ground just to keep her brothers safe.
So, Anya presses her lips together, countenance set in cold stone, and holds Lorcan's dead-eyed gaze. "Then tell me: what is it that you want with me?" Her voice is not entirely her own, steady with years of practiced plastered smiles and faked pleasantries. "You said I was a tricky woman to find. Was I worth finding?"
"You ask a lot of questions." His eyes narrow.
He can't know she's buying time, can't know that every second she keeps him talking is another second Tiarnán might wake and flee.
Anya smiles, all reassuring and innocuous. She knows men like Lorcan. He is no better than Rian, and she has had many years placating the Lord's quick temper. Men like them do not view her as a threat. They are blinded by their lust for power and control, and in their blindness, she steps up behind them to whisper in their ear.
"You said the wards made me difficult to track," Anya says.
Hook.
"That the spell work was complicated," she continues, pride stewing inside of her when Lorcan stands a little straighter, as proud of a man as she thought he'd be. "I've never met a mage with the ability to track others."
Line.
"You must be very clever."
Sinker.
"I know magic you could only dream of." He is all bared teeth and pride. "I will become the monster mothers tell their children about at night. If they wish to fear me, I shall give them a reason, and with you, I shall finally be free,"
Curiosity, unwanted and unbidden, stirs. "Free of what?"
For a moment, his cold demeanour seems to disappear, revealing a quiet mournfulness that seems foreign and out of place upon his visage. "For what it's worth, I am sorry," he says in a voice barely above a whisper. It seems far too gentle from a man such as him. "Fear is all they know, so it is fear we must give."
Lorcan's hand settles between her breasts, sharp nails digging into her thin skin. Pain washes over her like a wave crashing down upon the shore. It burns deep within her, like a fire without flames that licks at her insides. She can scarcely breathe; her vision pulsates, dark creeping in at the edges, when suddenly—
Nothing.
The absence of pain hits her hard, air filling her lungs and the darkness at the edges of her sight pushed back. Her legs won't move; everything feels wrong, violation striking her to her very core. Everything is cold and empty and aching, and somehow, it hurts just as much. Lorcan pulls his hand away, and there in the centre of his palm, lies a swirling vortex of glittering gold light—a light she had seen many times before. He had reached deep inside of her, and he had pulled the magic from her soul. It beats in his withered palm in time with her heart.
He stares in complete awe, utterly transfixed, at her magic resting in his hands. Her magic is a part of her; he might as well have ripped out her very heart and left her to bleed out on the floor. But then, his wonder turns into confusion and then anger as her magic slips from his grasp, slamming back into her chest with enough strength that it knocks the wind from her lungs.
She gasps, ragged and desperate, as magic courses through her veins once again, sharp, hot, and angry at the rot and mould that now taints it. It snaps and bites at her insides, vengeful and angry at being torn from its home.
Lorcan's eyes meet her own, dark gaze equal parts curiosity and fury. "What are you?" he asks hoarsely.
She has no time to answer his question, no time to summon the flames that have sparked to life beneath her skin before a blur of green and brown tackles Lorcan out of nowhere with enraged cry. A sliver of silver catches the sunlight, bright and blinding.
Tiarnán.
"Get away from her!" her brother cries, lashing out at the mage with wild, frenzied swipes of his dagger. He moves like water, one graceful movement leading into the next without pause or hesitation. The tip of his knife catches Lorcan's hollowed cheek, and there's a spray of blood, hot and wet, as Tiarnán drags the blade upwards.
Lorcan stumbles backwards, blood stained hand clasped down over where his right eye had once been. "You foolish child," he roars, and the clouds of rot seemed to be summoned from the earth again, manifesting in a roiling clouds of brown and muted green. "You interfere in forces beyond your ken, and you will not stand in my way!"
The fog solidifies into ropes of night, grabbing Tiarnán by his ankles and sharply pulling him away from the mage. Where they touch bare skin, they leave red, swollen boils that wither away into blackened holes. His skin seems to melt away, rotting down to the bone as if Lorcan's magic is turning him to a living corpse before her eyes, and Tiarnán screams.
Amber eyes—so like her own, so like their mother's—meet her own, wide, and full of terror, and then: "Run."
Anya doesn't look back, taking the precious moment Tiarnán had stolen for her, and runs. She doesn't know where she's going, just that her feet keep leading her forward through the dark underbrush, her heart pounding a war song in her chest, all blood and terror. Branches snag at her skin, leaving wounded red welts that she can barely feel over the panic that has overtaken her. She is nothing but a wounded deer, fleeing from a bear that she can hear chasing after her, roaring her name and swearing vengeance.
But all she can hear is Tiarnán's screams.
She had made a promise to protect him, but she had left him behind as he lay dying. Could she even have done anything? Perhaps if she hadn't been a coward—if she had just fought back, dared to stand her ground as Tiarnán had, then maybe—
She needs to get somewhere safe. Whatever Lorcan had done, it had clearly failed, and she knows that he's not going to stop until he's ripped her magic from her bones. He'll tear Mórsail apart looking for her, and she won't be able to stop him, but where can she go that he won't follow? He had found her once, and he'll find her again, and what happened to Tiarnán will happen again.
The woods pass around her in a blur of green, Tiarnán's screams still ringing in her ears. She had broken her promise—the one promise she had always sworn to keep, and now she's running from a man that keeps calling her name, knowing full well that she can't keep running for much longer. Her lungs burn as she gasps for air, bones aching with every step she takes. The edge of the forest is near, giving way to a field of golden wheat that sways in the wind.
She's running out of time.
Her foot catches on a rock, and suddenly, she's flying forwards, but she doesn't hit the spiked fence before her. Instead, the world fades away, and she can feel her magic burning within her. She's falling through an empty void with no end in sight, the air hitching in her throat, and then—
Anya comes crashing down onto a worn, dirt path, gasping as she catches her breath. She rolls over onto her back, chest heaving, as she closes her eyes. Somehow, someway, she's elsewhere, on a road just outside of Mórsail. Birds swoop and sing above her, and the trees that line the road sway in the breeze. For a moment, everything is peaceful, broken only by a surprised:
"Anya?"