Pleasantries were being observed at the fire, but Gally was more concerned with the seven elves creeping forward, tightening their grip with slow, even paces. It was a delicate balance. Let them get too close, and Kalla would spring his net before Newt spun her curse. Too far, and only Kalla would carry the curse, slowing its spread through the elven society.
“There were supposed to be ten of you to hear our grievances. Where are the others?” Newt said, boldly going to Kalla’s horse and petting his soft nose because it would bother the man.
Sure enough, the elf stood, peeved she’d negated his insult of offering her a chair that didn’t exist. “Finding lost property is my job, not theirs. Don’t make me beat you, Newt. I get paid more if your owners can beat you themselves.”
There was a flicker of movement across the glen, and Gally strengthened his hold on the ley line. There’d never been a chance that they’d listen, yet Newt stood there, chin raised, her red hair that once earned her treats and special attention drifting as she pulled harder upon her own line.
“I gift you with a new job, Kalla,” she said, and the first of the hunters circling them eased out of the mist; the young-faced elf crouched at the base of a tree and sucked on a sweet leaf as he smirked at Gally. “And you’re going to do it without even knowing.”
“Do tell?” Kalla questioned, starting only slightly when Newt muttered a word to circle them and keep them apart from the encroaching seven. The smoke from the fire rose and curled against the top of the circle, the barest amount of heat escaping as if through a sieve.
The watching elf spat out his sweet leaf and stood, not upset but wary. Gally, too, readied himself, his pulse quickening as a flush rose to make Newt all the more beautiful. The circle would curtail her curse, but it would also slow down the approaching seven. It wasn’t lost, but it wasn’t going well, either.
“Slippery Newt, clever Newt,” Kalla said, wary now as he moved to put the fire between them. “My uncle named you. Did you know that? When you were a squalling brat taken from your mother, still bleeding from your birth. You were supposed to be mine. Until you killed him.”
“He shouldn’t have beaten me for his wife chipping his pipe,” Newt said.
Kalla hesitated, his eyes on her feet, bare and cold on the moss. “I have raspberries, Newt. Red as your hair. You remember raspberries, tart and bitter like love itself. I’ll make sure your new owner knows you fancy them and that he won’t beat you unless you deserve it. Come with me.”
He was holding out a slaver ring. Face red in embarrassment, Newt shifted to cover her dirty toes with Dali’s ragged robe. “Let my kin walk away from their chains. End it now, Kalla, or it begins again, and you and your children’s children will suffer until there is nothing left of you or your Goddess whore but a fairy tale to frighten demon children.”
A snarl twisted Kalla’s pale face. Gally jerked when the elf reached over the small fire and grabbed her wrist, threatening to drag her through the coals. Almost. She was almost ready, her glistening eyes fervent with hate. “You’ve never been anything but what you are now,” Kalla said, and she resisted, narrowly avoiding catching her robe on fire. “Demons exist to serve. Even the Goddess knows it. She betrayed you. How dare you fight the heavens.”
“She allowed us to trap you here,” she said, jerking away in Kalla’s instant of surprise. “But your words have truth. Demons are what we are. But we have never been, nor will ever be, yours. Last chance.”
Gally’s pulse quickened as Kalla became still, his eyes darting past the spilling gold of Newt’s aura marking the edge of her circle. “Clever, silly Newt,” he breathed, his gaze meeting those of his hunters. “What are you thinking?”
She smiled, leaning over the fire to whisper, “The Goddess speaks to us, too.”
Kalla jerked back. “Blasphemy!” he exclaimed, and Gally stepped into the light when the elf slapped her, sending her spinning to the ground. She hit the edge of her circle, and it fell. The fire whooshed up in the new oxygen, and Gally froze at the stretching sound of arrows being pulled. Power trickled through him as all hung in balance.
But Newt laughed, spilled across the ground as she wiped the blood from her lip. An eerie keening was rising, and Gally’s eyes widened as he realized it was the line, screaming into her. My God, she was almost glowing.
“Blasphemy,” she said as Kalla calmed his horse, shying at the vibration. “Yes, that’s what everyone says. Everyone but her. You, Kalla, most famed slaver, will be my messenger.”
“And you will not live to see another sunrise!” Kalla said as Newt rose.
“Yes, I know.” Eyes alight, she sprang at him. “Honna, tara, surrundus!”
They went down in a tangle, both of them enveloped in a glowing aura that flashed black. Gally leapt into the shadows, the thump of arrows burrowing into the earth almost unnoticed as elves dropped from the trees and the horse reared and bolted.
“Finire!” Kalla screamed, pain ripping his voice to a ribbon of sound, and a wall of force slammed into Gally, tumbling him and the hunters back into the woods.
“You little bitch!” Kalla shouted again, and Gally gasped, clenching into a tight ball when the strength of the line was ripped from him.
Eyes watering, he clutched at a rotting log. It was dark. The fire was out. Hands shaky for not having eaten in days, Gally pulled himself up. Kalla stood beside the shallow, black depression where the fire had been. Heartache closed over Gally as he saw Newt, crumpled and unresponsive. Her aura was gone. The curse had taken everything from her, even her life.
“You stupid, demon whore!” Kalla shouted again, and Gally drew back, his hatred filing to a sharp point as the elf kicked her hard enough to roll her over. It was done, and there were elves in the woods. Soon they would be hunting.
“Someone find my horse!” Kalla demanded. “That half-handed runt of hers is around here somewhere. Where the hell is my horse!”
Everything in him screamed to run forward, to wrap his work-hardened hands around that pale throat and squeeze the life from him. His cry of rage rose only to gurgle to a halt, never leaving him. Hate-filled eyes jerked to Newt as the force of Kalla’s pacing shifted her hand and it fell, her gold slaver ring, the one she kept as a reminder, rolling from her to fall upon the mossy earth.
“Where is my horse!”
With the grace of one born to the mist, Gally eased back into the depths of the fog-dripping wood, a new certainty pulling through him. He realized now that he’d let them take his Celfnnah. He’d whined, “Unfair! Unfair!” as he let them beat him, convinced by their words that they had the right. There was no Goddess, and nothing would save the elves. Not now. He wouldn’t stop until they were all broken and bleeding. Newt had stood and died alone. Never again would he let them do anything but die.