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trouble, was dead
set on this woman. He’d bled for her; he would have her. And the
Circle would not.
    Assuming he could find her before they
did.
     
     
    Chapter Four
     
    So much for my knight errant, Gillian
thought, watching her rescuer getting beaten up by a half-roasted
bird. She was about to go rescue the creature when one of the war
mages dove off the side of the ramparts, flinging a curse in front
of him. She acted on instinct, dropping her all-but-useless shields
and throwing up a declive instead. It took most of her
remaining strength, but it worked; the protection spell acted like
a mirror, reflecting the caster’s magic right back at him.
    It caught him in the middle of his leap,
popping his shields and sending him crashing headfirst into the
cart. The vampire had landed on the other end, and the two hundred
pound mage smashing down at the edge of the cart caused him to go
flying, chicken and all. And then she didn’t see any more, because
strong arms clapped around both of hers from behind, lifting her
completely off the ground.
    She tried to mutter a curse, but found she
couldn’t draw a breath. The guard—and it had to be a guard, because
she was still alive--was doing his best to squeeze her in two. She
couldn’t aim the staff with him behind her, so she brought it down
on his foot instead, as hard as she could. The man bellowed and
dropped her, and Gillian scrambled away, only to be dragged back by
the ankle.
    She rolled over to try to free herself, and
then had to roll again as a knife flashed down, ripping through her
gown and missing her by inches. As he wrenched it out of the
ground, she caught a glimpse of Elinor behind him, her face pale
and her eyes huge. And then the guard dropped his knife and started
screaming.
    Gillian scrambled to her feet, ready to grab
her daughter and bolt, assuming he’d been hit by a stray spell. And
then she realized—it was a spell, but it hadn’t gone astray. A
coiling ribbon of reddish gold flame had snaked out of a burning
hut and hit the man square in the back.
    At first she thought Elinor must have done
it, despite the fact that it was years too early for that. But a
searing pain in her arm caused her to look down, and she saw the
fire glyph on the staff glowing bright red. She stared at it in
disbelief, because she couldn’t call Fire.
    All coven witches had to specialize in one of
the three great elements—Wind, Fire or Earth—when they came of age,
and hers was Wind. She’d never been able to summon more than one;
no one could except the coven Mothers, who could harness the
collective power of all the witches under their control. But she
could feel the drain as her magic pulled the element through the
air, as she called it to her.
    She just didn’t know how she was doing
it.
    And she didn’t have time to figure it out.
The guard had made the same assumption she had and spun, snarling,
on Elinor. Gillian had a second to see him start for her daughter,
to see his fist lash out—
    And then she was looking at the hilt of a
knife protruding from the burnt material of his shirt.
    The smell of the charnel houses curled out
into the air, mixing with the tang of gunpowder and the
raw-lightning scent of spent magic. The guard fell to his knees,
the blood gushing hot and sticky from a wound in his side, wetting
her hand on the hilt of his blade. She let go and he collapsed, a
surprised look on his face and blood on his lips. And then Elinor
was tugging her away, shock and pride warring on her small
face.
    Gillian didn’t feel pride; she felt sick. She
wiped her sticky hand on her skirts, feeling it tremble, like her
the breath in her lungs, like her roiling gut. But the guard’s
death wasn’t the cause. She pulled her daughter into her arms and
hugged the precious body against her, her heart beating frantically
in her chest. She’d almost lost her; she’d almost lost Elinor.
    She crouched down beside a nearby well, the
only cover she could find that