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A DARK PREMISE

Ember

E mber was furious. Perhaps that wasn’t the prevailing feeling one would experience when facing their bleakest moment, but fury was so familiar, it was practically a comfort. Less comforting was that Ember’s fury was tempered by sorcery.

Cloudy-eyed, she blinked about the darkened interior of the cart. It was impossible to tell how long they’d been rattling onward—days, maybe a week—but the rhythmic creaking of axles on worn road had deteriorated just enough to wake Ember’s foggy mind.

Fucking assholes , echoed into her skull in her own voice.

It was Ember’s thought, surely—one she had had many times—but now it was sort of just having itself while a second sauntered in and commented on the stuttered lurching of the covered cart and the nervous cadence of the muffled voices outside.

They’re lost , she guessed. Good . And then once more, just because, Those fucking assholes.

Firelight flickered through the gaps in the shoddy construction of the covered wagon. Traveling by torch was unwise, but it was pointless to wonder what her captors were up to since no one ever told cargo anything.

Gods, she was cargo .

Well, it wasn’t the first time, but if she was lucky—and Ember’s definition of luck was questionable—it would be the last.

Ember was lucky, of course, because she was in the arguably cliché situation so many other romantic female leads found themselves before things got good, it was just far, far too early to tell.

At least the cart was a slight improvement on prison.

In her cell, she had been freezing and starving, but there was heat here from the other bodies propped against the wagon’s walls.

Missing hunger pangs suggested the enchantment had not only knocked them out but slowed their needs.

She rubbed her tongue on the roof of her mouth, a bitter film there reviving the memory of having her head jerked back and a potion poured down her throat.

Ember had never been treated so well when traded from workhouse to manor before, but it seemed the spell keeping her docile was wearing off.

She squinted into the scant light to count five others. Each wore their distress uniquely in bruises and dried blood, though all were equally dazed and, worse, they were all young women.

Oh, fucking hells, of course .

But then that was often part of the setup because it wouldn’t do to tell the tale of just one woman thrust into such prosaic circumstances.

Ember’s heart triumphed over the magic that tried to slow it, thumping hard and fast. Strictly speaking, slaving was illegal in Ankerick despite that some employment felt impossible to leave, but there were cities over the mountains and across the sea where the bodies surrounding her would fetch plenty of coin.

Ember had been threatened with those places her whole life, and for as bad as things ever got, she’d always thought they could get worse until she’d been thrown in that cell.

That was supposed to be the end—not this .

Beside her, a woman with a mass of red curls drew in a long, slow breath.

Ember could feel that same sluggishness in her own lungs but pushed past it with multiple sharp inhales.

She lifted her tied hands and nudged the other woman, but her head only lolled closer, eyes shut as drool dribbled down her chin.

A shout made Ember jolt, tingles running down her arms. Only one of the others reacted, a heavily muscled woman who would be at least a head taller than the rest of them if she could manage to stand.

Ember’s tongue wouldn’t quite cooperate, each word burning against the dryness of her throat as she mumbled a useless, “You awake?”

The muscular woman groaned, head tipping back as she fell into stillness.

Damn, she could have been really useful .

Ember blinked and cracked her neck with a long stretch, the wet slithering of whatever hateful spell some sorcerer cast on her after that potion pulsing right behind.

Another shout made her heart flutter, and the spell continued to recede.

They’d taken her boots, but as she flexed her toes, pins and needles in the soles of her feet let her know her body was waking up.

“Can you move?” she managed to murmur to no one in particular, pushing herself to sit up fully against the wall.

Another woman made a sound from across the cart.

“Rosalind?”

There was no response, but the dark-haired woman was most definitely the one from Ember’s trial, the one who had tried to help.

Gods, was she paying the same price for speaking up?

She squinted at the faces of the others, strangers and yet they were sharing the same cart, the same fate.

Had they all been unfairly sentenced by a corrupt Ankerick triumvirate and then quietly sold off from their cells because there was no one to miss them?

The wagon lurched, and Ember was pitched forward. Curses cut through the air outside as horses whinnied, and then there was a guttural scream.

“Wake up!” The words were raw on her tongue, but before her plea could rouse the women, the ceiling of the cart collapsed. A shriek stifled itself in her throat as a body slammed into the center of the wagon, massive, muscled, and…horned?

Ember’s legs suddenly had no objections as she scrabbled backward, but there was nowhere to go. When she realized none of the other women were moving, she fell as still as the rest, terrified to be picked out of the bunch.

The figure was quick to straighten. A shaft of silvery light fell in through the newly made hole, spiked armor gleaming beneath.

She got only the briefest look at his face as he turned, but it was enough to make her heart skip.

The muscled woman leaned toward him in her daze, the new light illuminating her split lip and black eye. The blade in his hand flashed.

Don’t fucking touch her , Ember thought, the words strangled in her throat for fear, but the intruder’s weapon froze just below the woman’s chin.

Ember held her breath as she watched, useless to intervene if he chose to slit her throat.

The blade was a terrible thing in the gloamy light, shaped like a sickle as it hovered so close to bruised skin.

Ember’s fingers twitched, remembering the feel of the kitchen knife’s handle, the resistance of a blunt blade against flesh, the spilling of blood so hot it burned.

She had been enraged then, and lucky too, but now? Now, she could do nothing.

But nothing was exactly what the other woman needed as her arms lifted and swung through the air.

A hair’s breadth from the blade and the horned creature who threatened her, he pulled back with a grace something so big shouldn’t have had.

Without connecting, the woman slumped over, and Ember silently willed her to stay down.

The massive figure grunted, eyes catching the scant light like an animal’s as they darted over the rest of the women.

Ember trembled under the brief flash of his gaze, but just as quickly he reached overhead and pulled himself out of the cart with one nimble movement.

“Slaves,” he called in a gravelly voice. “Slaughter them!”

If there was anything that would break Ember of her sorceried sedation, it was that .

She flung herself down beside a shard of the wagon’s ceiling and sawed at her binds.

Sounds of chaos broke out on the cart’s exterior: the roar of some beast, cries cut off with sickeningly wet noises, and then the whole world shuddered and flipped.

Ember went careening sideways, and bodies toppled around her to the frantic cries of terrified horses outside.

Pain seared up Ember’s arm as the sharp piece she’d been using wedged itself between her binds, but with a tug, the ropes snapped.

The pain melded with the aching in the rest of her body, but her racing heart pushed her onward.

Hands free, she scrambled for the hole in the cart’s broken ceiling now turned on its side, but then she stopped. The others .

So much shrapnel had fallen that she could only find one of them. Voice hoarse and still slurred, she grabbed her. “Wake up!”

Tawny, knotted hair was plastered to her face with sweat, and she barely blinked.

“Shit, come on, please !” Ember took her by bony shoulders, but it was like shaking a doll so deeply enchanted she wondered if she would ever wake.

“Go,” the woman finally croaked out and slumped forward completely.

Ember’s eyes burned for what she was about to do, but she had no choice. She would have prayed the gods protect them, but she’d stopped believing in their help long ago. May your enemies peck at their shadows until they become real . She drew a cross over her heart and ran.

Or, she tried to.

The world beyond the cart was horrifying even through Ember’s hazy vision. Blood pooled on the earth beside a gutted body, but a different face twisted in death flashed through her mind. Bile rose in her throat, and her next step was so feeble she nearly fell back to her knees.

Where the fuck am I? Dim light illuminated the jagged edges of black stones, and leafless trees twisted out of a gray earth. Scrubby plants dotted the ground and strange lights blinked from between the tangled vines, but it all spun with the nausea roiling in her guts.

This was nothing like the forested outskirts of Ankerick on even the eeriest night.

As if the color had been sucked from this place, everything looked touched by the goddess Nhil, yet in death the plants continued to grow, knotted and gnarled branches blotting out the misty sky.

Terror held her to the spot, but then an arrow sailed so close to her face that she felt the fletching graze her cheek, and Ember told terror to fuck right off.

She staggered on wobbly legs, eyeing a sprawl of ferns and a dense thicket of trees for cover.

Feet sliding through muck, her knees threatened to buckle, but the stench of rot propelled her on.

Her body protested every step, the last of the sorcery flailing in her veins for control, but she was determined to escape the turmoil.

When she reached the tiny copse that had so seemed like safety when she emerged from the cart, she pressed her cheek to the rough bark of the nearest tree and dragged in a long breath, but the moment didn’t last when a sound like footsteps closed in behind her.

She stumbled in what she hoped was the opposing direction, limbs uncooperative.

A deep voice called out, the words garbled as her heartbeat thumped like a drum in her ears, and then there was a shove at her back.

The earth came at Ember all at once and heat exploded overhead as she fell.

Her breath was stolen as she desperately scrabbled against the ground, but far too much weight pressed her into the muck.

A ragged breath was all she could manage, and she thought surely this was how her life would end, not by overzealous punishment or giddy executioner but by suffocation in the mud.

Filthy and fitting, if a surprise.

Then the earth fell away as Ember sailed upright.

She opened her mouth to scream as arms wrapped around her middle, but only a pathetic whimper came out, metallic dirt coating her tongue.

She swung and connected with something much too hard, sending another shock of pain down her already aching arms.

Angry tears sprang to her eyes as her body betrayed her, sagging into the arms of her captor. Fury still welled, but the enchantment rose anew, and she could only mumble demands to be released.

The grip around her tightened, and she was lifted farther, legs dangling and as useless as the doll-like woman she’d left behind. This is what I get , she thought weakly, her head falling back so that she could finally see the man who’d caught her.

Half his face was blotted by shadows, but nothing about it said man . Bastard , perhaps, but it was the color of blood, horned, angry . Ember recognized that anger, but it was slipping away from her even as the horror that she wasn’t hallucinating took hold.

She wasn’t staring into the face of a man at all but into the face of a demon.

He said nothing, one eye catching the strange light and shining like a predator as his grip shifted to possess her completely.

Ember’s feet were no longer being ripped at by the brambles, the rough earth no longer biting into her arms and legs, and her lungs finally took a full breath, but she would trade all those comforts to be free.

She tried to thrash away, but it did no good.

And so, Ember finally gave in and begged. “Please,” she choked out, voice as pathetic as she knew it would be. “Please, let me go.”

But she couldn’t even convince a demon to leave her there in the muck to die. Instead, she was being carried back to the cart, back to the horrors she had almost escaped from, and the swirling sorcery finally won, turning her world dark.