“Okay, right,” she conceded grumpily. “Still. That’s almost unfair.”
“Try being his kid,” Draken grunted.
I’d walked a little bit in front of them during their back and forth, and now glanced back to grin at them.
“You guys squabble like siblings, you know that?” I teased. “I’d swear you were related, if you didn’t look so completely different.”
“I’m half Japanese,” Draken said.
“Really?” My drunken mind tried to make sense of that. “I thought Miranda said your family was from Hong Kong?”
“They were immigrants. They came over from Japan. My grandfather on my mother’s side opened a business in Hong Kong, and brought the family over.”
“When was that? Hey…” My drunken mind pulled my thoughts in another direction. “Was there a World War II in Magique? Have you hadanyWorld Wars? Or is that just a human thing?” I continued to think aloud. “Are wars and all that why most Magicals think humans are barbarians??”
I’d meant to elaborate on that, but an enormous shadow dropped down on me, jerking my eyes up. Wind gusted in my face as something dove into me like a crashing boulder. I threw up my arms, both to shield myself and to try and see what it was, but the shape hit into me too fast for me to focus on it.
A hard band wrapped tightly around my waist.
It felt like iron.
I reached for it, but once it had me, ityanked.
Miranda let out a shriek as my feet left the dirt road along the forest floor.
Then I was in the air, climbing fast, rising above the trees.
If Miranda shouted after that, I could no longer hear it.
I couldn’t breathe.Whoever had me, they held me so tightly I could scarcely move.
It was too late to try that, anyway.
Writhing free meant plunging dozens of feet to my death.
The freezing air and the abrupt, sickening rise snapped me out of the worst of my mind’s fuzziness from the two and a half goblin-bangers Alaric talked me into drinking, on top of what I’d had at the bar with Draken, Luc, Jolie, Darragh, and Miranda.
That clarity was enough for me to go totally still, to assess my options.
My eyes teared from the whipping wind.
My hair blinded me, making it hard to see anything.
I could feel it now, though.
The thing around my waist was an arm.
I looked up, and tried to see who had me, but only a glint of metal, and black, feathered wings were visible through my whipping hair. The wings beat steadily over me, and when they tilted gracefully to my right, turning us with gut-swooping grace, the moon caught the upper body of the black-wearing figure between them. Even with the full moon, I couldn’t see enough, just a hooded shadow in a metal mask that glinted in the blue light.
It looked to be made of brass. Maybe gold.
I couldn’t see my captor’s face, or determine their height, but the hardness of the body behind me, and the size of the muscular arm convinced me they were male.
Whatever they wanted, it couldn’t be good.
I geared up my magic, hoping my kidnapper wouldn’t notice. On the surface, I kept my mind as blank as I could. If I’d learned one thing in the past month, it was that I had to assume anyone here might be able to read my thoughts. In a smaller, partitioned part of my mind, I watched what passed below, gauged our height, my chances of surviving a fall.
I scanned for an option that wouldn’t be suicide.
