He grimaced, feeling as if he’d been hit in the gut as he nodded. Satisfied, Newt arched her eyebrows and walked away. Upon reaching the edge of the firelight, she turned back and mouthed, “Run.”

Gally settled deeper under the trees, peering into the misty shadows to try to spot the circling elves. The curse was down to three words, but if Newt didn’t say them before Kalla sundered her connection to the line, he’d try himself, futile as it would be. The renewed ache for Celfnnah scoured through him, and he vowed to live to see the next sunrise if only to find out which of the elven bastards had her. He hadn’t seen her for two years. Two tormented years.

At the fire, Kalla graciously lowered himself to a cushion and invited Newt to sit. There was nowhere for her to go but the cold dirt, and Gally’s jaw tightened. Perhaps the separation had been a blessing. To have had a child warped by elven magic would have broken Celfnnah’s heart—as if taking them as infants and exchanging them for favors wasn’t enough. The elves didn’t even call them demons, they were so broken, giving them to their children to play with as if they were ponies to learn with before being given a stallion.

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, readiedhimself, 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.