The Faceless Woman by Emma Hamm (i love reading .txt) 📕

“Witch?” the Unseelie hissed. “I don’t know what you did, but get the blood quick.”

Quick wasn’t going to be easy. Only half the guards had wandered toward the rock where the Unseelie still hid. The others were at attention with thick mist swirling behind them. She tried to peer through the strange, murky darkness to no avail.

Somewhere in that darkness, a god lay in wait.

“Hey!” the Unseelie shouted behind her.

The terrifying masks turned as one, all ten slowly converging on him. She turned just in time to see a wide smile break across the Unseelie’s face.

“That’s it, you louts. Move a little faster, would you? I’ll be dead and rotten before you reach me.” The guard nearest to him swung his sword. The Unseelie leapt back, the blade cutting through the air mere inches from his stomach. “Not bad, but you’ll have to do better than that.”

He flung dirt that burst into a swarm of beetles made of bright green leaves, obscuring him from sight. There must have been seeds in the earth, or one seed he managed to spread.

She pressed a hand to her chest and suppressed a sigh from escaping her lips. It was ridiculous to be so affected by a man who knew how to use magic. But as a beetle danced through the air in front of her, one who wandered from the side of its brethren, she noted it even had leaf veins on its wings.

Now is not the time, she reminded herself.

It didn’t matter he had created life with magic, with details so powerful they made her heart rattle the cage of her ribs, she had a job to do.

Blood of a dead god. Break the binding curse. Go home.

The thought wasn’t as exciting as it originally was. She bit her lip and plunged through the thick fog.

Why wouldn’t she want to break the binding curse? Her life was forfeit to whatever he wanted. If he wanted to throw his body into a pit of vipers, she would feel every bite before they each drew their last breath.

A trail of pain traveled from shoulder to shoulder. The thin line burned for a moment before dulling to an ache, which suggested he hadn’t backed away quick enough. She wanted to shout for him to be a little more careful but didn’t want to bring the guards to her side.

“Damned Unseelie,” she whispered. Thankfully, the pain wasn’t terrible enough to be fatal.

She beat back the fog, but it stuck to her. Tendrils hooked around her arms, trying to hold her in place. Aisling gritted her teeth and bared them in a grimace. “You will not take me. Let go.”

They didn’t listen. Instead, they coiled tighter until they were bands around her wrists and ankles. The fog quickly became a darker presence with a life of its own. She could almost see tall, lithe figures in the gray mist. They stood at a distance, never coming close enough for her to confirm they were there.

But she could feel them. Their magic was a living, breathing thing in the thick swirls of mist.

Another sharp sting bloomed on her shoulder, this time bisecting the previous slice. She didn’t have much time left. The Unseelie was losing, or at least allowing himself to get cut, and if there were poison on those blades, then both of them were as good as lost.

“Enough,” she growled.

Aisling lifted her hands with her palms bared to the figures. She felt the tattooed eyes blink, their magic coming alive and focusing their attention on whatever stood in her way. Magic built at her fingertips.

“Fire burn, blister, and sear. Make it so that they feel fear.”

She couldn’t see flames in her palms, but she could feel the heat waves wafting into the air. She released the balls of energy with a gasp. This magic didn’t feel like hers, and yet it was as much a part of her as air.

Magic sliced through the fog and left a trail for her to follow. The thick swirls of white parted cleanly, as if she had cut through them with a knife.

A faint whine echoed throughout the cave, and then sudden silence. The guards had paused in their onslaught. She heard the Unseelie give a sudden shout of glee, and then a heavy thud echoed as something hit the ground.

“Get moving, witch!” he shouted. “I can’t keep their attention for much longer!”

She didn’t want to tell him that was because of her. He’d yell at her again, and she had too much on her mind to win an argument with him.

And she refused to lose even a single argument to the insufferable man.

Sprinting forward, she thanked the gods the Unseelie had let her keep his clothes. Her skirt would have prevented her from running like this. She flew through the cave, arms pumping and feet pounding the ground.

The fabric sound of the golden guards marching forward paused. Aisling nearly lost her balance when the screeching sound of metal filled the caves. Their masks scraped as they tracked the sound of her movement, desperately needing oil but laden with dust and grime. Were they looking at her? The Unseelie gave another shout, and a metallic clang echoed through the cave.

“There,” she muttered.

In the center of the cave, a small table rose out of earth and stone. Pillars surrounded it. They were anchored to the ceiling, crystalline structures pulsing with a darkened light that looked more magic than stone.

Perhaps that was how they held a god. How else would anyone capture a creature like that?

She slid to a halt behind the altar and crouched behind it. Out of breath, she took a moment to organize her thoughts. Blood of a god. She had nothing to put it in. “Bollocks,” she muttered. Of all the things to think of, they couldn’t have considered that?

Aisling glanced around for something that could hold liquid. A rock would do, anything really, but the ground was