The woman loosed the arrow with an ever-so-subtle twitch of surprise as Eve cried out. She cursed vehemently in some Celtic-sounding language as the arrow clattered harmlessly into the trees and turned to regard Eve with death in her eyes. “You’ll pay for what your thrice-cursed hawk has done to my brother, little one,” she breathed, stalking closer as she nocked another arrow to her bowstring. “How do you think an iron arrowhead will feel in your gut?” she taunted, eyes glittering cruelly. “Imagine it,” she continued, arrow trained on Eve, “burning slowly through your innermost parts, spreading its poison—” She broke off with another curse as her bow was knocked aside by a blur.
Cormac shimmered back into humanoid form to the woman’s right, ignoring the weeping form of the other ambusher. “Such harsh words to speak to such an innocent maid!” he rebuked, his tone mocking. “But then, Liria was never one for courtesy, save that she demanded from others.” He shook his head sadly. “Small wonder her knaves are little better.”
The woman’s brother crouched off to the side, tears of blood from his ruined eyes streaming between his fingers. He raised his head briefly as Eve spoke, turning it this way and that as if to try to see something.
The woman raised her bow with a spluttered curse. "You dare—” she broke off, staring in disbelief at the space where the arrow had once been nocked. She turned her gaze to Cormac, who grinned as he held up her arrow in one hand.
“She is under my protection,” he said, his smile growing cold. “By the Laws and Mists of Fae, by rowan, ash, oak, and hawthorn, I deliver this warning unto thee: leave now ere I visit my wrath upon thee.”
The woman’s eyes widened as she relaxed the bowstring. “How dare you invoke the Law for this... this caitiff!” she spat, keeping the bow raised in Cormac’s direction. “She has trampled upon the offering of the Queen, sneered at our generosity! You would see the Queen’s justice thwarted?”
“Your Queen’s ‘justice’ is naught but petty vengeance born from a childish inability to bear refusal.” His expression hardened. “Again I say to thee: leave, or face my wrath.”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You would pit yourself against the Queen? Do not meddle with your betters, hawk. The Queen’s forces—”
“Would be consumed by the Wild Hunt,” Cormac interrupted. His smile broadened as the woman blanched. “Think you my liege would suffer a massed assault upon one of his vassals? I have claimed this changeling as my ward, as is my right.”
“Thy liege would not save thee!” the woman said, though her voice was less confident than before. “You know as well as I that only those who are strong survive in the Wild Hunt!”
“Indeed—he would not intervene were I attacked in ones or twos.” He smiled, the expression entirely devoid of mirth. “But do not be so foolish as to think he would brook a grouped assault on his vassals. And do not think for a moment that he would shrink from a fight with Lyria were she to overstep the Laws as you have threatened.”
The woman’s expression darkened and she opened her mouth as if to speak, but Cormac cut her off: “Thrice I say to thee and done: depart now with your crippled brother, or I shall deal harshly with thee for thine insolence.”
“Mine insolence!?” the woman spat, reaching to draw an arrow from her quiver.
Cormac lunged forward, sidestepping to the right and sliding around the woman’s left side as she loosed before he drove the arrow through the muscle of her shoulder.
The woman screamed, cursing again in that Celtic language as the cold iron tore through her flesh, the skin around the wound already darkening. She dropped her bow, scrabbling with her right hand at the iron arrow lodged in her shoulder as she slumped to her knees.
