"And yet you plan to go inside."
"I'll have you to guard me. Or don't you think you can handle it?"
"I don't think I can handle you," he muttered, and was irritated to find that despite his dislike of her, she interested him. She wasn't a typical witch and that snared his curiosity. He blamed his sojourn in the Mistlands. At any rate, protecting her wouldn't be an issue. Between the two of them, he doubted there was much they couldn't handle.
"What did you say?"
He was certain she'd heard. "I said I'm perfectly confident in my ability to protect you." From outer harm. Whether he could protect her from herself--that was another question altogether.
He'd had time these last years in the Mistlands to remember every detail about Horngate and had concluded that whatever else the motley group were, they were unusual. They sacrificed themselves for others, even strangers. Giselle could very well do something stupidly altruistic and get herself killed. But if she did, would the spell binding him send him back to the Mistlands for the duration of the curse?
He wasn't about to find out.
The pillars rose before them like giant skeletal reeds. Phantom mist twisted between them. Shoftiel couldn't tell what they were made of. Salt, perhaps. The area had been known as the salt flats once. Some of the stalks were the size of a finger. Others as big around as a barrel.
Unnatural silence smothered the sound of their footsteps and the rustle of their clothing. Giselle had said little since they departed the hotel in the predawn hours. He'd surprised himself by offering to fly them to their destination. She'd surprised him by accepting. Normally he'd have cut his arm off before lowering himself to such menial work, but he wished to see the sprawl of the city from the air and could not leave her side. Now they walked.
"Why did my brothers bind themselves to your covenstead?" he asked. The question had burned in him since he'd learned what Tutresiel and Xaphan had done.
"Self-preservation," Giselle said. "They didn't want to be pawns for the Guardians any more than we did."
He frowned. "How could binding themselves to Horngate allow them to escape?"
"It's a long
story, but the upshot is Max received a wish as a gift and used it to make the Guardians forget Horngate, including every member of the covenstead. Since they thought we were a better option than the Guardians, Tutresiel and Xaphan pledged themselves to Horngate."
His brows rose. "Clever." Her explanation only stimulated his curiosity about Horngate's denizens. Max could have used that wish on herself, but instead she'd protected her covenstead. A fact that reinforced how very wrong his judgment and punishment of her had been.
Witches who established their own covensteads created supernatural warriors out of ordinary humans to protect the covenstead. Each had a squad called Sunspears, composed of those who could come out only during the day, and a second squad composed of those who could survive only in the dark, called Shadowblades. Max was one of the latter, the Prime, or captain, of her fellow Blades.
They came to the inner edge of the ghostly towers surrounding the shrine. Shoftiel put a hand on Giselle's arm to halt her. He could see nothing through the smoke, but he felt a presence. Many of them. And enormous magic.
"What's wrong?"
"There's more here than I suspected."
"How so?"
He frowned, trying to sort out his impressions. "This is no mere shrine."
"Well, whatever it is, we're running out of time." The witch tugged away and strode in between two bone-white columns. Magic rippled and sent brilliant threads to wrap her legs and wind around her body until she was covered from head to toe in a golden net of power.
Shoftiel launched into the air and hovered beside her. "How can you have lived this long with shit for brains? I thought you were smart, but you're being dumber than a bucket of dirt right now." Crimson magic wreathed his hands as he reached out to break the spell.
She waved him off. "Don't."
His eyes narrowed. "You knew what would happen."
"Yep."
"You saw this in a vision?"
"Yep."
"You might have mentioned it."
"Across all the visions, this never changed. I figured it was bound to happen, so why wait? Now, let's stop wasting time."