Asylum (Causal Enchantment #2)(75)

“What do we do now?” Caden whispered.

I sighed. “I’m going in. They should be okay with me. Once I get to her, I can—” I stopped abruptly as my ears caught Evangeline calling my name. A second later I spotted long, raven-black hair flying through the air from the opposite end of the clearing, its owner sailing over the tribesmen and tigers, flinging spears in every direction. Several tribesmen went down, and a tiger yelped, wounded.

Rachel. Heading straight for Evangeline. And I couldn’t get to her in time.

16. Rachel’s Plan

Rachel didn’t say a word. She didn’t smile. She was on a mission. Grabbing me roughly, she spun, putting her back to the fire. With her arm around my neck in a deadly headlock, I became her shield. “Stay away or I snap her neck, you parasites!” she shrieked.

“Please!” a new voice cried out.

Unable to turn my head, I strained my eyes to the right. A slender, red-haired woman stepped into the clearing and moved toward the crowd of angry tribesmen, her hands held up in surrender. Sofie! They parted enough to allow her past, closing in quickly behind her.

Sofie’s mint-green eyes fell on me for the first time since the day she sent me from the atrium into my safe haven. She had apologized to me then. Now I saw that same pleading, contrite look in her ghostly pale eyes. “Stand down!” she ordered, her voice confident. She turned her attention to the chief. “Let us come out from the shadows and no one else will get hurt. Otherwise, many more will die, I can promise you that.”

Let us come? My heart, pounding against my chest wall, skipped a beat. Who else was here?

The chief, kneeling over the fatally wounded tiger, paused as if weighing his options. Then he barked an order. Every tiger dropped to its belly in submission. The tribesmen followed suit, dropping to one knee.

Satisfied, Sofie sang out, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

Who was it?

From the jungle stepped two tall figures in custom suits. Viggo and Mortimer. Even in the depths of a tropical forest, they had found me. They approached slowly until they stood about thirty feet away from Sofie and from Rachel and me, the last point in a perfect triangle.

“Of course you’d bring that lunatic with you!” Sofie scoffed, earning a growl from Rachel that rumbled in my ear.

“And aren’t I glad that we did!” Viggo exclaimed, adding, “My darling Rachel, that maneuvering was fantastic! Your battle skills are top-notch.”

“I was highly motivated,” she purred, her grip on me tightening until I found it difficult to breathe.

“Hello, Evangeline,” Mortimer called. I hadn’t heard that booming voice in a month, and would gladly miss it for a thousand more. But he didn’t wait for my response, his attention quickly zoning in on my unadorned chest. “Where’s the necklace?” he demanded.

Three sets of brilliant irises bored into me, Sofie’s minty green ones wide with genuine surprise.

I swallowed, mustering as much courage as possible. “Here,” I answered in a quavering voice, holding up my arm. I let the pendant drop so it dangled from its chain in front of me. Sofie’s eyes almost bugged out of her head. “I don’t want it. You can—” I didn’t even finish offering it before a gust touched my cheek and the pendant disappeared from my grasp. Just like that.

“I don’t believe it!” Viggo exclaimed, staring down at the pendant now in his clutches. So quickly, so smoothly, I couldn’t even tell he had moved. That was that. They had what they needed from me. Was it enough to let me be?

It didn’t matter because now Rachel had me, and it wasn’t the pendant she cared about.

“Let her go, Rachel,” Sofie warned, her surprise quickly buried, her tone cutting.

“I don’t think so . . . Come near me and I’ll snap her neck, you puke-eyed witch!” Rachel shrieked, grabbing a fistful of my hair, so violently that she ripped several strands out at the root. “Tell him to come out. Only him,” she hissed at Sofie.

Him? Could it be . . . My pounding heart stopped altogether.

The crowd parted. A tall, lone figure stepped from the dark jungle, moving past the ring of tigers and tribesmen to glide toward me like a dream. Firelight caught the jade in his eyes.

Caden.

Suddenly it didn’t matter that Rachel’s claws dug into my flesh, ready to tear me to pieces. What mattered was what was going on in Caden’s mind. The fears and doubts that I had buried deep to survive in my exile exploded to the surface. Had he changed his mind about me? Had time and distance dulled his feelings? Did he ever truly care? For these few seconds as he approached, my hope hung from the edge of a cliff, seconds from either falling or being pulled to safety. I held my breath.

Our eyes locked. I saw Caden’s eyes. The stunning green eyes I remembered, the eyes I thought I had lost forever. In that one look, every ounce of doubt, every moment of fear, every horrific memory washed away. As if pulled by a magnet, my body yearned toward him, desperate to feel him close again.

Rachel yanked me back. “No, no, little girl. That’s far enough.” Her grip around my neck tightened. “Is there anything you want to say to your dear human?” she called out to Caden. “Last chance.” She said it so airily, as if she were offering the last bite of a cookie before she took it for herself. But she wasn’t offering a cookie. She was promising death. After all this, after all we had been through, after lifting the curse, Rachel would end me.