Page 14 of Lost and Stolen Gods
We obliged, sitting with our backs to the shore but facing him as he rowed with strong, powerful strokes that drew us closer and closer to an unknown fate.
Dark wings of panic spawned in my belly, but I closed my eyes and breathed in through my mouth and out through my nose until the need to scream dissipated.
I was here, and there was no escape. Not yet anyway. And that was fine. I needed to find out what had killed Nani, and I had no doubt someone here knew the answer. Nani had given me herbs, and I was certain those herbs had somehow revealed my mark…A mark that had somehow been hidden… The herbal tea maybe? Shit. Okay. So she’d hidden me from…what? Rathor or the shadow monster or…maybe both? Urgh.
“Do as you’re told,” Rathor said to us, interrupting my thoughts. “Don’t be stupid and you’ll live. Now get out of my boat.”
Were we in the shallows already?
Dharma leapt out with a splash and began wading to shore. From what I’d seen of her, she seemed like a woman who took no shit and got things done. And despite her less than empathetic attitude toward me to start with, I liked her.
I gathered up my skirt and climbed out after her, sucking in a sharp breath as the cold seeped into my boots and up my bare legs.
Another rowboat was moored several feet to ourleft, and I spotted a stocky male wading toward it. Lomis. It had to be.
He’d dropped off his cargo—frightened faces that watched us from shore, flanked by tall males wearing green and gold uniforms.
But my attention was drawn to the woman standing in their midst. Dressed in black and silver, dark hair piled high on her head, dark eyes fixed on us as we waded closer, she had an air of authority that told me she was in charge. Her brown skin seemed to glow with inner light, a contrast to the paler-skinned guards at her side. She was smaller than the males by a good foot and a half but had a commanding presence that radiated across the waves. She held a staff with a twisty design at the top that looked like a wooden engraving of a flame.
“Who do you think she is?” Remi asked.
Rathor replied from behind us. “That’s Umbra. She’s a mage, not someone you want to upset. She’s responsible for keeping you alive until you get to Aakaash Sansaar.”
“Small haul there, Rathor,” Lomis called out as we passed him.
“Yes, it is,” Rathor called back. “But I’m not trying to compensate for my lack of girthy manhood.”
“Fuck you, Rathor.”
“Not with that worm!”
Remi giggled, and for a moment, the tension lifted, but only a moment because there was no mistakingthe fact that we were wading to the shore of another world, with no assurance that we’d ever be able to go home.
We hit the beach a few moments later, sopping boots sinking into dry sand. At least my skirt was mostly dry. My wrist tingled, and I looked down in time to see the copper shackle lift away from my skin and disperse, releasing me from Rathor’s spell.
The liveried guards surrounded us, and Umbra’s gaze swept over us, assessing.
“Only four?” she said to Rathor.
Rathor shrugged one shoulder, his attention on his nails. “Maybe you’d like to take a boat to the human world and navigate the ether to find more.”
Umbra’s eyes narrowed. “And maybe you’d like to be relived of your duties.”
Rathor snort-laughed. “Whatever. Umbra, you have no power over me, and you know it.”
Umbra’s gaze flicked to the guard to her left. “Pay him.”
The guard threw a pouch at Rathor, who snatched it neatly out of the air before giving Umbra a flourishing bow that was almost mocking. “Until next time.”
He spun on his heel and went back to the water.
One of the women in the other party began to cry, and Umbra’s jaw flexed. “I do not have the patience for tears. Cowards and whiners will not be tolerated. Stop wailing at once!”
The admonished woman slapped a hand over hermouth to quell her sobs but continued to leak tears, face reddening as she battled to contain her emotions.
We’d been torn from our world, from our families and brought here, wherever here was. The whole experience was terrifying, and dammit, I wanted to cry too, but all this stick up the ass, staff-wielding cow could say wasshut up?
The impotent rage that had been simmering inside me ever since I’d hit the forest on my knees finally boiled over. “Who the fuck are you to tell her how to feel? She was just kidnapped and brought to another world, for fucksake. Being scared is normal. Don’t you have emotions in this world, or does that staff have a twin that’s stuck up your ass?”
