Ruthless Vows (Letters of Enchantment, Book 2)

Iris hit the porch roof with a clatter. Her right ankle smarted from the drop as she managed to tuck and roll, catching herself before she found the edge. The thatch cut her palm but the pain was like a flare, guiding her focus as she perched on the eaves.

She was tempted to glance up at the window. To look at Roman one last time.

Iris resisted, keeping her eyes forward instead. There was a field directly before her, tall grass bending to the sough of the wind. She could see the high road off to her left, a shadow in the moonlight, as well as Hawthorne Route, which cut through the meadow like a slithering snake.

It was a good distance away, but she was confident she could escape using the cover of the grass until she reached safety. Then she could sprint back to Tobias and Attie.

Iris scrunched her eyes shut for a second before letting herself fall over the roof’s edge.

She landed on her feet, her ankle throbbing again from the impact, but it wasn’t a long drop. Stumbling, she reached out to find her balance. Two rain barrels sat in the grass nearby, and she ducked down to hide between them, assessing her surroundings.

A minute passed. Then another. Iris made herself wait. She was worried there might be a patrol that she hadn’t noticed yet, and no sooner did the thought cross her mind than a door opened behind her. She heard boots clipping on the stone pavers, heading in her direction.

Iris kept close to the barrels, using them as a shield to avoid being spotted. She watched from the corner of her eye as a tall shadow strode past her.

Again, she waited. The soldier returned, as if he had been assigned to watch this plot of ground.

Iris counted his steps the next time he passed, to see how long she had with his back turned toward her. Then she took a hard swallow and forced herself forward. She crept through the grass as quickly as she could manage, eyes trained ahead to where she knew the route lay. She made it all of ten steps before someone spotted her.

“Halt!”

Iris instinctively froze until she remembered Roman’s voice. The last words he had said, whisper soft against her parted lips.

Run, Iris.

She broke into a sprint.

“I said HALT!”

It was too late to hide. Iris pushed herself faster, harder. The grass whisked against her legs; the night air was frigid against her damp skin. She felt like wings had unfurled from her shoulder blades, like nothing could stop her, until rapid gunfire chased her heels.

Iris tripped, her blood humming with fear.

Somehow, she managed to stay upright, dodging the shots. Bullets peppered the ground to her left, so close that she could smell the pierced loam. Panic coursed through her like a river breaking a dam.

She was almost to Hawthorne Route.

Another round of gunfire pierced the darkness, followed by shouts. Iris never looked back. When her boots hit the road, she knew she had reached the place where Tobias had once been parked. She knew, because she passed the pothole in the road, but the roadster was nowhere to be seen.

They’re gone.

Iris laid her hand over her chest, relieved. Devastated. Where do I go from here? she thought, lungs heaving as she tried to calm her heart. She needed to forge a new plan, one that had her slipping from Dacre’s soldiers, but her pace began to falter. Her thoughts scattered like broken glass.

Exhausted, she eased to a brisk walk on the road. Her surroundings felt murky until she heard the familiar roar of an engine. A beat later, two headlights cut through the night.

Tobias’s roadster sped toward her, emerging from the wispy grass on the other side of the road. Iris sprinted forward to meet him, the bright sting of the headlights washing over her face. Behind her, Dacre’s soldiers were screaming for her to halt, halt!

She didn’t stop. Their orders melted into the darkness, like stars at dawn. When Tobias swung the roadster to the side, angling the back door in her direction, Iris leapt.

She slammed into the side of the car, her knees denting the metal door. Attie reached down and grasped hold of her arms, hauling her into the cab, and before Iris could so much as wince, Tobias had floored the accelerator. Tires squealed on the road, slinging mud as bullets plinked against the bumper.

The girls remained hunched on the floorboard as another medley of gunshots snapped in the distance. But the threat soon grew fainter, and the motor beneath them faster.

“Iris?” Attie said, helping her up to the seat. “Are you hurt? Did they…?”

“I’m fine,” Iris replied in a ragged tone. “Will they pursue us?”

“I don’t know,” said Tobias, shifting the roadster to the next gear. “Best if we act like they will, though.”

Iris nodded and withdrew the wrench from her pocket, only to realize her hands were quivering. The adrenaline was dimming, leaving embers behind in her bones. She let the tool clatter to the floorboards and rubbed her palms against her sleeves, eager to feel something other than the dread that was stealing over her.

“Hold on,” Tobias warned as he took a sharp curve.

Iris was glad to have something to distract her. She craved the wind’s bite in her face, the fury of consumed kilometers beneath the wheels. Anything to remind her she was moving away from danger.

“I see you got the tire fixed,” she said.

Tobias snorted, but Attie only groaned.

“The tire iron was in the boot the whole time,” Attie said. “Under a blanket. I’m sorry, Iris. We shouldn’t have sent you into town. I tried to signal you back with the match, but it was too late.”

“It’s all right,” Iris said. “It was good that I went.”

She didn’t explain why, although Attie tilted her head to the side, curious. Later, Iris would tell her everything. When the sun rose, and Iris could convince herself that Roman hadn’t been a phantom of her imagination. Because a part of her still felt softened from his hand and his words, like the entire encounter had only been a reverie.

Iris touched her finger, the groove that her wedding ring had left behind, and leaned her head back until her gaze was on the stars. She thought the constellations had never looked so close or so lovely.

“Do you see that? There’s something flashing in my rearview mirror.”

Tobias’s soft but urgent words woke Iris.

She didn’t know how long she had dozed—two minutes or maybe half an hour—and she sat forward, rubbing the crick in her neck. Her friends weren’t looking ahead but behind, and she turned in the seat, squinting into the darkness.

“I see it,” Attie said, just as Iris also discerned a pinprick of red-hued light in the distance. “But what is it?”

Another orb of light. And then a third, until they were in a line, growing steadily larger. Hearts, Iris realized. They were incandescent hearts, beating through pale, translucent skin.

“It’s the hounds,” she said, her stomach twisting into a knot. “Dacre’s set the hounds on us.”

Attie spun back around to lean closer to Tobias. “Erm, Bexley? Don’t panic, but you need to drive a bit faster now.”

“A bit faster?” Tobias cried over the steady roar of the engine. “I’m already in gear five.”

“Please tell me there’s a gear six, then. Or a seven.”

Tobias looked over his shoulder, the moonlight dousing his face in silver.

Iris wondered if he knew the old myths and recognized the lights as unnatural hearts. Or maybe he saw the long legs and bared teeth, which were coming into sharp focus. Tobias turned back around and shifted the roadster into the next gear.

The motorcar gave a lurch of protest. Iris closed her eyes, hair tangling over her wind-burned face. All she could think was Please, please don’t break down. Not here, not now.

“They’re gaining on us, Bexley,” said Attie. “God’s bones, how are they so fast?”

“They were made for speed, but not stamina.” Tobias shifted again. The engine revved in complaint before the car’s speed began to markedly dwindle.

“Tobias, are we slowing down?” Attie asked, incredulous.

“Yes, I’m gearing down.” He adjusted his rearview mirror. The hounds’ hearts reflected in his eyes, but he seemed calm, collected. “I’ve stressed the engine enough as it is, and I need it to power up again.”

“All right. We’re going to let the hounds reach us, and then what?”

“Trust me,” he said, so softly that the wind almost stole the words.

Attie opened her mouth, but she only sighed at his behest.

Iris took that tense but quiet moment to look behind again. She could see the hounds clearly now. Beasts the size of unnaturally large wolves, their mouths shining with caches of sharp teeth. Their eyes were like coals and their paws struck the ground like lightning.

“Tobias,” Iris said. “I think…”

She couldn’t finish the sentence.

Tobias was silent, but his eyes were trained on the hounds’ reflection in the rearview mirror. As if he were counting their steps, the shrinking distance, the speed, the acceleration. The possibility of impact.

The roadster geared down again. It felt like they were crawling along the road.

“Listen to me,” Tobias said, his voice vibrant in the dark. Confident, like he was no stranger to racing hounds on country back roads. “I’m going to outrun them, but you need to trust me and you need to remain low and safe in the cab. Take hold of the rope handle in front of you. Whatever happens, don’t let go.”

The girls grasped the handle, Tobias waiting for Attie to give him a nod. In the next breath, he hit the brakes. As the roadster came to a screeching halt, the hounds soared over them.

Iris could feel the frigid air that haunted their long legs, rushing a mere arm’s length above her head. Their claws stirred her hair, and she could smell the dank, rotten scent of their flesh. She could nearly taste the under realm—shadows that were never touched by light, stone floors that were slick with blood—as time moved achingly slow. It felt like a year had come and gone with the hounds arcing overhead like three meteors, the roadster shuddering beneath her.

But when the hounds hit the ground before them, the world came back to alarming focus. Two of Dacre’s creatures seemed confused, but one turned around quickly to double back.

Tobias was ready for it.

He smoothly shifted the engine into first gear, then second, the roadster leaping forward. At the last minute, he cut the motorcar sharply, and they spun in a tight circle.

The tension in Iris’s chest was almost unbearable, as if gravity had been suspended. She was rising from the floorboard like she had been caught in a levitating spell, her mother’s locket hovering before her face. A flash of gold that reminded her to hold on, don’t let go.

The side of the roadster slammed into the returning hound’s hind leg. There was a sickening crunch followed by a piercing keen.

Tobias kept the car going, the wheels churning over the divots in the road until they launched eastward once more. The roadster slipped between the other two hounds, who lost time turning around again to pursue. Their angry growls shook the ground like thunder.

Iris tentatively rose to her knees, one hand clinging to the handle, the other to Attie.

She dared to glance back.

Only two hounds were in pursuit now, the third left behind to flounder in the road. But the pair were gaining on them again, as if wide open spaces and straight paths fed their mythical speed.

This time, Iris didn’t look away. She stared at the creatures as the distance waned once more. And she counted each time Tobias shifted, until she knew he was in the highest possible gear. The roadster was at its top speed; there was no power left for the engine to give them. They were all but flying over the road, and still the hounds came.

Iris stiffened when the hounds lunged forward with yawning, rotten maws. They surged like a tide only to ebb as Tobias drove through a sharp bend. Their pace at last faltered, and they slowed, slinging drool from their mouths along with snarls of defeat.

Still, she would not believe it. She could hardly trust her own eyes this night.

Iris kept her gaze on the road behind them, marked by tires, rutted by storms. She kept her gaze on the shrinking hounds until their hearts winked out, like candle flames being snuffed into darkness.