"Move—she's heading straight for the woman!"
"Cillian, run!" a voice cut through the wind.
Cillian Johansen dropped his pack and slammed his shoulder into the next ridge, shoving Hedda down behind a slab of black stone. The purple streak screamed overhead, carving the sky with a line of living light that wanted one thing.
"Where is it?" Hedda panted. Her hand pressed at her belly. The cliff edge was a blind mouth; rocks fell away and a cold mist crawled up from the valley where spirit-beasts nested.
"Keep low." Cillian had no breath to spare for anything else. He crushed the panic under routine. "Where did it come from?"
"Over there," said a stranger's voice—thin, urgent—pointing toward a wavering dot of chaos-glow that bobbed through the fog like a far-off ember. It pulsed with a pale, restless light and made no sound but seemed to tug the air with it.
The purple lightning doubled back like a beast following a scent.
"Move!" the stranger hissed. "Don't look at it!"
Cillian shoved Hedda behind him, turning his back to the ridge. The lightning's shadow split the world into shards of violet and black. A rock exploded three steps away, throwing gravel into Hedda's hair.
"Tell me you had a ward!" Hedda said.
"I don't carry wards on hunts." Cillian's voice was hard. He grabbed her shoulders and searched her face. "Hedda, listen—if they hit you and—"
The
