Dame of Owls Read Online Free

screwed.
                  The unicorn twisted its head and cantered in a mad circle, determined to bit her again. Her wound widened around the horn, dripping her sluggish blood down unicorn’s pristine white head. Stars popped in Sid’s vision.
                  Something popped hard into the unicorns jaw. A tree branch. And again, and again, until the unicorn was convinced to ignore the madwoman riding on its back and focus its anger on the madman, significantly less hardy, trying to beat it to death with a piece of wood.
                  Gathering all her strength, Sid swung her knife up and cracked it hard into the base of the unicorn’s horn. It took two more blows, a lot of blood, and Chris’s continued idiocy with the local flora before the horn snapped off in her hand. The unicorn staggered drunkenly before falling, which gave Sid just enough time to untangle herself from its mess and not get crushed.
                  It oozed opalescent blood onto the forest floor, and flowers grew and rotted in the puddle of its death. The air was filled with glittering motes. Sid sneezed, and every inch of her objected to the treatment.
                  “Holy shit,” said Chris, belatedly.
                  Sid pressed a hand against her chest, counting her ribs and taking a deep breath to make sure nothing untoward was digging into her lungs. “Don’t worry, it’s dead.”
                  “Duh, it’s dead.” He tossed his tree branch onto the quickly desiccating corpse. “You’re bleeding.”
                  “Oh.” Right, her hand, which still felt like her palm had been flayed open to the bone. Coincidentally, it had been. “I’ll heal.”
                  He tried to take her hand and get a better look at the aftermath, but she clenched her fist and shoved it her coat pocket despite the pounding pain. She could feel her blood leaking out in time to her pulse, and she needed a moment to pop her ankle back where it belonged. She needed Chris not to see any of it, because he’d shown he was smart enough to take advantage of a weakness.
                  “How quickly? And what was that?”
                  “A unicorn.”
                  “Why a unicorn? You – look. You’re standing all wonky, sit down. I can at least wrap it up or something.” He pulled off his over-shirt, presumably to tear it into strips and be a real action hero about the whole thing.
                  “Do I look like I know why a unicorn? And if you’d just stayed in the god damned car instead of wandering off into the woods to find the unicorns, I wouldn’t be ‘wonky’ in the first place! Put your damn shirt back on.”
                  “You know, considering you tried to drug me, the least you can do is let me make sure you’re not bleeding to death.”
                  Well, oops. “You weren’t supposed to notice that.” Sid pulled her hand out of her pocket, as if she did actually have to make amends to her kidnapping victim for trying to victimize him.
                  “I told you, I just got out of jail. You pick stuff up, like rampant paranoia.” He’d been able to rip off one of his sleeves, and he smoothed it into a passable bandage as Sid put her hand out and opened her fist. “Jesus.”
                  “You’re telling me.” It was, at least, a relief to be able to unclench her teeth, to stop pretending that she wasn’t in a slow-burn of agony. “And I’m not going to bleed to death. If it had gored me, yes, but no one ever bled to death out of their hand.”
                  “Wanna take a bet on that one?”
                  Chris was less than expert, but passably gentle, as he wound the makeshift bandage and tied it off. The pressure felt good, maybe just because her brain approved of