She needed a way out of here. She needed to plan, to figure a way out of this mess for good. “Hey,” Orfeus called and cast a crooked grin at the both of them. “This contract, is it nonlethal by any chance?”

A shadow shifted beside her and she darted her eyes that direction. The Wolf, silent and cloaked in night. So there were three of them. Fantastic.

He didn’t move any closer, and neither of the other hunters paid him any attention. The shark-masked one stopped and said, “They’re not contracts exactly.” Orfeus couldn’t take her eyes away from the pair of cuffs.

“We’re not here to bargain,” Hyena said.

“No,” Orfeus agreed. They hadn’t shot her yet, even as on-edge and dangerous as they seemed, and that told her all she needed. She held one finger up to her forehead. “You know all about me, right? I have Blood and plenty of tricks up my sleeve. You lot are going to back off now and leave this place, unless you want to explain a dead…prey person, or whatever, to a very angry client.”

The Shark took several rapid steps back, lifting their hands back up. Orfeus breathed out some of her tension and almost grinned. It was a wonderful thing to have fire at her fingertips.

They didn’t move back any further. The one with the gun didn’t move at all. Orfeus’s grin faded. She shifted the angle of her thumb.

“No,” Faol said suddenly. “Wait.” The one with the gun frowned.

Orfeus kept her gaze steadily ahead. “I’m not at your disposal, Wolf.”

He said, voice rising in irritation, “Orfeus. Wait. Does your town always smell of—”

The Hyena fired at her. At the same time Orfeus flicked heat into her fingers, just enough to sell the threat.

Fire caught in the thick air in front of her and a fireball boomed out. She was knocked off her feet, almost weightless, blown backwards and hitting the ground on a wave of heat.

Everything was hot, and gold and red and blinding. Orfeus blinked rapidly. Her eyes … it felt like she was crying, but her eyes were dry. The air was very dry.

Shock, her mind supplied. The word didn’t have much meaning. Burned, badly burned, and that penetrated a little more. Nothing hurt yet, but it not-hurt vastly as a cavern, in a way that said the pain when it came would be terrible.

That wasn’t right. She couldn’t be this burned. Not this burned. Her playing was better than her singing voice, and she would have trouble charming audiences away from noticing that if she was this burned.