Lydia squinted against the staring faces that glared down at her. The tree had her pinned and she could do nothing but lay helpless against the Earth. A gritty substance cut into her palms and she wondered if it wasn’t salt because the Earth was giving her no vibrations whatsoever. A shout went up from the men and they began to tear the limbs from the tree. Lydia thought she could hear the tree groan in agony but she was mesmerized by the ease with which the men handled the heavy branches.<br/><br/>“Sir, we have the woman.” A voice called out in clipped precision.  All she could tell was that these men were operating with a military discipline and all of them were extremely handsome. Her warning bells of intuition should have been jangling but for some reason were not. Perhaps the fall had injured her more than she realized, maybe these people had nullified magic.<br/><br/>Lydia was now fully exposed to their view and at the mercy of their hard grasping hands that pulled her upright. They took no heed to her black hair being tangled in the twigs. She swayed on her feet as sharp blinding pain coursed through her shoulders when they tied her hands behind her back.<br/><br/>“Make she sure stays bound like that,” the order came from a man with a deep gruff voice just out of her eyesight. “She’s a witch and can use those hands for more destruction that you can imagine.”<br/><br/>The taller of her two captors gripped her soft breast and gave it a hard squeeze. His companion ran his hand over her stomach to cup her sex.A third man slipped a necklace over her head.<br/><br/>“No time for that just now, lads,” the gruff voice ordered. “We may all take our leisure once we get back. Let’s go.”<br/><br/>Lydia was jerked forward. Her hair tumbled into her eyes and she was blinded to the pathway. Only her abductor’s biting fingers kept her from sprawling headlong on the path.<br/><br/>