Chapter 34
Rowan
p and armed!”
“Perimeter breach! Everyone on guard!”
I wake with a start, my head pounding right along with the
world around me. Shouts come from every direction. Warnings. Orders.
Shocked cries. Cadets scramble, the chains of their manacles clanging as
they dart about to figure out what’s going on, or at least avoid getting
skewered in the melee.
A shadow moves at the edge of my vision, cutting through the disarray
and rising panic.
“Ainsley.” Kai looks wild, dangerous, and—gods—totally free. His
shackles are broken. He’s got a sword in one hand, his other gripping my
shoulder. “On your feet.”
“What’s happening?”
“Eryndor soldiers,” he says curtly, his attention already back on the
unfurling battle. “Seems the commandant has decided she does care about
what happens to her cadets after all.”
The commandant? I shoot to my feet and peer through the fray, unable
to help myself despite knowing that I should be making myself a smaller
target rather than a larger one. It takes only moments to find my mother in
the chaos and clashing of swords, her auburn hair whipping in the wind as
she moves with a deadly grace I’ve heard about but never seen in truth.
No wonder I’m a disappointment to her.
My mother’s sword flashes in the firelight as she parries blow after
blow, forging her way toward the mercenary leader, a hulking brute of a
man named Hak who is moving toward her with the same brutal efficiency.
“What is the meaning of this, Phillys?” Hak demands, shouting to be
heard over the battle cries as they near each other. Apparently the two are
on a first name basis.
“You’ve kidnapped Spire cadets.” She guts a man on her right without
pausing the conversation. “I’d like them back, please.”
“Kidnapped?” Hak opens his arms, shaking his head in a show of
bewilderment. “Not at all. We are simply participating in your field
exercise. Are you not honor bound to follow your own rules?”
She laughs without mirth. “A mercenary talking about honor?” her
voice hardens to the one I know all too well. “Enough. You are no part of
this, Hak. You know it. You will return my people.”
My people. Am I her people too? Or was she thinking about the stronger
cadets when she said that.
Kai’s arm wraps around my waist and he yanks me down. Hard. “Are
you trying to get your head taken off?” he hisses.
Behind us, there is a familiar creak of the prison wagon being opened
and gruffly passed orders between the mercs to corral us into it.
Kai’s gaze swings toward the wagon, then the darkened treeline. “Listen
to me carefully,” he instructs. “We are not going back to the wagon. Stay
with me and be ready to move. Did you succeed in weakening your
shackles the way you did mine?”
And here I thought I’d been discreet about it.
“Yes, but it’s not enough to break through.” I test the chain with my legs
again. Iron rusted on the inside may be more fragile, but it’s still tough. I
couldn’t get Collin’s or Ellie’s chains to break apart either.
Kai braces his foot on my shackle chain, then brings the blade he’s
acquired down on the chain’s center, shattering it beneath the force of the
blow. Holy gods. No one should be that strong.
“Ready?” he asks.
“We need Ellie.” I grab his arm as I look for her. My friend is on the
ground, huddled in on herself. I rush to her, pulling a cursing Kai in my
wake. Gods, but it’s nice to be able to move my ankles more than eighteen
inches again.
“Ellie.” I drop beside her. She trembles uncontrollably, her face pale
with a terror I’ve never seen in her before. “What’s happened?”
“She’s come for me, Ro,” Ellie whimpers. “The commandant. She
knows I broke. She will torture me. Kill me. She knows.”
“No. Listen, the game is over. She is here to get us back. This is a
rescue.”
Ellie shakes her head in apathetic, blind disbelief.
I look at Kai for help, but his face is sober. Right. I know my mother.
She might be willing to fight to get her people back, but there will be an
example made. Of someone. And I can’t promise Ellie it won’t be her.
“We have to move, now,” Kai urges, his voice barely audible over the
din of battle. His icy eyes dart around, assessing threats closing in around
us. Soldiers clash violently mere yards away, swords clanging and flashing
in the flickering light of the fires. The scent of blood and death is already
rising into the air.
I grip Ellie’s arm and try to haul her to her feet but she is bigger than me
and little better than dead weight. Behind us, I hear the all too familiar
sound of prisoners being loaded into the wagon. The mercenaries are
rounding up cadets left and right. Any second now they’ll reach us too.
“Come on Ellie, please!” I beg her. “We can’t stay here.”
Ellie flinches as someone cries out in pain. “They’re going to drag me
back and—”
Sheathing his sword in one fluid motion, Kai scoops Ellie up into his
arms. “This way,” he commands, jerking his head towards the shadowy
treeline.
I nod and scramble after him, my heart pounding in my ears as we
weave through the chaotic fray of clashing swords and grunting soldiers. As
we near the edge of the fighting, a long-legged mercenary with a patch over
one eye lunges at us from the shadows. A cry catches in my throat.
Still holding Ellie, Kai pivots and sinks his booted foot square into the
man’s chest. I swear I can hear ribs crack as the merc crumples to the
ground in a groaning heap.
“Keep moving,” Kai orders, shifting Ellie in his arms. He isn’t even
breathing hard as he plunges us into the treeline.
I follow close on his heels, branches whipping at my face and snagging
on my filthy tunic as we race headfirst into the darkness, slowing only when
the half blind trek makes me trip over roots with every other step.
“Are you alright?” Kai demands, the third time I fall.
“I’m—”
“Appear to be deserting,” Collin’s voice announces a moment before the
man himself steps out from behind a wide oak. His shackles are broken,
same as mine and Kai’s, but whereas Kai’s arms are full of a shocked Ellie,
Collin is holding a crossbow with an auric steel arrow already notched and
pointed at my chest.
