Chapter 32 #2
I slid an arm beneath her shoulders, and the heat of fever scorched my forearm.
She’d gone so slight. Rage vented through me like a fault line letting off steam.
Furyfire licked through my veins, fully awake, aching to free itself, but I banked it.
There would be no wrecking their supplies or scorching their camp.
All that mattered was getting Lesha out.
Rydian appeared at the cot’s far side. He gathered Lesha into his arms with a practice that betrayed how many bodies he’d carried for Autumn over the years. Her lips made a shape that might once have been a protest but now was only breath.
He looked at me. “My shadows will do their best, but the sun will be up soon. You’ll clear our path?”
I nodded, Dorcha already loose in my hand.
We moved. The smell of cauterized flesh followed us all the way to the exit. I held the flap to let them pass then followed them out. The cold night air was both balm and blade. The moon was gone, offering a darkness that was already lightening toward dawn.
A quartet of Obsidian soldiers rounded the medic tent from the left, armor chittering like teeth. The nearest spotted me just as Rydian’s shadows swallowed him up, undoubtedly morphing our faces into something that resembled allies.
The soldier faltered, yawned, and kept walking.
We hurried the other way, but it wasn’t the same path as the one we’d come in on. I had no idea if the twists and turns I was taking now would lead to an exit point or if we’d find ourselves surrounded after each new bend.
Twice, we flattened against the side of carts or tents as patrols passed. Once, we pressed into the space between a supply cart and a meat rack while an officer checked the hitching posts. Through all of it, Lesha was nothing more than a silent wraith in Rydian’s arms.
At a fork in the path, I held up a fist. Rydian paused. A sentry in a cowl stood with his back to us, head turned toward the central pavilion. Beyond his post, the outskirts of camp gave way to a clear path back into the wilderness of the valley. To our escape.
I switched Dorcha to my other hand and quietly pulled a small blade free from where I’d hidden it in my boot. Rydian didn’t say a word as his shadows pulled and twisted around me, beckoning me forward to do what I must.
Barely breathing, I moved.
One step.
Two.
The knife was in and out of his neck before the sentry realized what had happened. He folded soundlessly. I caught and lowered him, dark blood leaking from his opened throat.
Then we were moving again, low and quick as we ducked behind a line of carts. I could already see the brush beckoning us. The hillside sloping up and away.
A figure stepped from between the last two carts. Not Obsidian. Fae. Gray cloak. Hood pulled low. But I caught sight of the face inside it and froze.
Taron.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
His attention flicked to Lesha. “You found her.”
Rydian snarled softly. “Eirnan sent you?”
The Withered’s gaze ticked to me, to the shadows, to the way Rydian held Lesha like breakable glass. Something ugly curled at the corner of his mouth in a shape that had nothing to do with triumph. “I don’t serve Eirnan.”
His words sent a shudder through me.
“Move,” I told him softly.
For a breath, he only stared at me, the gaunt, hollow look in his eye now filled with something deep and treacherous. Then he stepped aside.
I didn’t turn my back on him as we passed. Rydian didn’t either. When we were clear of him, I marked the most direct line to take us back up to the cave’s entrance.
From around the brush, two Obsidian soldiers appeared. Rydian’s shadows coated us and, for a breath, the soldiers’ helmets angled as if they accepted us as part of the retreating night.
Then one straightened. “Identify.”
My hand tightened around Dorcha.
The Obsidian’s neck broke backward like a reed in winter wind. Rydian’s shadows went through the second helmet as gently as smoke and retreated in a mist of darkened blood.
My sword hung at my side as I stared at Rydian. His stoic expression was unwavering as his stormy eyes met mine.
The thing nightmares fear.
I’d never realized what he was truly capable of. What my father had gifted him when he’d vowed to protect me. But there was no time to process it now.
“Come,” he said, and we resumed our retreat.
Above us, the sky was lightening. Rydian’s shadows would be no use now.
The stream was just ahead. A thin ribbon of murky water between us and the path that led to the caves. The current was slow, the bank on the far side a dark smear. Beyond that, a stand of bracken. Good cover for our ascent straight up to the cave’s mouth.
“Almost there,” I urged.
If we jumped, we could make it without getting our boots wet.
The sound was small. A single whistle—three rising notes—carrying from the high ridge. A scout’s signal. One of ours. Except it wasn’t.
My gut dropped.
“Rydian.”
He’d already whipped his head to the ridge. A figure stood there, barely a silhouette against moonlight. Gray cloak. Hood low. Withered.
He should have been signaling our teams’ safe return—one whistle for Slade’s team, two whistles for Daegel’s, three for Rydian and me. Instead, the three short whistles were followed by a lantern being lifted in his hand. The shutters flew back. Light spilled wild and bright in the graying morning.
He swung it overhead.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
I felt sick.
All along the edge of camp, Obsidian helmets snapped toward it like a field of flowers turning to the sun.
The cloaked figure on the ridge held the lantern high, illuminating his face. I was close enough to see it all. The hard set of his aged jaw. The hate glittering in his hollow eyes. Brist.
I watched as he angled the lantern toward the valley, low and left, as if pointing at us.
Horns split the night.
At our backs, the sentries we’d evaded erupted in shouts.
And from the ridge, the traitor’s lantern burned steady as a small, treacherous sun.