Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Ivy
At the sight of the blades flashing in the late-afternoon light, my body goes rigid. My men all whip around to face the intruders.
The burly guy at the front of the group said they were here to arrest us, but none of them wear any kind of uniform.
Rheave’s expression twitches, and he points a finger at one of the men flanking the apparent leader.
I think he’s saying that one’s a daimon. These are Order of the Wild members, come to exert their ill-gotten authority over us.
How did they find us? How much do they know?
Stavros tucks his prosthetic slightly out of view, his posture drawing up with his full military authority. Every muscle in his massive frame is braced to spring into action.
In spite of the precarious situation we’ve found ourselves in, a pang of gratitude fills me at the sight of him so steady after his bloody collapse this morning.
I didn’t know if I’d ever see him standing again.
“Arrested for what?” he demands.
My magic shudders through my chest in anticipation of their answer. I could tear straight through them all.
But how will I balance out those consequences? Uncertainty scatters my thoughts, which were already a bit dizzy from everything I pulled off this morning.
The lead Order member opens his mouth to speak, but he hesitates at the creak of the steps behind him. He and his colleagues ease to the side so two more intruders can push into the cramped room.
The first to enter is an even beefier man so vacant-eyed I’m expecting Rheave’s gesture toward him before it happens. Then a tall figure strides in with a haughty, authoritarian air that has me tensing up before my eyes lock on his face.
Julita gasps, her presence flinching in the back of my skull. It can’t— Oh, gods help us. Ivy, that’s Borys.
My stance stiffens even more. Borys, her brother—the one who introduced my ghostly friend to scourge sorcery by making her the subject of his sadistic experiments as a child. The brother who vanished on his way to enter Sovereign College three years ago and who she’d hoped was dead.
As he considers us with his lips curling into a smirk, the resemblance jumps out at me.
He has the same chestnut waves as the woman I first saw dying in an alley, just long enough to tuck behind his ears.
The same porcelain complexion, though his features strike me as sharper than I think Julita’s were.
“So,” he says in an arch voice that’s like a harder, masculine echo of Julita’s typical sultry tone, “this is the company my little sister has been keeping lately, is it? It’s a shame Julita couldn’t be here herself.”
If only he knew.
Julita chokes back what sounds like a wail, her presence twitching and trembling, rattling my thoughts even more. Oh, no. Oh, fuck. We have to get out of here.
I don’t know how justified her terror is. She hasn’t seen her brother in three years. It sounded as if he hadn’t managed to harm her much once she came into her own gift three years before that and could force him to accept her refusals.
Is she simply in shock, or is he an even greater threat than I could anticipate?
My magic thrashes to be let out at him, but it’s even harder to concentrate through my ghostly passenger’s frantic babbling. I swallow hard and imagine a leafy vine wrapping densely around me to bolster my control.
Julita never told the men she allied with just how painfully Borys involved her in his dabbling, but they’ve heard enough. Anger flashes in Alek’s eyes as he gets up from the table. Casimir’s hands have clenched at his sides.
Stavros keeps his voice even, but a thread of menace winds through it. “What do you want?”
Borys draws the short sword at his hip and waggles it at the bunch of us. “I heard the little pipsqueak sent some people to nose around and interfere with our work. You sparked quite the riot this morning. You couldn’t really think you’d get away with it.”
Rheave, the least emotionally affected of us all, stares at him with a totally deadpan expression. “We don’t know anything about that.”
I might believe in his ignorance if I didn’t know better. But it appears Borys knows better too.
Julita’s brother lets out a dark chuckle. “Nice try. It really is too bad that Julita couldn’t see this. Me, in charge of not just Nikodi but half the province as well. I’ve got too many more important matters to address to bother playing games with you lot.”
He makes a brisk gesture toward his underlings. “Take them. Preferably alive, but dead will do too.”
Julita yelps, the men lunge, and I latch my mind on to the image of that poor battered willow tree on the abandoned farm as tightly as I can.
I have to stop them. I have to.
My magic bursts out of me in a blasting force. It hurls the four closest men including Borys to either side, bashing their heads into the walls.
As the thump and crack of the impact resonates through the air, I have the sense of branches ripping off the distant tree. Nausea pools in my gut.
The men slump where they crash to the ground, a couple of them bleeding through their hair and so still they might be dead. Borys lets out a groan.
My mind whirls with a starker flash of panic. He’s going to murder us all. He’s going to stab his sword into me right now—
I sway with the wave of dizziness, my gaze catching on the sword in question. It’s spun across the room away from Borys’s hand.
Before I can pick apart my confusion, the other two Order members hurtle straight at me with their blades drawn.
As I start to grope for my focus and power, Rheave leaps into the way with a wordless snarl.
He slams his fist into the nearer man’s belly with a sizzle of energy. A smoking hole sears deep into my attacker’s guts.
As that man topples over with a bloody gurgle and shifts into a mass of clay, Stavros smacks his prosthetic against the final intruder’s head.
The man reels toward Rheave, who doesn’t so much as blink before wrenching the attacker’s head around.
With a crack of the man’s neck and a gristly hiss, the daimon tears the head right off the man’s neck and flings it across the room.
Okay, then. I stare at Rheave and the blood splattered across his hands. The feral intensity in his stance sets off an unnervingly giddy shiver down the middle of me.
Then Stavros’s urgent tug of my arm and another groan from Borys launch me into action.
Casimir snatches something from beyond the table. “Stav, your sword!”
The former general catches the thrown belt and sheath, and we rush out the door.
As we pound down the stairs to the ground level, Alek pulls at Rheave’s cloak. “You did an incredible job protecting Ivy, but we can’t have you seen like this. Wipe off your hands on the inside of your cloak and pull it close around you to hide your shirt.”
Away from the battle, the daimon-man looks as disconcerted as I feel, but he follows Alek’s orders. We barge out into the chilly air of the street.
I don’t spot any other Order members close by, but a faint shout brings my head jerking around. I don’t see any reason for concern farther down the street, though, and none of my men react.
“I think it’s time we get some distance from Pima,” Stavros says under his breath. “Let’s grab the horses.”
Sticking close together, we hustle along the street toward the public stable where Hanie arranged for us to keep our steeds. We veer sharply left at the first cross-road—and nearly bump into Julita’s old maidservant herself.
Hanie jumps back where she was poised by the building on the corner. She gapes at us, her face blanching. “You’re still— They didn’t—”
My thoughts settle enough for one clear revelation to shine through the whirlwind. “She’s the one who turned us in!”
We never told Emor and Voleska’s group where we were staying. Hanie looked upset seeing the rioting start this morning, and she knew we were involved.
And she’s clearly surprised that we haven’t been arrested.
What? Julita cries. Hanie gave us up?
The maidservant backs up another step. “You’re as dangerous as the Order of the Wild,” she hisses, and raises her voice to a yell. “Help! Someone! There are traitors to the Order here!”
Stavros growls and moves to catch her arm, but Hanie bolts in the opposite direction. She dives through the nearest shop doorway.
Footsteps drum against the cobblestones from around the corner.
Alek waves us on. “We’ve got bigger problems than her!”
I spot a narrow alley a few buildings down and race toward it with a jab of my hand to direct the others. We dash into it and sprint past several buildings, emerge onto an unfamiliar street, and duck down another alley.
Near a stinking waste bin behind a tenement building, I pause to regain my wind. No sounds of pursuit have followed us this far.
Rheave glances over his shoulder, his brow knit. “All those angry people in the square made her afraid.” He pauses, and his voice drops lower with a sorrowful note. “And so did I. So she blamed us.”
I reach out to squeeze his arm through his cloak. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t do anything to her. We were trying to help her and everyone else in this city.”
Casimir peers farther down the alley. “Do you think it’s safe to go for the horses? Hanie knew where they were too. If Julita’s brother has even half his wits, he’ll have cut off our easiest means of escape.”
I suck in a breath. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “You’re right. Curse it all.”
Stavros frowns and squares his shoulders. “We should get within view of the stable and take stock. She might not have mentioned that part.”
And if the Order of the Wild has confiscated our steeds, we could always steal others. Although I’m not sure how the former general would feel about that kind of criminal activity.
We continue through the city, taking alleys and the quietest roads we can, until we can spot the front of the stable building from a couple of blocks away.
Alek tenses beside me. “They have it staked out.”