But it wasn’t just one archer watching the field—it was a whole host of them. A horde of flaming arrows rained down on them. Stella had left her breastplate in the maze, leaving her unguarded. Teddy searched helplessly for any cover.
Stella threw her hands up and her magic surged into the arrows, burning them to ash that rained down on Teddy and Alexandra like remnants of a bonfire.
“Move,” Alexandra said, grabbing both of their collars and dragging them forward.
They sprinted across the field to the cover of the castle wall. They needed to get inside before they were mistaken for rebels.
Stella led them along the outer courtyard wall until finally the dense shrubbery that surrounded the queen’s garden came into view. She walked up to the hedges and sent out a surge of magic. The bushes bent apart, leaving a gap just wide enough for the three of them to squeeze through.
Once they were inside, Stella let the tall hedges fall back into place.
“What I’m about to show you is a secret you must immediately forget,” she whispered.
“You sure you wouldn’t rather just steal the memory from us when you’re done?” Alexandra taunted.
“That was one time and only because your brother begged me,” Stella said.
Teddy and Alexandra followed her down a path bracketed by roses. She moved soundlessly, falling back into her training as if she’d been as involved in combat as Teddy and Alexandra.
As they crossed into a water garden, Stella stopped suddenly, her hand clamping over her mouth.
At the far end of the pond, a large group of fifty rebels stood in formation. A tall man stood in front of them, speaking animatedly.
Fionn Silver.
He paced back and forth down the line, a subtle limp in his step. Although they couldn’t make out what he was saying through the sound of running water in the pond, it was clear that he was a leader. His men listened with rapt attention.
“We can find another way around,” Alexandra whispered.
Stella shook her head. “You don’t understand. They’re standing on top of the way in. I’m trying to figure out if they know that or not. If they do, we have a much bigger problem.”
Teddy waited, peering over Stella’s shoulder, holding his breath. To his horror, the men parted, and Fionn bent down and tipped up the grate in the ground below them, ushering his rebels into the secret passageway to the castle.
Stella gasped. There were too many rebels for the three of them to take on. There had to be at least fifty men, outfitted in high-end leather armor and beautiful weapons, not to mention the strong pulse of magic emanating from the group. At least some of them were witches. It would have been stupid to attack without knowing which ones had magic and what their strongest affinities were.
One of the rebels lifted his arm and Teddy spotted a glowing cuff on his wrist.
“It’s our magic they’re planning to use. That’s why the priestesses had us make so many. It wasn’t for the Games. It was for the rebellion,” Stella whispered.
Teddy swallowed down his fury. Much as he wanted to charge across the garden and rip those cuffs off of the men, he needed to be strategic. Even Alexandra, always eager for a fight, was holding completely still so as to not attract attention.
“Our father is expecting us to come through that passageway,” Alexandra whispered, peering at the men through the hedges. “What elements do those cuffs hold?”
“I gave fire and I’m assuming that Dixon would have given fire also?—”
“Did we not just watch him panic over fire on his shirt?” she interrupted.
“Yes, but I hit his head pretty hard. If he just woke up, he was probably disoriented, and he still had the cuff restricting his magic…” Teddy let his voice trail off, trying to get the image of Dixon out of his head.
Alexandra shifted, her gaze still fixed on the men who were now beginning to descend into the tunnel. “Once they’re all in, we need to follow them. We can pick them off one by one if we can do it quietly.”
The wait for the men to descend into the passageway was excruciating, and then they waited a full minute after the grate slipped back into place with a metallic clang before they darted across the garden. They rounded the large pool full of lily pads and lotus flowers.
A scrape of boots on gravel behind them drew Teddy up short. He spun and came face to face with two men in rebel regalia. Both had bows drawn and aimed at Stella and Alexandra.
39
STELLA
