A handful of figures burst out of the tunnel. Soldiers and Aiden, Maz, and Nikella.
I nearly sobbed with relief. They were alive. They’d made it.
But the mine was still collapsing, spewing stones at everyone on the wide beach.
The battle halted as the fighters raced for their ships. The soldiers retreated to their warship, and the Dags and fake Wolves splashed their way to our ship.
Maz threw an older woman over his shoulder and kept running toward the water. Spear in hand, Nikella snatched up a skinny girl and followed. Sprinting hard across the beach, Aiden seized the arm of a boy younger than Ruru.
A woman called out, thrashing in the water, trying to get to me. I swam toward her. An arrow grazed my cheek.
I jerked back. Rellmiran archers were still shooting from a corner of the beach. Until a massive chunk of the cliff crushed them.
I struggled toward the woman, then clasped her hand and towed her to the ship.
Maz had beaten me there. He carried the old woman all the way up the ladder. I let the other woman go first, then followed her on the slippery rungs. I glanced down once to see Nikella and Aiden and the people they’d saved below me.
We’re going to make it. We’re alive. The mine is dying. We saved as many prisoners as we could. We’ve won.
Rising hope pushed me up the last few rungs onto the ship. The deck was crowded with Dag warriors and half-dressed Shadow-Wolves and prisoners. People bled and cried in huddles. Skelly yelled from the captain’s wheel to get everyone below. Prisoners scuttled down the hatch.
The cliff devoured the beach and slammed rocks into the bay, violently shaking the ship.
“We need to get the fuck out of here!” Skelly roared.
A barrel with a lit fuse crashed onto the deck in front of me. My mind blanked.
Maz seized it and threw it over the railing. It exploded, raining bits of wood and boiling oil over us. I threw my arms over my head, whimpering as my skin burned.
“Fucking bastards!” Maz roared across the gap of water between us and the warship.
Yarina and Sigrid, in their Wolf garb but without masks, stepped up next to their brother and fired arrows at the soldiers.
Aiden and Nikella clambered onto the ship with the boy and the girl, whom they shoved down the hatch.
I snatched an abandoned bow off the deck and yanked an arrow from Yarina’s pouch.
“Good to see you, princess!” she shouted and loosed another arrow. It hit a soldier, sending him into the churning sea.
But they were loading the catapult with another lit barrel.
“Shoot the barrel soldiers!” I yelled, firing at one of the men. I missed. But Sigrid didn’t.
The barrel exploded in the soldiers’ faces.
Maz cheered, lifting his battle axe above his head. He beamed down at us.
Just as an arrow slammed into his chest.
Chapter 49
Aiden
All I heard wasKiera screaming. Endless and agonized, like her heart was being ripped from her chest.
I let go of the man I’d been helping into the hatch and whipped around.
Kiera held Maz in her lap, screaming and sobbing. He was so pale. So still. Blood covered his chest and side. An arrow.
