“Tomaz,” the Prince said. His mind helplessly began imagining what kind of treatment Leah would undergo if she made it to Formaux, into the hands of his brother Tiffenal. The thought of seeing her at the mercy of the Prince of Foxes was enough to make him sick to his stomach. “Tomaz, your people will come for her, won’t they? Isn’t there some way to get her back?”
“NO!” the giant roared. He strode forward, pulled his sword from the tree trunk with wrenching, bone-breaking power, and swung it around in an enormous arc, to sink it into the side of another tree, a tall redwood, where itstuck fast, quivering. He let go of the hilt and fell to his knees, covering his face with his hands.
“Once she is in one of the capital cities, she will be disavowed,” he said, his voice heavy with despair. “She will not be rescued. She will be mourned as if she were already dead, though she may cling to life for years to come.”
The Prince stood stock-still, unable to wrap his mind around what the man was saying. The girl had always seemed… untouchable. No matter what danger had been thrown at her, she had dealt with it quickly and efficiently. Following him undetected through Banelyn, dispatching Death Watchmen in the Elmist Mountains….
And she had rescued him. From the bowels of a Seeker’s lair. She had rescued him. He, who wouldn’t have lifted a finger to save her.
Now you are your own weapon. Now you have a choice.
He spun to face the Defenders. Five of them, all told. Five of them.
What matters is what you use it for.
The Defender was watching Tomaz with evil glee. “Yes. Now you see. The Empire cannot be defied. Make your peace with whatever god you pray to, Exile, for there is nothing you can do to bring her back.”
“Nothing he can do,” the Prince said softly. “But something I can do.”
The Defender shifted his gaze to the Prince, and his smile faltered and became uncertain. The Prince reached beneath his drape-over, feeling the cold wire-wrapped hilt of the dagger Leah had given him.
“What canyoudo?” the man sneered.
“I can kill you. Because what you don’t know is that you’re right. She is worth ten of me. And she’s also certainly worth five of you.”
The Prince walked forward and slammed the dagger into the Defender’s chest, piercing his heart.
Immediately, the man’s life was added onto the Prince’s own. He staggered under the weight of the man’s memories even as he forced them to the farcorner of his mind along with the bloodlust that came from the man’s zealotry. His limbs flooded with strength and the world leapt forward as his eyesight improved; the smell of the trees and grass and the stink of the Defenders’ bodies filled his nose; the sounds of skittering wildlife and calling birds suddenly seemed far too loud and close.
The Prince turned to the other four Defenders. Without pausing to think, he stepped to each of them in turn and cut their throats.
Their lives fell on him one by one. His heart began to beat so quickly and to pound so forcefully that he felt it might jump right out of his chest. He felt as though he could leap to the top of any of the tall trees surrounding them; he could see the veins of each individual leaf, hear insects buzzing and birds calling to each other what seemed like miles away. His blood was on fire with power and life.
He had never absorbed so many lives at a single time. He reeled under the memories as they crowded against his own—memories of home towns, of childhood sweethearts, of murders and beatings they had committed in the name of the Empress. He focused on those—on their evil deeds—and used them to fuel his anger and his need to save the girl who had saved him.
“What are you doing?” Tomaz asked, shocked.
“Bringing her back,” the Prince said.
He grabbed two swords from the dead Defenders, one a long hand-and-a-half sword, the other a short stabbing sword. They felt no heavier than twigs. He reached out, questing for the life of the distant Defenders and the Exile girl.
His mind, powered by the deaths, shot out farther than it had ever gone. There was a woodsman several miles to the east. There were two women moving to the south. There were several small bands of what must be families off to the west in a little town.
And there, a mile or more north, a band of soldiers and a girl—flashes of green and silver, the sound of steel cutting silk—moving steadily away.
He set off at a run, his feet digging deep trenches in the soft ground as he shot through the forest with inhuman speed. Trees flashed by him to either side at an astounding rate. Each of his strides covered nearly ten feet, his bounds leaving long gouges in the earth.
He didn’t know how long he ran for, following the life energy of the fleeing Defenders, but as he ran the sun moved overheard, and he felt more than saw the forest take note of his passing. He was a phantom—a blurred wraith made of six men but controlled by the anger of one. He ran faster and harder and longer than he ever had, dodging fallen trees, running up the side of hills, leaping streams, all with barely any effort, all while focused on that distant point of life in front of him, that single beating heart that belonged to a girl with green eyes and raven hair.
And finally, just as his stolen strength began to wane, he caught the scent of horses and the sweat of men in rusty armor.
He pushed himself even harder, passing through the forest so quickly that he left whirlwinds of leaves swirling in his wake. Without warning, the forest ended, and he was running across a grassy plain that stretched out several hundred yards before ending in another line of trees.
And silhouetted against that plain was his quarry.
The squad of Defenders rode in a tight knot, with Leah, bound and gagged, struggling and bucking wildly against her restraints, at its center. As he watched, one of the Defenders turned to her and carelessly backhanded her across the face. The blow was so hard that it struck her temporarily still, and if it hadn’t been for the ropes binding her to the saddle, she would have been sent tumbling to the ground.
The Prince growled deep in his chest, and the bloodlust of the Defenders he had killed rose up inside him like a tide and swept him away before it.
