But there’s a rigid tension stretched over the unit.
Steeds are dismounted ahead; torches impaled into the soil; bound and gagged humans are booted out of carts.
It’s when the humans are dragged up to the crown of the camp that the cold one rises, and behind him, Shark does, too.
Glass jumps off the post, boots thudding on the grass, and around, all the other warriors stand to attention.
Murmurs flood through the fae.
The warrior gives the softest tug of the tether. The gesture lures me off the headstone, sagged against my own exhaustion.
The unit rustles with movement.
All over, fae are getting to their feet, even the ones I thought were asleep, and in moments, everyone is facing the steed-warriors.
The post that’s usually at the head of camp, isn’t. The captives haven’t been released to work. So there’s no table, no throne, no post, no maps—just the general, and her shadow.
The cold one leans closer to me. “Watch.”
The command is spoken so quietly that it’s like a breath tickling through my hair.
My brow is still furrowed as I look ahead to the general.
That chalky diadem glitters on her scarlet hair, like crushed glass sprinkled through dark chalk, then wrapped around ropes of blood.
She stands firm, a blade in her hand. Something of a short sword, but glass-like and flaked with inky shards. It’s longer than my forearm, and the sight of it, the torchlight dancing menacingly over it, steels me.
She lifts it, inch by inch by inch, until the sharp point winks at the captive closest to her.
My heart is sinking as, slow, I drag my gaze to the woman—the stocky one who’s always moving around camp, doing the laundry.
Her face is always blotchy in the cold, but now it’s wet with tears all over. Snot bubbles at her mouth, the strip of cloth tied that muzzles her is soaked with her blubbering.
The guard with the chain-link cuffs moves for her—and the moment he snatches up the ropes binding her, a harrowed scream forces through the muffling of the cloth.
As she’s hoisted off the grass, I chance a look over my shoulder at the captives, but the exact moment my gaze lands on their wobbling, twisted faces, the air chills around me.
It’s the winter one, speaking without words, commanding without voice.
I heed the warning.
Whipping around, I force my stare to fix on the woman—and in a heartbeat, it happens.
No ceremony about it, no tortures, no drawn-out suffering, it just fucking happens.
The woman is thrown down to her knees. The general spins around once, swift, with the sword. The woman’s head is pulled back—and the sword is fucking impaled down her throat.
A strangled scream rises up my chest.
Before it can rip free, the cold of the warrior’s hand latches onto my throat. His grip cuts off any noise I might make, but it also cuts off all the blood going to my head, and so my skull is quick to start throbbing.
I can hardly hear the other gasps and muffled shouts over my blood pulsating in my eardrums.
But all I see is the sword being ripped out of a mouth, like a magic trick gone wrong, and blood sprays with it.
The retch jolts me.
It’s silent against the grip he has on my throat, but my shoulders jerk and ropes of nausea are lashing in me.
