He was sure he looked like a madman standing on that roof, smudged head to toe with soot to turn his brown hair black and dulling the color of his borrowed armor from bright Arathian red to muddy brick.
The witch Talia widened her eyes. “There are two of them.”
Skatia narrowed hers. “Nowthereis your phantom, Sisters.”
The Drakmori captain now with them barked, “Bring him down!”
“No!” Dane shouted, horror writing itself across his face. “Hedley!”
One of the other witches peeled back her lips and snarled, “Do not waste your arrows.”
But the Drakmori didn’t listen. Their bows lifted. Their strings snapped taut.
A barrage of arrows sailed through the air toward him.
Ignoring the projectiles, Hedley dropped and rolled straight off the roof, plunging himself into freefall for a few dizzying moments before he landed hard. Inelegant. His hands and knees slammed into the stone of the square with a sickening force. He should have broken something.
He didn’t.
His Arathian sickle-blade—a khopesh he now knew it was called—still hung at his hip. But he snatched up an abandoned halberd from the pile of the dead anyway as he rose to his feet. The witches watched him with open wariness, their golden eyes sparkling in the swiftly fading light. The Drakmori exchanged confused glances.
Dane stared.
“Release the prisoner,” Hedley instructed, addressing the witches rather than the Drakmori.
One of them, whom he was entirely too familiar with and yet still did not know her name, arched an eyebrow. “Or what, phantom?”
He leveled the point of his polearm at the hulking brute standing at her side, eyes dull. Dead. “Or I’ll decapitate that puppet of yours just like I did your last.”
The air around the witch shifted. The acrid tang of witchfire crackled on the wind.
Hedley bolted for the nearest alleyway just as a bout of flame engulfed the space where he had been standing a mere second ago. The heat of it lapped against his back, threatening to singe what remained of his already tattered and scorched cloak.
Come to me!Skatia’s voice boomed within his mind again, sending him stumbling, threatening to drive him to his knees.You insolent fool. Come to me at once!
Drawing in a shaky breath, Hedley kept running and dove down the next street, prepared to loop back around and return to the square from another vantage point. He had to get Dane. They had to get out of there before even more troops arrived.
Behind him, a man’s voice rang out in a wordless shout. Shooting a glance over his shoulder, he caught sight of an Arathian patrol further down the way, looking straight at him.
He cursed beneath his breath.
Too late.
Please, Lord.He had no plan. No idea what he was doing. But still he ran full tilt back into the square, halberd at the ready. Closer to Dane this time.
Closer to the witches, too.
The pile of dead no longer separated them—only a wall of umber flesh and hard muscle. Their witchsworn. Hedley narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t handle them all. Killing one two weeks ago had nearly done him in, too.
The Drakmori captain lunged for Dane and grabbed him by the hair, hauling him to his feet. “Make another move, ‘phantom,’ and I will slit your doppelganger’s throat.”
Finally.An opportunity they could use.
Hedley’s gaze ticked toward his brother.
Without a word, Dane slammed the back of his head into the Drakmori’s face, breaking the other man’s nose.
Chaos erupted.
