The air changes, and I realize the scravers have paused. Several of them hover nearby. They’re watching us.
They know we don’t have much left.
As if they can read my thoughts, the ones waiting by the barn take to the air as well.
Quick as the lightning he just drew from the sky, Tycho moves to my side. “Alek,” he snaps, like I’m a soldier he can command. “Cover the queen. Now.”
I inhale to object, but then I meet his eyes, and I read the bleaknessthere. I see his exhaustion. I feel the way the wind has dwindled. There’s no more thunder, no more lightning. No more snow.
He doesn’t expect to survive the next five minutes.
“If they take the queen,” he says, “they’ve taken Syhl Shallow.”
I give him a nod, then grab hold of Callyn’s wrist. “You too,” I say to her. “Come on.”
I expect her to resist or to argue, but maybe she hears it in his voice, too. She scrambles after me.
Screeching erupts in the air, and it’s so loud and piercing I nearly drop my sword. Callyn gasps beside me.
“There are so many of them,” she breathes.
I can’t look. I don’twantto look. Panic is a living thing in my chest, gripping my heart with claws.
The queen meets me at the doorway. “Your Majesty,” I say. “Move to the back of the house.Run.”
“We will stand and fight,” she says to me, her voice equally fierce.
“Then you will lose your country,” I say, and she blanches. I move to shove her back from the doorway, just as a shadow falls over the forge. Callyn sucks in a breath, jerking free of my grip. Her sword raises, and I don’t even need to look to know. The scravers are descending all at once. Ice forms on every exposed surface from their magic, wind swirling through the space to lift my hair and cool my cheeks.
We’re going to die.
I feel it with a certainty I’ve never known before. Not even the day I was attacked with Callyn. It gives my thoughts new clarity. Time slows. My breathing deepens. I shove the queen through the doorway and whirl to block, prepared to brace with my sword and dagger.
My eyes don’t see scravers anymore. Just wings and fangs and claws. Certain death for Tycho and Jax. For the Emberish soldiers. For me and Callyn.
But then one of the winged bodies jerks in the air. Not once, buttwice. An arrow appears in the side of its chest, and it falls out of the sky. Then another one falls, two arrows piercing its chest, too. Then a third, arrows slicing into its wings from behind.
The other scravers begin to change course, realizing they’re under attack from behind, but there are too many archers— or too many arrows. Within seconds, the scraver bodies drop in front of the forge.
None of us even had a chance to swing a blade.
The sudden silence is louder than the thunder was. We’re all still braced, weapons ready. No more snow swirls, the air returning to midsummer warmth. It’s already melting in the lane.
And then, with absolutely no fanfare, a handful of Emberish soldiers slip out of the shadows between the trees on either side of the lane.
To my absolute shock, one of them is the king.
Beside me, Callyn gasps. Tycho says, “Grey,” and he sounds stunned.
And then the queen is shoving past me, dropping her weapons in the dirt, all but scrambling over the fallen trees and the bodies of scravers and charred debris to get to him. The king strides forward, doing the same. A sob breaks free of her throat, and then she throws her arms around his neck. He catches her so tightly thatIfeel something in my chest clench, and my throat grows tight. Callyn must feel it, too, because she gives my hand a squeeze.
“Don’t you feel it?” she whispers to me. “They shouldn’t be apart.”
“I do,” I murmur— and I hate myself, but it’s true.
The queen’s voice is nothing more than a hitching breath against the king’s neck, so we can’t hear what she’s saying. But it doesn’t matter. The king’s voice is low and sure and soothing, as if we’re not surrounded by the remains of a violent and bloody battle.
“You’re safe now,” he’s saying. “I’m here. I’m here.”
