I covered my mouth as a horrified cry worked its way up my throat. I recognized the men and women from the times I’d come to visit Ragnar, now slumped lifelessly in their beds, blood bubbling from their slit throats.
Blindly, I tore through the wing, past bodies of nurses and broken furniture.
I stopped before a familiar bed.
My knees hit the hard floor, sending a shockwave up my legs and spine.
Ragnar.
His right arm hung off the side of the bed, his head bent at an unnatural angle on the pillow. Blood dripped from his neck and pooled on the stark white sheets.
I screamed.
I screamed until my throat was raw and my head pounded from exertion. Until the sound became a strangled whisper.
I screamed, but there was no one there to hear.
I was spiraling, caught between the past and present, between my father’s glassy eyes and my uncle’s closed lids, between my little hands soaked in blood and the fingers now clawing at my tear-soaked eyes. I felt my invisibility spell drop, but didn’t care. I couldn't breathe, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move?—
Where were Morgana and Beau?
That single, penetrating thought was the only thing that pulled me from the darkness. The image of my aunt’s raven hair and cousin’s gangly arms gave me strength to rise from my knees and follow the path out of the infirmary. The hope of finding them safe and secure in their room kept me floating across the hall as if in a daze until I reached their door and twisted the handle.
It was unlocked.
I threw myself into the room, tearing and scrabbling and stumbling through every nook and cranny, calling their names until I didn’t recognize the sound.
Nobody was there.
They were gone.
“My lady!” a voice sounded behind me, and I rounded on them like a feral cat, slamming my hand against the stranger’s throat and shoving him into the wall by the door.
“Where are they?” I snarled.
The man sputtered beneath my hold, and I loosened my grip. “Civilians were—were taken hostage,” he finally got out. I released his neck and staggered backward, the backs of my knees hitting the bed.
“Hostage? Where did they take them?”
“W-we don’t know, my lady.” He rubbed at his throat. “Our guards saw a black carriage carrying some toward the central sector. We think that’s where the attack originated.”
Hostage.
Central sector.
Black carriage.
I stormed from the room and retraced my steps to the main hall, my normal charm of amaranth stem mixed with mistletoe and blackthorn ash already on my tongue. When I grabbed my dagger from my waist, the weight of it settled something in me. Alchemists didn’t rely much on weapons of steel, but Ragnar had taught Beau and me from a young age how to wield basic swords and daggers. “Never be so confident in magic that you fail to use all tools at your disposal,” he would say.
I would not fail.
As I rushed toward the palace entrance, a band of four soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms rounded on me, their swords raised high and glistening red. Mysthelm, I presumed.
I didn’t even have a chance to feel fear. Not formyself. Not when all my dread was consumed in thoughts of what could be happening to my innocent aunt and cousin at that very moment.
I slipped an angelica leaf into my mouth, its sweet licorice taste mingling with the amaranth protection spell.
“Incendar,” I muttered, and my open palm filled with fire, mildly warm against my skin but deadly to my foes.
