“Come on, you need to get out,” I said hurriedly, offering my hand. I pulled them both up and we rushed out the door, keeping low to the ground and the shadows of the street.
“Do you see them? Heading toward that building?” I pointed, and the woman nodded. “Follow them. They’ll keep you safe.”
I watched as they scurried off, then made my way from house to house, rounding up any straggler I could find and sending them off as swiftly and inconspicuously as possible.
Exiting one of the houses, I was almost trampled by an oncoming horse and carriage making its way west.
A black carriage.
The back of it contained rows of steel bars, with men, women, and children crammed inside, hands flailing out the space between rods as if trying to get free.
A face stared back at me from behind the cage. A face I knew as well as my own.
“Beau!” I shrieked, throwing myself into the street and racing after the carriage. For a moment, it flickered, and I blinked against the mirage, holding my hand out as if I could catch him.
A female Veridian guard flew into view. She grabbed onto my outstretched arm, blocking Beau and the carriage from sight. I screamed at her and pulled out of her grip so I could get to my cousin, but her next words made me stop.
“Were you helping those people get to the shelter?”
I slid my focus to her as she gestured to the building behind us. “Y-yes,” I gasped, my mind spinning. “They’re?—”
She shook my shoulders. “They’re going to blow it up! I heard a Mysthelm soldier say they’re planning to drop an explosive on it. We have to get them out!” she insisted, dragging me with her back toward the building.
Away from Beau.
I ripped my arm away. “I c-can’t,” I pleaded. “My family?—”
“Didn’t you see how many people were being led there?” Her voice was frantic. “We can’t leave them to be slaughtered!”
My neck snapped to the direction the carriage had gone in, pulse pounding so hard I felt it in my palms, my ears, my gut.
I closed my eyes against the destruction around me.
I knew I should save the mass of innocent lives holed away in that building—many of whichI’dput there under the promise of safety.
But my heart…
My heart was stuck behind the bars of a cage, barreling toward an unknown fate.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered weakly, and took off after my cousin.
38
Rose
The scent of blood, copper, and sweat spun around me as I ran through a village blanketed in red and steel, cries of the slaughtered and helpless ringing in my ears, fading away with each breath. Each blink. Each heartbeat.
For a moment, all sound ceased entirely.
I watched the violence unfold but was unable to hear it, like there was some sort of veil between myself and my surroundings. In the next second, it all rushed back, and I shook the strange sensation off.
The carriage was heading west. There was no way I’d ever be able to keep up on foot. Spotting a saddled, dapple-gray horse tied to its post off the side of a stable, I sped to it and pocketed my dagger, hastily untying the reins and trying in vain to calm the frightened creature. He pawed at the ground, his muscles shaking as he snorted at me with flared nostrils.
“I know, boy—I know it’s scary,” I murmured, my voice a tremor, my trembling hand reaching out to stroke his nose. Wide, brown eyes locked on mine. “But I need you to help me save my family, okay?”
When I was certain he wouldn’t buck me off the second I triedto mount, I stuck my foot in the stirrup and swung my leg over his back. Steering him in the direction of the carriage, we fled past torn bodies and shrieking children, past growling Shifters and blood-thirsty men.
Wind whistled through my hair, and soon, the sound of rushing water grew increasingly louder over the cacophony behind us. The Scarre River, I remembered from my trek here during the first trial. I urged the horse faster until the dark wood and metal of the back of a carriage came into view.
