We made it across the river and onto the far bank when the camp erupted behind us. From the far side, a plume of fire and smoke shot into the sky—their communications tent, by the looks of it, going up in a controlled explosion.
Thorne and Slade.
I felt the pulse of Slade’s shadow-walking tug, distant butunmistakable, as he blinked someone—several someones—out of that firestorm. Relief slammed into me as hard as fear.
They were alive.
For now.
“Keep going,” Aurelia said. “We can’t help them if we get ambushed on this hill.”
I kept running, uphill, zigzagging around the thick brush that blocked a straight ascent.
We were almost to the far slope.
Another horn blared, ahead of us, not behind.
“Patrol on the outer ring,” Aurelia said. “We’re going to run through them.”
Lesha stirred weakly in my arms, a faint sound scraping from her throat.
“Almost there,” I murmured to her. “Stay with us.”
We slid through a narrow opening in the brush—and nearly collided with a wall of pale leather and ice.
A line of Frostwights, moving in eerie, perfect unison. White armor, masks like featureless moons, blades of blue-white ice burning in their hands. Behind them, a handful of Obsidians stood, eyes black and eager for our deaths. Thanks to Brist, they’d likely been waiting for us here all along.
One of the Frostwights lifted its arm, pulling its ice-spear back and aiming its sharpened tip at us.
“Get down,” I called.
I dropped, twisting my body to shield Lesha as a spear of ice screamed through the space where our heads had been.
It landed impaled in the hardened ground behind us.
Aurelia rolled away, coming up on one knee. Flame spiraled from her hand, flaring into a wide arc that forced the nearest Frostwights to halt. The fire didn’t burn as quickly as it should have—it clung to their armor, eating at it slowly, hungrily.
Her mark flared bright, pulling.
I felt it again.
“Leave them!” I shouted. “We don’t have time?—”
A Frostwight stepped through the fire.
It reached for her.
I surged to my feet, shadows whipping out like chains. They wrapped around the thing’s arm, trying to pull it off course, but the cold that met my power was like nothing I’d felt before. It crawled up my shadows, burning them away in shards of frozen darkness.
“Rydian.” Aurelia’s voice snapped through my head like a whip. “Go! Get her to the cave. I’ll hold them.”
I looked at the slope, at the line of Frostwights, at the obsidian-eyed soldiers moving in a tightening circle.
Leaving her here went against every instinct I had.
“I won’t?—”
She turned on me, furyfire roaring up her arms, eyes gone molten. “Go,” she growled. “I’ll be right behind you.”
