Her heart hammered against her ribs. She forced her legs to move, her boots crunching on fallen debris as she joined him at another slit a few feet away. The narrow opening was a stone tunnel into a nightmare. The compound was a sea of torches and angry, shouting men. They formed ranks, their faces grim in the flickering light.
Then, the rhythm began.
It started as a synchronized shuffling of feet. Eight large men emerged from the gloom. Suspended between them was a massive, freshly felled pine log, stripped of its branches.
The first blow struck the door with a force that shook the dust from the ceiling rafters.
The stone beneath Gessa’s feet vibrated with the impact. The concussion rattled her teeth. She stumbled back, her hand flying to the wood behind her as if she could hold it together through will alone.
The second blow followed, heavier than the first. The sound was a dull, wet thud of wood compressing against wood, a noise like a giant’s fist striking a coffin lid.
A spiderweb of fractures appeared in the oak. Ky pulled her back, grip firm. For a fleeting second, his eyes met hers, a silent, fierce promise passing between them before he positioned her near the base of the spiraling stone staircase, his body a shield between her and the entrance.
“Stay here,” he commanded, his eyes not on her, but on the groaning door. “If they get through, run. Go up.”
The third blow brought the sound of torture. The oak screamed. Splintering wood cut through the damp air. A jagged fissure split the center of the door, and a sliver of torchlight pierced the darkness, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the room.
The shouting outside grew louder, a triumphant roar. They were moments away from breaking through. This was it. This was the end of their tiny island of defiance. She tightened her grip on the sword, her knuckles white. If she was to die here, it would not be as his property. It would be as the woman who set him on fire.
Suddenly, a new sound sliced through the roar of the mob.
Not the dull thud of the ram. A high, ripping whistle—a volley of arrows.
The men holding the battering ram simply dropped. The huge log crashed to the ground, pinning legs and crushing feet, followed immediately by the chaotic shrieks of men realizing they were being hunted.
Ky, who had been braced for the door’s final collapse, froze. His head snapped toward the arrow slit.
“What is it?” Gessa breathed, her own fear momentarily forgotten, replaced by a wild curiosity.
Ky didn’t answer immediately. He was still, staring through the slit, his eyes scanning the periphery of the camp. “The courier,” he whispered, his voice thick with disbelief. “He actually made it.”
The tunnel.
The memory flashed in Gessa’s mind—the lean man standing his ground in the ravine while arrows flew, the way the air had warped around him as he dove into the shimmering distortion. He hadn’t run into the woods; he had stepped into the veins of the world.
“He reached the outpost,” she realized, the impossibility of the timeline suddenly making sense. No army could march this fast. “They came through the Lines.”
Ky let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-growl. “He opened the door and let the wolves in.”
Gessa scrambled back to her vantage point, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
The scene outside was pure chaos. The organized ranks were gone, scattered. Men were running, not toward the tower, but away from the main gate. And there, illuminated by the burning remains of the tents, sat the young messenger who had fled days ago, near the tree line, pointing frantically toward the tower.
And pouring past him was the storm.
In the center of the compound, motion blurred. A flash of something enormous and brown and wild: a horse, bigger than any stallion she had ever seen, its hooves striking sparks against the stone as it trampled a bandit. On its back was a rider, a figure moving with fluid, deadly grace, their Spur blade a blur of silver in the torchlight.
Then another. A pair of massive, grey wolfhounds, tearing through the panicked men. A flash of white—a swan’s wing, impossibly large.
The Iron Spurs were here.
The pounding on the door had stopped. The shouts of Polan’s men had turned into screams of terror. Through the narrow stone slit, the battle was a series of violent fragments: a glimpse of a familiar fighting stance, the flash of an Academy-forged blade, the impossible forms of Soul Beasts wreaking havoc.
She turned to Ky, and for the first time since he had been dragged into Polan’s tent, the mask was gone. The broken prisoner, the cold tactician—they had vanished. In the sliver of light cutting through the splintered door, his face was split by a grin—sharp, savage, and alive.
He looked at her, his eyes shining with a ferocity that made her breath hitch.
“Do you hear that, Gessa?” he whispered, the sound vibrating through the hand he still held tight.
