I hoped so. If it were fire titans—much more powerful than nymphs and far less human, much harder to reason with—we were in trouble. One squadron alone wouldn’t be enough, even with three elementals in our ranks.
“A Unit, take the eastern buildings!” I shouted. “B Unit, the western buildings! C Unit, with me to the main house! Eliminate all hostiles, and rescue all the Roses you can find. Roses priority, staff disposable!”
No one hesitated. It was protocol, and the humans we’d allowed into our ranks over the last few weeks—to support the war effort and relieve us of our more menial duties—knew it as well as we did. If necessary, we would save ourselves and each other before we would save them.
Another flutter passed through me, a chill of bad feeling. Nerves? Memory? I kept expecting to see the Warden’s face rise up out of the darkness to stare at me in disappointment. A wild image flashed before my eyes: the Warden standing over me, prying open my mouth with both hands and pleading, “Tell me your secrets, Mara!”
I shook myself, furious and spooked. What was wrong with me?
“Mara?” Brigid cried from my right, a rare note of uncertainty in her voice.
I nodded sharply at her, then roared, “Deploy!”
As one, we dove ten feet and then split into three groups, hurtling toward the burning buildings below. My unit slammed into the front doors of the main house three times before they finally flew open. Someone had barred them from the inside. The entrance hall was deserted, but we heard screams from the corridors on either side, calling to us from deeper within the outpost.
“Caralind?” I shouted over my shoulder—one of the low-magic elementals on my team, and a good one. Earth was her affinity, not fire, but I hoped she would be able to read the signs well enough.
“Searching!” she replied, already surveying the room on quick gray wings. After a few seconds of examining the flames, she reported back breathlessly. “This fire is definitely nymph-made, not titan. But there’s something else here too. A magic I don’t recognize.”
The wordKilraithslithered through my mind with a vicious smile. I squashed it flat. I’d beaten him before; I could do it again.
“The nymphs who did this should be nearly burned out by now,” I said. “They won’t be much of a threat, but the fire will. Pair off in Ruby Formation. Each pair takes a hallway. You have your orders.”
I flew up the stairs, my partner—Caralind—racing up behind me. The air was scorching, the splintering floor even worse. Our feet were feathered and bore gleaming black talons, but they weren’t impervious to damage. Flames crawled up every wall; groaning rafters crashedto the floor. We turned a corner and recoiled, barely evading a small firestorm thundering down the hallway. I glimpsed a grinning face within its flames. Godsdamnednymphs. They couldn’t just let their fire be fire; they had to show off andanimateit.
Each room we came to was empty, and as we plunged deeper into the outpost, the flames grew and grew. The heat felt physical, a smothering force. A burning rafter crashed down right behind us, throwing us both to the floor and showering us with sparks.
“We have to turn back!” Caralind shouted, shaking embers from her wings. “The walls are buckling!”
She was right, but I couldn’t leave yet. If the Roses in the outpost were all dead, where were the bodies? And if they had fled, who was screaming? The shrieks were turning desperate, bordering on animal.
I pushed down the hallway toward the sound, raising one of my wings to shield my face. Through the smoke I saw a door I hadn’t noticed before, split in two by a section of fallen ceiling.
“Mara, get back!” Caralind cried.
“Someone’s in here!” I shouted back at her, hoping I was right. I peered into the room, and my heart dropped when I saw them: ten young girls, all new recruits I recognized at once. We’d sent them to Graystone earlier that week to prepare for their trials. And now they were huddled in the middle of the room, encircled by a ring of fire clearly controlled by the nymph standing in front of me. Except for her hair of flames, her fiery fingertips, and her impossibly bright blue eyes, she looked human. And on her face was naked desperation.
“Don’t come any closer,” she hissed. She thrust out a hand at me, the flames dancing at her fingers coalescing into a ball of flame. “I don’t want to kill you, but if you take another step, I’ll do it.”
My own fingers, hidden under my wings, itched to draw one of the arrows from the quiver strapped around my torso. Caralind spat out alow curse. I felt her elemental magic simmering behind me. She could use it to shift the ground under our area of the house, throwing the nymph off-balance. Then I could lunge and fling her against the wall so hard her fire would vanish and she’d never wake again.
“Please, help us!” screamed one of the recruits. They were drenched in sweat and tears, stained with smoke, overheated, coughing. I thought of Farrin as a child, how frightened she had been as Ivyhill had burned around her, and felt a spike of rage.
“Let them go,” I said, “and I’ll consider sparing your life.”
The nymph shook her head slowly, and with a slight turn of her wrist, the ring of fire around the recruits shrunk, roaring closer to them. The girls screamed, sobbed, clung to each other.
“I didn’t want to do this,” the nymph said. “He gave us no choice.”
The brightness of her hair and hands flickered, and her eyes dimmed. The effort of maintaining the ring of fire was draining her. Nymphs’ affinities ran in their blood, and they had only that to draw upon to manifest their elemental power. If she didn’t stop soon, she could burn herself out, even to the point of death.
I just had to keep her talking.
“Who gave you no choice?” I demanded, my mind shivering with his name.Kilraith, Kilraith.
“I cannot tell you,” she said, her voice cracking. Her eyes flared white, then blue again. “I want to, but Ican’t. Do you understand?”
Some sort of spellwork had hold of her tongue. I nodded. “Release the girls. You don’t need to die today.”
