A couple of the others laughed. I did not. The wordfamilystuck in me like a splinter.
“A motley crew,” Brigid observed. “That’s odd.”
“Enough chatter,” the Warden said. “We’ll dive on my command. Ruby Formation.”
I couldn’t let it go: afamilyof griffins.
Freyda, flying off to my left, suddenly let out a chirp and dove down into the Mist. A few seconds later, she returned with an urgent cry and pushed her head against my sternum, as if warning me away.
My blood turned cold. Something was wrong.
“Wait,” Cira said, squinting. “I count twelve hostiles, no more than that. Far fewer than we thought. And they’re not doing anything. They’re just gathered in what must be the village square. I see humans, I see—”
“Children,” said Brigid, her voice clipped. “Madam, your orders?”
The Warden didn’t answer. We were close enough now that we could plainly see what awaited us: not a village in ruins, but one still standing. The columns of smoke were coming from chimneys. This far north, winter was in full force. Snow already blanketed the ground, and icy wind bit my cheeks as we emerged from the cover of the Mist, but I hardly noticed the cold.
My full attention was on the village below. The square was crowded with humans and hostiles alike, but as Cira had said, the hostiles were hardly that. No one was running or screaming. There was no violence here. And in the crowd I saw many small figures among the taller ones. There was a griffin bull with two pups clinging to his back. The siren Cira had seen held an infant in her arms. A quartet of wood nymphs stood nearby with pine needles in their hair and moss coatingtheir feet. One was on the older side, her skin wrinkled and her posture hunched. The other three were much smaller. They couldn’t have been more than five years old.
I scanned the rest of the scene frantically. The furiants, with their luminescent palms and glowing white eyes, weren’t using their powers of the mind to hurl objects at the villagers. They were sitting at a table instead, sharing a meal with them. And the figment? When I found him, my heart sank. As Cira had described, a shimmer of illusion outlined the human male form he’d assumed, but he wasn’t trying to deceive the villagers. He was sitting beside a small, pale child, beautiful and copper-eyed—a vampyr, though I could see no others of her kind. He held her hand while one of the villagers bandaged her leg.
Another man—a human man—had spotted us and was standing on a crate, waving his arms. He was hollering something, and though I couldn’t make out the words, his meaning was plain enough.Stop. Wait.Others noticed him and began to do the same. The griffin plucked the pups from his back and stepped in front of them, his body a shield. The siren held her infant to her chest and ran. And even though my wings propelled me ever forward, I felt frozen with dread.
Somehow I managed to speak. “Madam, we must abort, they’re not—”
“Now!” the Warden cried.
In an instant she was gone, diving fast toward the panicking crowd, and we all did the same, falling into Ruby Formation with the automatic movements honed by countless hours of drills.
But I broke ranks, going after the Warden instead. I would ram her if I had to. This was a mistake; her intelligence was wrong. These Oldens were not hostiles. They were refugees, and clearly the villagers of Sablemire had formed some kind of alliance with them. But the Warden was deadly fast, speeding out of my grasp like a shining black arrow before I could get close enough to stop her.
She went for the vampyr first. One moment the child was sitting between the healer and the figment, watching our descent with alarm. The next, the Warden grabbed her by the arm with her shining black talons and flung her into the nearest building. Her body hit the wall with a sickening crack before dropping to the ground. She did not get up.
I whirled around and spread my wings wide. “Abort!” I cried. “Abort,now!”
And for a moment the squadron obeyed. Cira drew up short; Brigid turned to block the others, echoing my command.
But then I heard a furious howl behind me. I whipped my head around to see the Warden darting through the crowd in a blur of black. The griffin reared up to meet her, but she was faster than he was, and he was a distracted father. She swooped around him, plucked one of his pups from the ground by the scruff of his neck, and seemed ready to toss him as she had done the vampyr child. But then she looked up and saw me, and she paused for a heartbeat. Her eyes locked with mine—hers round and gold, crowned with furrowed feathers—and I thought I saw the hint of a smile flit across her face.
Her hesitation gave the griffin bull enough time to whirl around and knock her from the air with one massive lion’s paw.
The pup dropped into the cradle of his waiting wings, and the Warden went flying. She skidded across the ground and crashed through the door of a nearby cottage.
That was all it took: the sight of the Warden reduced to a limp pile of black feathers.
Behind me, my squadron let out a chorus of furious war cries. The blood fever that drove us through battle after battle, year after year, had seized them. Our Warden was hurt. And an Olden invader had been the one to do it.
The griffin lunged at us, claws outstretched. The furiants leapt to their feet, eyes and hands blazing, and flung their table at us with theforce of a slingshot. Their chairs followed, then the doors they ripped from every building on the square using only the power of their minds. I threw myself to the ground just in time. A spinning windowpane zipped past my head before crashing into the building behind me. My fellow Roses tore past me, their familiars scurrying and flying alongside them. I could hear only the sounds of battle—the roars of my sisters, the roar of the griffin, and the roar of my own blood.
I had a choice to make and only a split second in which to make it.
I could stop this now, somehow, even though I feared the moment for that had died along with the vampyr child, or I could fight.
Behind me, Caralind screamed in pain. Brigid roared my name. She needed my help. The Warden still wasn’t moving. And my bones were singing for blood, just as my training had taught them to.
If I tried to call off my sisters, I might lose them. I might lose the Warden.
I had lost enough. The furious thought ripped through me like lightning. I had lostenough.
