“Come out, Vednis. I’ve got a little surprise for you.” Again, Ricca’s voice wrapped around her like a net, ready to pull taut. Lory shook the feeling off, exchanging a glance with Aiden, whose blade was shimmering now in his other hand.
“Is hiding even an option?” she asked in a whisper, trying to measure the distance to the next set of rocks up the mountain.
Aiden shook his head. “If it’s only two or three of them, we’d better confront them. Odds are we can run after we decimate them.”
“And by decimate, you mean kill,” Lory confirmed without waiting for a nod of his head that wouldn’t come. Aiden had crossed that line before—a line Lory had managed to keep, even when she knew killing was to become her job if she survived the next fifteen or so hours.
“Whatever it takes,” Thal said from her other side. “We won’t die here tonight.”
“There’s another one,” Tabi interrupted, her eyes opening just long enough to find Lory’s as the clouds retreated above them, and the soft light of the moon and stars drenched the night in a silvery glow. “Two more.”
Aiden’s throat bobbed, and Thal’s hand started shaking, blade quivering in front of him. But Tabi’s focus didn’tbreak. “Two more over there,” she gestured east. “Guardians. There are six total.”
Six. They were outnumbered.Not outmatched, a feeble voice attempted consolation, perhaps encouragement, but Lory shut it out. It didn’t matter if she could burn the mountains to dust; she couldn’t risk hurting her friends in the process. If she could lure some of the attackers away from them, she could give Aiden, Thal, and Tabi a fighting chance.
“I’m not going to wait forever, Vednis. Come out, or we’ll kill off your friends one by one.”
“Wait, there are two more.” Lory held her breath as Tabi seemed to be counting in her head. “Eight.” She confirmed with a nod. “I can’t feel any farther out than that.” Her hands had wandered to her blade, drawing it soundlessly while, with her other hand, she kept weaving patterns until a scream tore the air not twenty feet from them, and a grin split Tabi’s face. “Seven.”
Lory didn’t dare ask what Tabi had done with the eighth, too afraid of the answer, but a faint glow of magic at Tabi’s fingers informed her that her odd gift of manipulating human bodies had something to do with it.
A curt nod passed between Aiden and her as the ice wielder slowly straightened, peeking over the edge of the rocks. “This is a good place to hide from the elements and get a good night’s sleep, but with seven long-range, weapon-wielding magic users out there, we’re sitting ducks.”
“All right.” Lory suppressed the fire stirring in her veins as her fear festered into panic. “What do you suggest?” Andbefore he could get any ideas, she insisted, “I’m not running unless you do, too.”
A wicked grin flashed across Aiden’s face. “Not a chance.” Instead of sending his magic flying, he extinguished the gleaming crystals with a snap of his fingers, bending down to grab a fistful of gravel and throwing it out into the night. “Let’s see what sort of powers we’re dealing with—then we’ll figure out how to defeat them.”
All four of them held their breath as roots whipped through the air, not five feet from them, gusts of air rushed through the bushes, and some of the rocks never hit the ground, hovering, suspended mid-air as if held there by invisible fingers.
“Nyla’s root-wielding, a matter manipulator with the gift to direct rock, and air magic,” Tabi spelled it out for them, her free hand still weaving patterns, a sigh on her lips. “I wish I could sense the type of magic in a body. That would make prioritizing whoever I take out a lot easier.”
The fact that Thal hadn’t asked a single question about Tabi’s powers let Lory guess he was in on the secret.
“As long as you take out anyone, I don’t care what sort of magic they have,” Aiden whispered, eyes on the hovering rocks.
“Nice try, Vednis,” Ricca purred from much closer than Lory had anticipated, and this time, her voice didn’t disperse in all directions—only one, and as it wrapped around her limbs, holding fast, Lory knew that the short, graceful ashling was even more dangerous than she’d imagined.
Heart leaping into her throat, Lory strained against the invisible bonds as the echoes of Ricca’s voice trailed away. And for each bit it faded, the hold of her voice weakened.
“Her magic makes her voice into a physical entity as long as it’s resonating in the air, almost like she can grasp things with the echoes she creates,” she said, quickly sharing her assessment with the others.
Thal shot her a glance—“Wicked.”—while Aiden frowned. “Let’s hope she hasn’t learned how to shape it into a blade, or she’ll be able to slit our throats without even looking at us.
“Come out, Vednis, or should I drag you?”
This time, Lory was prepared. She ducked under the voice, flattening herself against the ground, and as the echoes rolled through the air like lapping waves searching for something to trap, she slithered a few feet to the side, taking tally of her limbs and breathing deeply as all of them moved freely.
“Apparently, it’s restricted to location. If she doesn’t know where we are, she can’t directly aim it. Keep on the move.”
Without waiting for confirmation, Lory took off in the opposite direction of Ricca’s voice, waving the others along toward the cluster of trees half a mile up the mountain. Aiden was right: Here, they were sitting ducks without knowing where their attackers were hiding. The only way to lure them out was to give away their own location and lead them into the open before disappearing into a new hideout.
She didn’t care whether Aiden, Thal, or Tabi approved. Giving the others a chance to sneak up on them wasn’t going to happen.
“Can you take them out while running?” Lory asked Tabi over her shoulder, her magic simmering beneath her skin.
“I can try.” Together, they sprinted up the hill, feet slipping on the gravel path, but with a glance back, Lory confirmed there were at least five shapes following them, all of them nearly melting into the night with their black uniforms, but the occasional flash of moonlight bouncing off a blade gave them away as clearly as in daylight.
A streak of light split the night as lightning struck in front of Lory’s feet, and she nearly stumbled into Aiden, who’d sped to her side, catching her by the elbow and setting her back on her feet.
