A blood signature flickered to life behind her just as the sound of hooves drummed along the pavement. Ana turned to see a Bregonian commander riding toward her. Half his face was drenched in blood. Beyond him, the riverside promenade to the left of the Kateryanna Bridge was afire, and as Ana watched, flaming arrows—visible as tiny flickers of light—launched from the Palace walls.
“Red Tigress,” the commander panted, drawing to a stop before her. “We’re losing ground. The Palace is retaliating with fire-tipped arrows that explode—half my battalion is down—”
Ana looked to the front gates, hesitating. The key to a battle was for every unit, down to each individual soldier, to fulfill their duties and carry out their orders. Improvisation, her commanders had advised her, was the downfall of strategy.
The moment cost her.
The ground shook as an explosion thundered behind them, from the sector where the commander had come from. She was barely aware of her valkryf shrieking, dust and debris fogging the air; all that she could sense was blood pooling across an entire field, countless bodies lying in the snow, cooling.
Red unfurled across her vision; she could sense the power in her siphon writhing, begging to be unleashed.
Ana wrenched on the reins of her valkryf, turning it toward the riverside promenade, and dug her heels in its sides. Ramson had always called her impulsive, quick-tempered, and stubborn. Morganya had pointed out that Ana’s inability to let people suffer was also her greatest weakness.
Yet standing behind and watching as people fighting underhername died was not the way of Anastacya Mikhailov.
She drew her valkryf to a sharp stop. One sweep of her blood Affinity told her that the entire riverside promenade was choked in blood, its scent at once intoxicating and nauseating. There were bodies buried in the snow, some half moving as she passed by, their moans haunting.
Ana called on the fire Affinity in her siphon, and the world roared to life in a burning haze of smoke, heat, and light. She flung her focus far beyond the burning promenade, up the walls of her Palace, and beyond the crenellations. There, she felt the faint flicker of flames.
As the next barrage of arrows was launched over the walls, Ana flung her hands up and grasped at each individual flame.
It felt as though her mind were splintering. The flares of fire were small, yet numerous, and she had the impression she was trying to stop an entire shower of comets across the sky. They sped forward, some yielding to her call, others slipping from her grasp.
Ana held her arm out and in a commanding motion sliced it down. Half the arrows dropped, plunging directly into the Tiger’s Tail, where their flames sputtered out.
Exhaustion flooded her. She clutched the reins of her steed, trying to steady the shaking in her hands as she watched the remainder of the arrows—those that had slipped from her grasp—slam into the promenade. The ground shook with explosions; the air was laced with the scent of smoke and oil, yet all that Ana could think of was the familiar, warm taste of copper on her tongue. She brought shaking fingers to her lips and swiped.
They came away red.
“First Battalion!” roared the commander. “Nock!”
Lifting her gaze, Ana found that most of the soldiers seemedto have found cover; that the new flames burning on the ground were fewer.
“Draw!”
As the archers’ grasps tightened on their bowstrings, Ana’s attention was diverted by motion from across the bridge. The assault on the gates seemed to have slowed, and it took her a moment to realize why.
The gates were opening.
Even from this distance, she heard her battalion cheering—yet for some inexplicable reason, Ana only felt a sense of dread tightening her chest. She spurred her valkryf and raced toward the bridge in a canter.
Above the pounding of hooves, she heard the cheers of her battalion fading, dying, changing…and turning into cries of panic. And as Ana urged her steed on, she glimpsed, above the motley outfits of her soldiers, something that turned her stomach to lead.
An ocean of pale armor, glinting like bones in the moonlight.
Imperial Inquisitors.
Morganya’s army fanned out into formation, and the Salskoff gates clanged shut again.
The Inquisitors lifted their hands, Affinities erupting in streaks of blinding light. Screams rent the air as cracks split across the ground; water rose from the river and transformed to daggers of ice. Even from where she watched, she could tell that the skill with which the Inquisitors wielded their Affinities far exceeded that of her Affinite soldiers and Yuri’s Redcloaks.
Ana heeled her steed forward across the Kateryanna Bridge, and out of an old habit, she sent a prayer to her mother.
Protect me, Mama. Let me finish this. For our land. For our people.
And then Ana plunged into the battle.
As she drove her horse forward, she reached deep inside herself and unleashed her blood Affinity. It felt as though she were burrowing through layers of herself, pushing past the bone-deep fatigue that seemed to have become a part of her in the past few moons, digging into her very flesh and blood and sinew, to draw the vestiges of power from her siphon and channel it. Ana flung out her blood Affinity, casting it like a net over the lines of Inquisitors. They were easy to grasp, their armor free of blackstone that would impede their Affinities.
