She ripped.
Blood salted the air and sprayed the flattened snow and the stones of the Kateryanna Bridge.
An overwhelming sense of nausea and fatigue washed over Ana. She leaned over her saddle, cold and suddenly aching all over. The screams had quieted. From halfway across the bridge, she could make out a new line of bodies lying beneath the Salskoff Palace gates, covered in their own blood.
Monster. Blood Witch. Murderer.
If this was her legacy, then she would carry it through until the very end.
Movement in her line of sight. Ana looked up. There, beyond the first line of Inquisitors, came more—pouring out of the Salskoff Palace gates, marching in formation, Affinities already sparking at their fingertips.
“No.” The word fell from her cracked lips, her voice hoarse, her breath misting in the air before her. It felt as though theground were slipping out from beneath her, the inevitability of an end drawing closer with each beat of the enemy’s footsteps.
Ana looked to the battalions fighting on the Salskoff riverside embankments behind her, half-decimated. She looked ahead to the gleam of the Inquisitors’ armor at the gates, glowing red in the light of the fires all around. To the Affinites in her own army before her, outnumbered and outmatched.
Affinities exploded from the line of Inquisitors before the gates: ice and fire and lightning and air, lashing out and raining down upon Ana’s army. There came screams and yells as people dove for cover; Ana’s valkryf shrieked, bucking as a rock smashed before them into the cobblestones of the bridge. Clinging on tightly to regain control of her steed, Ana searched the scene before her for Daya’s familiar figure. She found Yuri’s bright red hair among the tides of the crowd, his frantic gestures at them toretreat, retreat.
They would not have enough time to make it back to the safety of the riverside promenade and the Salskoff city streets.
As the Inquisitors lifted their arms once again, Ana reached for the power of the siphon and realized that her blood Affinity would not come. She had overexerted it.
Then, stone and soil exploded beneath the first line of Inquisitors’ feet, throwing them back. There came water, roaring from the Tiger’s Tail to curl over the Inquisitors. Wind, rising into a screaming gale; wood, splintering from the nearby trees.
By Ana’s side came several dozen figures, hands outstretched, dressed in plain furs and clothing. The man closest to her turned to her and she saw that his eyes were aglow in white light, streaks blazing across his irises like flashes of lightning.
“Red Tigress,” he said. “The Affinites of Salskoff have arrived to fight on your side.”
Ana looked beyond the lightning Affinite. There were at least thirty, forty others marching steadily toward the Salskoff Palace gates, Affinities writhing from their hands. Several were clad in rags too thin for the deep Cyrilian winter, their faces gaunt, bearing the shadows of a hard life. Others were draped in opulence, furs rippling and gems glinting on their hands as they pushed forward. Affinites, herpeople,from all walks of life, gathered and fighting under one purpose.
She glanced across the bridge, to where Yuri’s and Daya’s forces continued to retreat, under fire from the Inquisitors.
Ana turned to the lightning Affinite. “Are you the leader?” she asked. He nodded. “I’m going to open the way across the bridge to the front lines, where they need reinforcement. Can you follow?” Ana said.
He drew a circle over his chest—the sign of the Deys’krug, aconfirmation.
Ana spurred her valkryf toward the Palace, plowing through the stream of Affinites in her army that were now retreating across the bridge, under assault and outnumbered by the Inquisitors. As the civilian Affinites joined the ranks of Ana’s Affinite army, the tides of the battle shifted. The Inquisitors’ relentless forward march began to slow.
Still, Ana’s army was losing ground. Whereas before they hadbeen at the Palace gates, they were now halfway across the Kateryanna Bridge, a trail of wounded and dead left behind them. The other quadrants of the Palace, defended by Ana’s battalions, faced uneven challenges. To her left, the previous sector she had helped defend was struggling to hold their ground, her soldiersfalling back to volleys of arrows—some of which were beginning to find their way to the Kateryanna Bridge, to Ana’s battalion.
Yet the battalion to her right—the sector under Ramson’s command—seemed to press forward. Someone had frozen a section of the Tiger’s Tail stretching from one bank to another, and even as Ana watched, her troops pushed across the river. On the battlements between the crenellations of the wall, someone had lit a torch and was waving it back and forth.
Ana frowned, momentarily distracted. She recognized that signal. It was the signal for her army, an indication that a quadrant had been captured.
This early in the battle, it was impossible that anyone had breached the Salskoff walls already.
An explosion thundered to her right, pulling her attention back to the battle. She was near the front lines now, the bridge shaking with the ruthless pummeling from Morganya’s Inquisitors. Ana’s battalion was still being forced back; if they yielded the bridge, they would allow the Inquisitors to reach the other sectors.
Someone shouted her name; looking up, she found Daya and Yuri racing toward her astride their steeds. Through the chaos and sound of battle all around, a sharp, lucid relief pierced Ana: Her friends were safe.
“We’re losing ground!” Daya yelled, drawing to a stop by Ana’s side. Her face was covered in sweat and dirt and she had a cut that was bleeding on her left cheek. Behind her, Yuri turned to fire two more blasts at the Inquisitors, so close that Ana could make out the crests on their breastplates, the shimmer of a crown at the center of a Deys’krug. “They’re too strong—we underestimated their numbers—”
It felt like the final straw. Ana looked to the burning Palace—the place she had once called home—shrouded in crimson smoke. To the ranks of her army, people shouting and crying out in pain. To the Inquisitors, barely twenty or so paces away, their armor gleaming fresh in the night. To her own hand, coated in blood that continued to drip fromher nose down her mouth and chin. The command—tofall back—was lodged behind her lips, an ache building in the back of her throat.
“Ana!” Yuri shouted. He was panting, and even as he punched his fists into the air, his flames sputtered weakly in the wind. His knuckles and the back of his hands were burnt red and raw, the skin peeling. “I can’t hold them back—we need more forces—the other battalions, can they—” He faltered at the look on her face.
Ana’s lips parted to give the signal.
And a flash lit up the ground where Yuri stood.
