All at once, that silence broke in a shuffle of movement as Fifth Territory soldiers, garbed in the awful orange Ellan loved so much, swarmed from the city walls behind Edmund, bows in their hands strung tight with arrows ready to fly.
They formed a line across the walls, their arrows aimed at us.
These are our allies.The thought filtered in from some distant place in my muddled mind.
Harthon didn’t suffer from the same confusion. His expression was cold as steel.
“I do sincerely hope,” he ground out, “that you and Ellan are craving your own deaths today.”
His threat was forthem, but it still hit me like a slap, cutting through my confusion as he made the sudden turn of events starkly clear.
Thesewereour allies.
And they were ambushing us.
But why? Ellan wasEllan.Obsessed with Harthon, too narrow-minded and inexperienced to ever hold his own, too preoccupied with riches and wealth to make political moves.
Ahead, Edmund spun to face us, shoulders settling with a swagger I hadn’t noticed before. “Ellan is not fearing his death at the moment, and neither am I.”
Harthon took in the perimeter of soldiers, sizing them up. I knew what he was thinking: we were on horseback while they were on foot. We could make a break for it. We only had to outrun their arrows. But we couldn’t outrun all thirty of them. One of us would fall, if not all of us.
I saw the moment Harthon set aside thoughts of escape. A muscle in his jaw snapped as he traced the line of archers.
His eyes collided with mine, a severe glint to them.
This was not good.
Not at all.
“You may as well come closer,” Edmund taunted. “We all know you cannot leave.”
There’d always been something about him that didn’t quite sit right. His watchfulness, his silent observation—it had always struck me as strange.
Now it was far more than an innocent oddity.
The soldiers tightened their bow strings, every step they took to corral us tying new knots in my abdomen.
Those knots unraveled and bottomed out when Edmund added, “Though we don’t need all three of you.”
The moment I understood his implication, I jerked to the side, reaching for Joris. “Don’t—”
My panicked yell was for nothing.
The arrow was already buried in his forehead when the sound came out. He didn’t even have the chance to flinch.
Shock wrapped around my throat as his body keened sideways before slipping off the horse. He landed in a motionless heap.
Joris…Joris was dead. His family, his children, hisnewborn…Oh, skies.
Tears burned my eyes as I numbly looked from the empty bow and the stone-faced soldier behind it to Edmund. His hand was raised in silent order, but his face wore a bored expression, as if ordering deaths were some kind ofchore.
It was then that a new horror slammed through my shock.
We’djusttold Edmund about Stefano.
He was next.
Run, Stefano. Run,I screamed in my head, like there was some way for him to hear me. But even if he could, would it matter? He could hardly sit upright. He wouldn’t be able to run from armed men, even if he uncovered their intentions in time.
