The hairs on my neck raised. “Heard them speak?”
He said something too quiet for me to hear.
I set the map aside and leaned forward. “What was that?”
Stefano’s hand landed on my knee, but I barely felt it, too intent on hearing the boy’s response.
“Not speak. Scream,” he quavered.
I straightened, skin tingling—
Stefano shot up, and I jerked to face him just as he unsheathed two daggers.
The boy. He’s going to scare the boy away.
But the boy didn’t run. Instead, he stiffly turned and followed Stefano’s gaze, and then I was following it, too, up to the wall walk, which was…empty.
The typical guard was gone.
And no one was walking down the wall to replace him.
Stomach tightening, I looked at the wood panels of the kitchen door. There should have beensomesound coming from behind it. Chatter between the bread bakers, if anything. But there was nothing.
It hit me like a bolt. My body wasn’t reacting to the boy’s eerie words, but to my surroundings. There was a tremor in my knees as I came to stand beside Stefano.
“We’re in the center of the Citadel in the middle of the day,” I stated woodenly, as if that fact alone would relieve the mounting sense of wrongness burrowing into my belly.
“We are,” he said.
The door to the kitchen opened.
The boy immediately dropped, flattening to his stomach behind the thick leaves of the squash plant.
For a shallow breath, there was no movement from within the kitchen, no apron-clad worker bustling out with a bucket of water or a basket for picking. Stefano slipped a dagger into my hand. As my fingers curled around the leather hilt, several figures emerged from the ominous space, their appearance dashing any hopeful doubt to pieces.
Five men, mouths set in firm lines. Black leather armor around thick torsos. Blades in their hands. Attention fixed on us as they callously flattened plants beneath their boots—plants that took an exhaustive amount of care and resources to grow here.
No one from the Citadel would crush them like that.
“Mercenaries,” Stefano hissed, limbs rigid.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes,” he said grimly. “I know what mercenaries look like. Iwasone with Harthon.”
Skies.
A bitter taste coated the back of my tongue as my heartbeat kicked into a racing tempo. The sensation was familiar, now—the hard edge of fear, the rush of blood as my body prepared to defend itself, the moment of questioning whether such a terrible thing was really, truly happening. And maybe that familiarity was why I didn’t freeze or gape or choke on my breath.
“Stay at my back. We’re moving away from the wall,” Stefano instructed, guiding me forward until we were next to the boy, who lay frozen on the ground.
The last fight that child had been in had resulted in the death of everyone and everything he knew. I expected him to be curled in a ball, maybe crying in panic, but his young face was fierce instead, hands braced on the soil where he hid.
“They aren’t here for you,” Stefano told him without looking down, as the distance between us and our attackers dwindled. “The second they engage, you run, and get out. And maybe get some help for us, too.”
“Knife,” was the boy’s muffled response.
Stefano didn’t hesitate, sliding yet another dagger from the back of his waistband and dropping it to the ground.
