The black sky shifts, as though darkness cancome alive. From within that darkness, a swarm of crows descends, followed by arrows stabbing into the cottages’ summer-dried thatching, setting our village ablaze like a pile of parched kindling.
With them comes a horde of Eastlanders on horseback, carrying death in their eyes.
Ishould take Raina. Take her and run.
I glance beyond the demented birds raining down on the village to where the enemy’s hoofbeats pound loud and sure, and the first fires catch hold and flare. It’s a single moment of indecision, but when I turn back, Raina is gone.
“Damn the gods!” I jerk Mannus around and swing my sword at crows, looking for her. That long, dark hair and blue dress. Those sapphire eyes. It’s like she vanished.
I face west where the Eastlanders charge straight for us, the darkness that lives inside me swelling like a storm. I long to let a fraction seep out, let that old power settle over me—a second skin. Magickal armor. Such a thing isn’t impossible, but it’s been so very long since I’ve tasted that power.
I might kill everyone.
Instead, I draw my sword, the ring of metal sending a rush through my blood. The man in me will have to be enough.
Eastlanders blow through Silver Hollow like a flaming wind, too numerous and fast on their mighty horses for the wardens who nevermade it to the stables. I slice my weapon across one Eastlander’s middle, spilling his guts, then plunge my blade into another’s mouth before yanking back to land a fatal hit across the throat of one more.
All around, villagers fight on foot, struggling to hold off the crows and Eastlanders at the same time. Witch Walkers run and fight and chant all the while, but it’s no use. The Eastlanders’ arrows, cast with a magick that’s strong enough to penetrate the veil, strike many and kill them in a manner I’d been too panicked to notice at the other villages. I tell myself it couldn’t have happened there. Surely I would’ve seen such terror.
Beside me, a man falls to his knees. A fiery arrow sits lodged deep inside his abdomen. Flames billow unnaturally from his mouth and eyes, melting skin and sinew from bone—burning him alive from the inside out. Crows gather and pick at his flesh before his body explodes into dust like he’d been made of ash.
Fire magick. The devastating kind that is so much more than summoning a mere flame. The kind only Summerlanders like Fia Drumera know and teach. It’s happening everywhere, one after another, villagers shot down and incinerated. Even the children who didn’t manage to leave are not spared.
“Watch out!” A young man holds a large wooden platter in front of me, catching a fired arrow before it penetrates my chest. A small girl clings to his leg as she sobs with fright. Weaving around them both is a golden dog, barking and yipping in fear. The young man glares at me. “You don’t deserve to live, you big son of a bitch. But I’m giving you a chance for redemption. Now, you owe me.”
I narrow my eyes at the brave little bastard. I’ve seen him and the girl before—the blacksmith’s kids.
The boy tosses the platter aside. With one protective hand clutching his sister, he swipes a dagger at an approaching Eastlander with the other. He misses and drops his blade in the grass.
A colorful curse leaves his lips, and fear twists his face as the Eastlander lunges.
With all my strength, I lift my arm and bring down my sword, slicing a diagonal across the warrior’s body before it’s too late. Blood sprays and pours, and with a stunned look fixed on hisface, the Eastlander’s body splits open, his innards tumbling to the ground a moment before he collapses.
The little girl screams a painful shriek that splits the night. The smith jerks her into his arms, hiding her face in the crook of his neck. He looks up at me, eyes wide and wet, chin jutting, his fine moss-colored tunic and dark breeches painted with the dead man’s blood.
“Now we’re even,” I grit out between clenched teeth. I don’t know what it is about this kid, but I can’t decide whether I’m impressed by his bravery or if I can’t stand him.
“We’llneverbe even.” His face hardens, and he’s shaking, from fear or anger—I can’t tell which. He glances around, desperation in his eyes, then exhales a trembling breath and adds, “I tried. I did. But I must get my family to safety.”
Those desperate words are meant to persuade himself to leave, and I can’t imagine why he’s even still here with a child in tow, so I jerk my head toward the hills. “Go south or west. It’ll be easier.”
He’ll find destruction either way, depending on how the Eastlanders got here in the first place. But his death is waiting in Silver Hollow, not back at Littledenn, Penrith, or Hampstead Loch—not even in the valley outskirts or near the southern mountains. I sent all those other villagers east earlier, to the orchards, a mistake made in the heat of the moment. Now a band of killers—led by the gray-haired general I fought back in Hampstead Loch—rides in that direction, on the hunt for fresh blood.
And they’ll find it, thanks to me.
The boy runs with the little girl and his dog. The three of them disappear through a cloud of smoke and cawing crows. Throughout the village, fire races from thatched roof to thatched roof, chasing along any piece of wood it touches.
In the ashy haze that too soon settles over the green, I see Raina again. It’s impossible to turn away. In all the years that I’ve looked upon her face, I’ve only ever witnessed nervousness. Dread. Fear. Even repulsion, and maybe hatred. Like tonight. Tonight, she’d stared at me as if she could kill me. Brutally.
But I’ve never seen her cloaked in pure rage. It rolls off her, as hot and bright as the fires around us, lighting her up like a virago. A furyamong men.
An upward swing of her blade catches an Eastlander in the chin, his end gruesome. She spins, and her next strike lands in the bend of a warrior’s neck.
What in gods’ teeth did she do to that scythe? Inherhand, a farmer’s tool is somehow just as deadly as any sword, her movements so swift and precise that I’m momentarily mesmerized, even in the midst of such devastation.
I’m brought out of my admiration by a flash of silver through the air. I twist to miss an Eastlander’s sword, but not before it slices deep into the meat of my already wounded arm.
Pain fuels my anger, and though the injury has weakened me—making the slight weight of my weapon feel like I’m holding the world on the ends of my fingertips—I swing the tip upward and jab, piercing the Eastlander’s throat where I’m certain it will end him. I withdraw, and he slides from his horse, lifeless, like the sack of bones he is.
