My sword arm falls limp. The wounds burn and throb as blood streams down my sleeve, slicking my fingertips. Without me controlling the reins, Mannus wanders around the green’s rim, confused by the thickening smoke and cries for help. The number of crows and Eastlanders has thinned, but villagers are still fighting, and so many lie dead or dying, burned or burning.
And I no longer see Raina.
A few feet away, an enormous Eastlander struggles to rise out of a daze. He fixes his eyes on me. With a groan, I sheathe my blade and tuck my injured arm against my side before retrieving my dagger from my boot with my opposite hand. I don’t know how I’ll win this fight if he heads in my direction.
I glance toward the village’s stone wall where more invaders ride, followed by a flock of deadly crows. Could that be where Raina’s gone? To help the helpless? If she’s anything like Nephele described, that’s something she might do.
With my good hand, I yank the reins and turn Mannus toward the east, but the sight of Raina and Nephele’s mother standing in the middle of the ceremony circle, surrounded by a translucent smoke cloud, stops me. I recognize her gray hair and lovely face. She’s the olderversion of Raina, though I see Nephele in her features, too. The power emanating from her body is the one thing Idon’trecognize.
Her lips move with earnestness as she sings magick, her hands and eyes lifted in prayer. Dead crows drop at her feet, and the raging fires engulfing nearby cottages begin to dim. The flying sparks fade, the smoke starts to clear, and a rain cloud rumbles overhead.
Gods’ teeth.She’sdoing that. Ophelia Bloodgood.
In all my years, I’ve never sensed such power in this woman, just like I’ve never sensed it in Raina. I only sensed a trickle of anything that substantial once, in Nephele, the year I chose her. Now I think I understand why I never sensed it.
Ophelia Bloodgood did the impossible. She hid their power.
An Eastlander stalks toward her, teeth bared and dagger raised, and at her back, another assassin appears. He forms from a plume of red smoke, a smiling wraith stepping from a scarlet shadow, testing the heft of a spear in his hand. Darkness swirls around him, and a crow sits on his right shoulder.
I know those shadows, and I know him. We met once at Shara Palace in the Eastland Territories, three decades ago, not long after Fia Drumera killed King Regner in battle. I didn’t like the situation, and I had good reason, but the prince seemed decent at the time, enough that he caught the attention of my king’s eye.
But that was not meant to be. When we left Shara, we left a piece of Colden Moeshka’s heart behind, though we got what we came for. Regner’s treaty with the North remained intact, even if the East still meant to find war with Fia Drumera.
Given the circumstances, I never dreamed I’d see this man’s face in our valley, let alone with murder burning bright in his eyes. He’s the man who rose from nothing and nowhere and no one to become the leader of an entire continent.
The man who broke his word.
The man with no real name.
The Prince of the East.
The Eastlander crushing my throat in the crook of her elbow is as strong as a bear, but I’m slippery and quick. I spin and bring a knee to her gut, and she staggers back enough that I’m able to break free of her hold.
I stand crouched, arms wide, my body a shield in front of Mena. My old friend sits huddled behind me, chanting in the smoke-filled corner of her cottage. Powerful as she is, her magick is too weak for any weaving now.
She’s bleeding. From where, I don’t yet know. I didn’t have time to look. I only knew I had to help her when I saw this behemoth Eastlander woman shove her inside her cottage. That same woman now blocks the open doorway—and the path to my scythe.
She picks up my blade, and with a snarl, lunges at me. In the same second, she freezes, face blank. It takes a moment to understand why.
The woman crumples to her knees and collapses face-first on the slatted floor with a loudthud. Blood pours from a puncture wound to the back of her blonde head. Behind her stands Hel, bloody sword still raised, on guard.
Lowering her weapon, Hel steps over the Eastlander and throws her arm around my neck, her words coming out in a rush. “Gods, Raina, I was so scared I wouldn’t find you!”
I push out of her hold and quickly sign,“I’m right here! I’m all right! But Mena?—”
Hel looks me in the eyes, her brows raised. “Get Mena and your mother and meet Finn and me at the fallow fields. I have to find the rest of my family.” She kisses my cheek. “I love you!”
And just like that, she’s gone, a flutter of blood-stained golden silk flying out the door.
I turn to Mena and kneel before her, uncertain what to do.
“Leave me.” She lifts a hand from a gash in her stomach. “My time is here.”
But it doesn’t have to be. There’s so much death in the air that I can’t tell if hers is as close as she believes or not.
Not caring if she learns my truth, I begin signing my song.“Loria, Loria, una wil shonia, tu vannum vortra, tu nomweh ilia vo drenith wen grenah.”
These are the words for healing, for when death hasn’t crossed too near. I start to repeat the lyrics, but she grabs the fingers of my right hand.
