I close my eyes and focus my hearing.
Voices. They’re faint, like murmurs around a campfire, but they’re there.
Is this what Nephele hoped to protect us from?
When I open my eyes, Alexus approaches, still hauntingly quiet. He folds his hands around my waist and lifts me off Tuck. Gripping my arms, he bends down and looks me in the eyes.
“Eastlanders,”he signs.“About twenty. Camped on the path. The prince is not with them.”
“To the woods,”I sign, pointing.
Because what are our options? As for the prince, I’m worried that he could be anywhere in an instant, so the fact that he isn’t warming his bones with his men isn’t exactly soothing.
Alexus shakes his head.“I know where we are now. Too near the mountains.The landscape is too rugged.”
I glance back the way we came.“We cannot turn back.”
“No.”Sighing softly, he shakes his dark head again, and his broad shoulders fall.“The only way forward is through,”he reminds me.Gently, he presses his forehead against mine and whispers, “I will take care of them. Just stay here.”
I grab his cloak before he can pull away.“They should not have to die for us to live,”I sign.
My stomach churns, sick with knowing what he means to do, if he even can. He alone cannot take down twenty men, Eastlanders at that. Can he? The God Knife hasn’t proven itself as the divine weapon I once believed, though Alexus seems to think it’s a critical piece in this game we’re playing.
He tilts my chin, and even under this red haze, I can see that the pretty green of his eyes has turned black.
“Believe me, this is the last thing I want to do,” he says. “But you’ve seen what these people are capable of. They will not spare us, Raina.They will kill us or take us to their prince. Or worse. Make no mistake.”
He tosses up his hood, shadowing his face, and kisses me. I don’t know why his hands on my cheeks, or the press of his lips is so shocking. Perhaps because it’s so natural—so impossibly right—when it should feel anything but. It’s a tender kiss, but it makes me weak all the same, scattering my mind like I’m sure he knew it would.
“Do as I say,” he whispers against my mouth. “Do not follow me. Your life depends on it. I will come back for you, but no matter what you see, no matter what you hear, do not follow. Swear it.”
I hate every bit of this, but I press the wordPromiseagainst his chest, not missing the way his heart pounds like a war drum beneath my touch.
It turns out I’m more of a liar than I ever knew, because minutes later, the earth quakes and rumbles like a star fell from the sky and crashed in the middle of this godsforsaken forest. Then I’m tying our horrified horses to a tree, stripping off the cumbersome gambeson, freeing both my blades, and creeping up the path in the cold, just as Alexus did.
A momentary white light splits the wood, stopping me in my tracks. The horrible groan of trees falling and snapping—a thousand at the same time—shatters the night, followed by men screaming in misery.
Their screams die at once, and the wood falls to absolute silence and stillness that makes my blood turn to ice. The wolves have stopped crying, and the crows have abandoned the trees.
The rocky hillside digs against my back, the jagged stones loosening as I move. One snags my bodice—under my arm—slicing through the fabric covering my ribs. I wince at the sharp pain. I’m cut, I think, but I’m more worried about every noisy pebble that falls, setting my pulse racing. I’m a liar breaking a promise, but I must know if Alexus is okay.
Finally, I’m at the cliff’s edge, panting around my anxiety. It takes all I have to gather my defiant bravery and peer around the rocks.
My heart lurches in my chest, slamming to a stop before speeding up all over again. The Eastlander campsite—no, the path and even part of the wood—looks exactly like my imagination conjured.
Like a star crashed in Frostwater Wood.
There’s a crater in the middle of the forest, obliterating the path and surrounding landscape. As for the Eastlanders, there’s no sign of them, though dark stains splatter the open earth, and bits of wet flesh hang from the limbs of broken trees.
In the middle of it all is Alexus, kneeling like a fallen god.
Even from here, I can see that he’s in pain. He rests his weight on one fist while the other hand pounds his chest like he’s driving a stake through his heart. He gasps so hard his back bows with the effort.
I hurry down the hill, stumbling and sliding to the shallow crater. The moment I reach the basin, I’m running. When I reach him, I drop my weapons and fall to my knees, slipping my arm across his back, hoping to help him when I’m not even sure what in gods’ death happened.
At my touch, he jerks his head up. Black veins web the blanched skin around his eyes, which are still that same liquid darkness, only now it’s not only his irises. Even the whites of his eyes have been overtaken.
“Go!” he roars, and the deep, reverberating sound of his voice is bone-rattling enough that the echo hits my core in ominous waves. It’s so arresting that I’m shaking, and I almost obey.
